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Re: abuse of insanity defense

Posted by Elizabeth on March 10, 2000, at 10:21:00

In reply to Re: abuse of insanity defense, posted by judy on March 8, 2000, at 13:24:34

> Am I the only one on this forum who went into a psychotic manic episode while taking prozac (without a mood stabilizer in place)?

I had a mixed episode with psychotic features on Effexor, not Prozac. I wasn't nearly organized enough to have pulled off an act that requires as much planning as a bank robbery (even if I had tried to do something like that, it would have been obvious that I was "out there" by my incoherence). I wonder exactly what this bank robbery consisted of -- did he just take a gun from his closet or whatever, go into a bank, and say, "give me all your money," or did he do some planning? What exactly are they talking about when they claim he didn't know what he was doing was wrong? Was his act the result of delusional thinking, and if so what was his delusion? If not, why were the expert witnesses claiming psychosis?

I don't know the details of your episode so it's hard for me to say whether I think it would be grounds for an acquittal on the grounds of insanity, had you done something that had brought you in contact with the criminal justice system.

> Believe me, if not hospitalized, I was totally capable of criminal acts.

Uhh, I think we're all "capable of criminal acts" pretty much all the time. Do you think there is some special intrinsic feature of "criminal acts" that differentiates them from other acts?

> I think this is a valid defense, and only people who have not been through something like this would be so quick to condemn.

I think it can be, but it is abused so often that the insanity defense has a lot less credibility than it should.

It *is* possible to be psychologically affected by a drug (or a mental disorder) without being legally insane, after all.


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poster:Elizabeth thread:25642
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000302/msgs/26610.html