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.
I think that at least half the murders are committed by people who are insane.
I know half our laws are passed by insane people.
I never got the standard of whether someone knew it was wrong. It seems to me the standard really used is whether someone knew it was illegal, because trying to hide it is seen as proof that a person knew it was wrong. A truly crazy person could know it’s illegal and still think it’s justified because for whatever crazy reason that they actually believe.
Under what circumstances is the author willing to have Routh living in the house next-door to him?
A person can be psychotic yet still know right from wrong. The rule is that “IF AT THE TIME OF THE CRIME” he was psychotic enough that he was not aware of the nature of the crime and unable to realize his act was wrong.
As a caveat, when I am called for jury duty and they have someone up for trial after being incarcerated and waiting for trial after two years, I don't go along with the 'innocent until proven guilty' matrix.
My question to the judge and the lawyers is this: "If he isn't guilty, then why did you keep him in jail for two years?"
They usually stare at me, speechless. And, I am excused.
Who is more likely to murder again?
A) the person barrel who knew it was as wrong and did it anyway
B) the insane person who didn’to know it was wrong
The answer is both A and B are equally likely to kill again.
Neither should ever live again amongst the law-abiding
I hate my fucking IPhone for inserting words i did not type and for changing words i did type
I don’t think anyone has it figured out as to whether someone is insane. We do say so ourselves and to our neighbors. I do ... I say someone is “CRAZY”. Heck there are CRAZY PEOPLE posting on Free Republic.
The thing is, the standard is an artificial construct of the law, since no one knows anyway. You are either insane or not, by the luck of the draw ... or the “luck of the vote” on a jury!
Heck there are CRAZY PEOPLE posting on Free Republic.....Hey! I resemble that remark!
He’d be confined to a mental institution....Uhhhh, I thought the lawyers got rid of those necessary societal brakes? I kind of know after helping shut down three of them by Court Order.
Being crazy is no defense. Legitimately not having the mental capacity to tell right from wrong is. That’s a very rare defect.
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.................
Ya think that the FACT that he was a muzzie convert on his own private Jihad against muzzie’s enemy just might have had a tad to do with it??
Just asking.
Sane people plan evil things. Just because one person is surprised by what another can do, doesn’t automatically make the other person insane.
And after all that, we still won't know what a person barrel is...
Ah, yes. "The nuance-ity defense." I'm for abolishing that one for sure.
In Georgia, it use to be you could be found “Guilty BUT insane” They would treat the illness, then, you would go to prison, or, they would at least treat the illness IN prison.
I haven’t worked for the Dept of Prisons in 20 years, so, I don’t know what they do now.
Easy answer. This is Texas, we don’t care if you’re crazy we about what you did.
Nobody is suggesting he didn’t need in-patient treatment or just confinement. Kyle was correct: he was “straight-up nuts.”
And the two victims were also nuts to take a guy they just met and knew nothing about to a rifle range, and turn their backs on him. Sorry, that was idiot stupid. Take him to a zoo, take him horseback riding, take him on a trail hike.
DON’T TAKE HIM TO A SHOOTING RANGE AND GIVE HIM A GUN after texting that he was “straight-up nuts.”
Then why is Andrea Yates still breathing?
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