[Avodah] Insanity

[harchinam]

I can assure those of you who are concerned over the issue of pleading
insanity, that sometimes even if the criminal pleads insanity justice can be
done.

I am very familiar with a certain case in which a Jewish [but non-frum] boy
who was suffering from schizophrenia murdered his father by stabbing him
something like 35 times or more. He definitely was insane, was having
definite psychotic issues at the time, and was still convicted of murder by
a judge who was very wise. The judge said that while the young man [I think
he was 21 or 22 at the time] was definitely schizophrenic and had been
diagnosed as such years before, he was aware of what he was doing at the
time, planned the attack in advance, ditched the knife, and lied to police
and his mother in order to get away with the murder so he could not be
judged innocent by reason of insanity.

To be judged innocent by reason of insanity the defense must prove that the
person could not understand the difference between right and wrong and did
not understand what he was doing at the time. Just because a criminal is
insane does not mean that they can use this to get out of being judged
guilty of a crime.

In the case I mentioned above, the murderer has up until this time been
refusing his medication and is so psychotic that he cannot even attend his
sentencing hearing and so it has been postponed for a long time now [more
than a year or so IIRC] but it will eventually happen and until that time he
is serving his time locked up in a well-known state mental institution in
Maryland.

To bring this back to Avodah relevance, I have never heard of a case in
Torah in which a murderer has been set free because they were insane.

*** Rena
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