“If she’s truly mentally deficient, she needs to be locked up.”
Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t ‘lock up’ people because they have low IQ’s.
Yes, we do! There's a holding pen for 538 of them in Washington, DC!
I didn’t say anything about locking up people just because they have low IQs. I’m talking about a woman who engaged in criminal activity.
However, if she truly lacks the judgment to know that she would have killed the puppy by mailing it in a sealed box, she’s sufficiently mentally deficient that her ability to take care of herself is in question.
It has the added bonus of deterring the “mentally deficient” defense from being misused (which I expect it is in this case).
At the very least, a ruling of “mentally deficient” should mean, “First you get whatever treatment a medical professional deems necessary; when that is established, THEN you STILL have to pay whatever fines/serve whatever time you owe. It should NEVER be a “get out of paying a fine/serving time” judgment.