[livius]

To avoid such rulings in the future, the legal definition of insanity should be altered to take into account that not all cultures and religions have the same view of right and wrong. The question should not be whether the defendant believes his actions are right or wrong, but whether he knows how our society views his actions.

She makes an interesting point. Our law is based on certain foundations of natural law (e.g., killing an innocent person is always wrong) but we have suddenly wound up with a group of citizens who don't accept the fundamental premise. Islam substitutes its ritual law for all other forms of law; sharia is not based on natural law.

Does this mean our law doesn't apply to Muslims? Of course not, but it might be a good idea to make this more specific. Because he was a Muslim, this man's entire mental universe was insane. But he obviously knew that in our world, which was also the day to day world in which he lived, what he was doing was wrong. So perhaps insanity laws should be modified to indicate that an insane belief system does not exonerate someone or make him not responsible for acts that he commits in our society.

[Steely Tom]

She makes an interesting point. Our law is based on certain foundations of natural law (e.g., killing an innocent person is always wrong) but we have suddenly wound up with a group of citizens who don't accept the fundamental premise. Islam substitutes its ritual law for all other forms of law; sharia is not based on natural law.

Yeah, well. So what. They vote for Democrats, so open the doors and let 'em in by the million.

[swarthyguy]

Gotta hand it to his lawyers.

Didn’t think there’d be any doubt about this, but I guess that driving purposefully with a loaded gun, using subterfuge to enter a specific place, killing people of a specific religion all points to “insanity”.

america, what a country.