Posted on 03/01/2015 12:10:58 PM PST by Kaslin
When a Texas jury rejected an insanity defense and convicted Eddie Ray Routh in the murder of "American Sniper" Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield, it raised a question: If this guy isn't crazy, who is?
Routh had a voluminous history of mental illness. After being discharged from the Marines in 2010, doctors hospitalized him because he thought a giant tapeworm was eating him. He had several more stints in psychiatric facilities and regularly took medications for psychosis.
A few weeks before the shootings, doctors concluded he was a danger to himself and others. After his final release from a Veterans Administration hospital in January 2013 -- over the objections of his mother -- Routh got worse. He said his co-workers were planning to eat him and "the heater in the workroom was a large human rotisserie," as The Dallas Morning News reported.
Traveling to a gun range with Kyle and Littlefield, he behaved so strangely that Kyle texted Littlefield, who was sitting next to him: "This dude is straight-up nuts." Routh, who was in the back seat, said he grew angry during the drive because they tried to get him to eat something and "nobody would talk to me."
"It smelled like sweet cologne," a jail guard heard him say. "I was smelling love and hate." He also said, "I'm sure they've forgiven me." When he arrived at his sister's house in Kyle's truck after the murders, she testified, he "was talking about pigs sucking his soul."
But the jurors needed less than three hours to decide that for purposes of criminal law, Routh was as sane as Tom Hanks. Maybe they were persuaded by the steely logic of the prosecutor who said the defendant's subsequent visit to a Taco Bell confirmed his mental fitness.
"What does it take to go and order fast food?" asked Assistant District Attorney Jane Starnes. "So you've got to go through the right lane; you've got to place your order; you've got to interact with the clerk; you've got to give them the money, get your change, get your food and go. It's not something that somebody who's just out-of-their-mind delusional does."
Really? My suspicion is that even delusional people need food and recognize Taco Bell as a place they can get it. I would bet plenty of fast-food employees have encountered customers who are a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
Nor did prosecutors offer any compelling theories why Routh would commit what they called the "cold, calculated capital murder" of two new acquaintances who were going out of their way to help him. The only reasons he had to kill Kyle and Littlefield were loony ones.
But it didn't matter. Under Texas law, his attorneys had to prove that their client, "as a result of severe mental disease or defect, did not know that his conduct was wrong." That hurdle is almost insurmountable.
Mental Health America of Texas, an education and advocacy group, has said the requirement does not "allow a jury to consider the true effect of mental illness on an individual who suffers from psychosis, delusions or irrational beliefs" and is "unable to appreciate the moral wrongness of their action or conform their behavior to the law." Texas Tech law professor Brian Shannon has written that the Texas standard "is so narrow that it is virtually meaningless."
That's not a bug; it's a feature. The insanity defense has never sat well with many Americans, who have no use for the notion that anything can excuse serious criminal violence.
The idea that some people are not responsible for their crimes because their minds are defective offends our normal moral standards. It's easier to dismiss it than to acknowledge the complexity of the world. Some states have abolished the insanity defense altogether, and others hardly need to.
No one wants psychotic killers set free to follow their dangerous impulses. Under a more sensible set of laws, though, someone like Routh would not be sent to a Texas prison to rot for the rest of his life. He'd be confined to a mental institution where he could be thoroughly treated -- and kept off the streets unless and until he is no longer a hazard to anyone.
Instead, we act as though such defendants are as capable as the rest of us of behaving rationally and responsibly. In this case, that is straight-up nuts.
exactly, the hospital treatment is temporary. Liberal reformers don't like prisons or jails. They want them mostly done away with. That's why you hear them crying about how many prisons we have in the United states. It's barbaric, they say. juries don't trust it.
Not bein' funny here; but reading the news over a number of decades leads me to believe that the insanity defense only works for female defendants. If you're male, you could be stark-raving, but you'll still be found guilty.
Don’t care if they are legally insane or not; if determined to be legally insane put them down for the safety of the general public, they can’t be cured.
If determined to not be legally insane, put them down for murder.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the rule. “Did the defendant know right from wrong when he committed the act?” What the attorneys have been permitted to do with the manner of determination is criminal.
You know that; I know that.
The author seems to be saying “Put him in a mental hospital for a while, cure him and turn him loose”.
Seldom an issue. people hospitalized for NGRI purposes generally spend longer times in confinement than those imprisoned for the same offenses. If you want to keep the public safe, nothing wrong with NGRI findings, rare as they actually are.
Probably tried in Houston, Austin, or DFW. Snake pits full of liberals. I call Austin “Hanoi in the Hill Country”. Stephenville is down home Texas with Texas values.
You are correct in that "insanity" is a legal term, not a psychiatric diagnosis. But it has little to do with luck.
BALIFF: “You are hereby charged that, on the night of September 14th, you did willfully, with malice and forethought, sexually assault a 14 year old girl. How do you plead?”
LESLIE HORWINKLE: “Insanity”
BALIFF: “Insanity?”
LESLIE HORWINKLE: “That’s right, insanity....I’m just crazy about that girl...”
Excellent point. I have not followed this case in detail but I have wondered about this more than once.
Guess you missed the John Hinckley case. He tried to kill a famous person, as you may or may not recall.
Funny how all the conspiracy nutbags don’t question if Hinckley was acting alone.
This, http://www.murderpedia.org/male.S/s1/shaw-joseph-carl.htm is the story of Joseph Carl Shaw who killed three young people with the assistance of two accomplices. He apparently had sex with the corpse of the fourteen year old girl for several days, if that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is. I remember when the crime happened and there were newspaper reports saying that Shaw had gone and begged to be locked up because he said he was afraid of what he might do. Still he was found guilty and electrocuted, personally I think anyone who begs to be committed because he says he is crazy should be taken at his word.
Citation, please. I haven't heard this, and it would solve the big fat fact that the prosecuter didn't give any motive at all, that I know of, which is... impossible.
Need to define “insane” when it comes to legal means to elude a penalty. Knowledge of right from wrong, at the time of the crime, is probably as good as it will get. Loosen up the parameters and many really bad folks will get off lighter and possibly be released when they have been “successfully rehabilitated” and we have seen some heinous crimes committed by those types. No graceful way to do it and to also protect the Public from them w/o re-instituting insane asylums.
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