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Judge: Loughner can be made mentally fit for trial

Lokiate said:
I think the 'shock' is coming from them using medications to uncrazy him long enough for trial and sentencing.
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Yea, this caught my eye too. I'm no expert, but I had thought forced meds were unconstitutional.
 
jamesrage said:
The fact he researched what would happen proves that he knows right from wrong and that he knew that committing mass murder would get him into serious trouble.
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Well that's why we have the courts. If it's that open and shut, the State will have no problem proving that he was mentally coherent at the time.

jamesrage said:
States should have a "it doesn't matter if he is insane or not, he is still guilty and thus will get the same punishment anyone else who committed mass murder would get which is the death penalty or life without parole in a real prison" verdict.
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The State should have to follow the law. The government cannot be allowed to act on revenge.
 
There're been instances of elderly drivers, who well knew they could no longer drive safely, plowing into pedestrians and injuring and killing many. We don't decide their punishment until we know more about their state of mind, competency, etc.

IMO, same deal as with the violent mentally ill. We can't execute until we know more than just what they did.
 
Thunder said:
who do you think may have framed him?
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Anything I said to you would be pure speculation. But if you really wanted me to speculate something/anything. I would have to place my bet on someone that already had him profiled as a terrorist before this happened. Some sorta rogue agent. My view is of pure intuition and not much fact though.
 
dirtpoorchris said:
Anything I said to you would be pure speculation. But if you really wanted me to speculate something/anything. I would have to place my bet on someone that already had him profiled as a terrorist before this happened. Some sorta rogue agent. My view is of pure intuition and not much fact though.
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you can say that again
 
Pinkie said:
O, I do think the vitriolic speech, especially Palin's, could well have affected Loughner. But exactly how it fit into his delusion, we may never know.
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No, you don't know but you'll make the accusation anyway.

This is yet another example of the sort of crazy speculation that went on following the murder of those six people, including a little girl. It was especially the fault of Sarah Palin, according to you, that this little girl was killed.

There is a madness sweeping America.
 
Grant said:
No, you don't know but you'll make the accusation anyway.

This is yet another example of the sort of crazy speculation that went on following the murder of those six people, including a little girl. It was especially the fault of Sarah Palin, according to you, that this little girl was killed.

There is a madness sweeping America.
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Ah, this again. In brief:

We have crazy people in this country. Some may become violent. When a public speaker uses violent imagery and speech, and that causes an uproar, it adds the fuel that MAY someday cause someone to go off the rails.

This does not make Palin legally guilty. It makes her refusal to tone it down morally reprehensible, and it's painfully ironic that one person who asked her to do so before the shooting was Gifford herself.

Now, you can continue to defend this as "no causal link can be proven", or you can accept that our actions may have unintended consequences. You have your POV, I have mine.
 
Pinkie said:
Ah, this again. In brief:

We have crazy people in this country. Some may become violent. When a public speaker uses violent imagery and speech, and that causes an uproar, it adds the fuel that MAY someday cause someone to go off the rails.

This does not make Palin legally guilty. It makes her refusal to tone it down morally reprehensible, and it's painfully ironic that one person who asked her to do so before the shooting was Gifford herself.

Now, you can continue to defend this as "no causal link can be proven", or you can accept that our actions may have unintended consequences. You have your POV, I have mine.
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The murderer is insane yet you still contend, without saying where or how, that it was Sarah Palin who contributed to his murdering six innocent people. You have no proof whatsoever that this was the case at all yet will continue to defend your baseless charges. It is these sort of ridiculous and hateful accusations that is poisoning debate in the United States and, with few exceptions, it comes from the Left. You are contributing towards the hatred and yet seem to believe you are behaving in a rational manner.

Sound familiar?
 
Frolicking Dinosaurs said:
Jared Loughner has paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia: Symptoms - MayoClinic.com

The ability to research how to kill or the consequences of killing do not necessarily mean that this man was not totally convinced by his delusions or auditory hallucinations that he must kill Gifford in self-defense. That he now has remorse is a pretty good indication that he was operating under a delusion that he now realizes was bogus.
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good reason we should have a "guilty by reason of insanity" and not "inocent by reason of insanity" for the jury or judge to decide on.
Just because he may not be connected to our world and he doesn't understand our social standards/laws is no excuse.
 
Grant said:
The murderer is insane yet you still contend, without saying where or how, that it was Sarah Palin who contributed to his murdering six innocent people. You have no proof whatsoever that this was the case at all yet will continue to defend your baseless charges. It is these sort of ridiculous and hateful accusations that is poisoning debate in the United States and, with few exceptions, it comes from the Left. You are contributing towards the hatred and yet seem to believe you are behaving in a rational manner.

Sound familiar?
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Grant, this is a fun debate for me, but it hijacks the thread. Start a new one and I'll join you, I promise.
 
mike2810 said:
good reason we should have a "guilty by reason of insanity" and not "inocent by reason of insanity" for the jury or judge to decide on.
Just because he may not be connected to our world and he doesn't understand our social standards/laws is no excuse.
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Well, I wouldn't say "it's no excuse". It's an excuse, but we still need to be protected, and furthermore, for many mentally ill people there is a level of sanity whilst they are medicated. There's a level of comprehension that they may become violent if they go off their meds...and yet, they still do it. (This may not always be true, and it may not have been true of Loughner, but it istrue sometimes.)

I agree with you, "guilty but insane" is the superior result.
 
I like the idea of "guilty but insane." Loughner is mentally ill. What that means is that anything could set him off--vibrating electric wires speaking to him alone, whatever. Not much point in trying to blame Palin or anybody else.

Sanity can be a terrible punishment...having to live with the knowledge of what you have done.
 
nota bene said:
I like the idea of "guilty but insane." Loughner is mentally ill. What that means is that anything could set him off--vibrating electric wires speaking to him alone, whatever. Not much point in trying to blame Palin or anybody else.

Sanity can be a terrible punishment...having to live with the knowledge of what you have done.
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I suppose. My compassion is for his victims and their families, and to a degree, for his parents. If I recall correctly, they tried to get him confined as dangerous but law enforcement wouldn't or couldn't pick him up.
 
Grant said:
No, you don't know but you'll make the accusation anyway.

This is yet another example of the sort of crazy speculation that went on following the murder of those six people, including a little girl. It was especially the fault of Sarah Palin, according to you, that this little girl was killed.

There is a madness sweeping America.
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A madness stemming from the manipulation of beliefs through language, perhaps?

He clearly had an obsession with language. His question to Gibbons was to the effect of what is government if words don't mean anything.

Sign language courses.

His writings examined through the lens of cognitive linguistics, "persuasion", etc. Provide an interesting perspective. Consider his use of the term currency as referring to language, instead of money for instance. I think he may have been using substitute terms to avoid scrutiny by search engines like boardtracker. We had a blogger here a while back show up because we were talking about him. He knew from boardtracker, which he claimed to monitor regularly.

Couple that with netvocates responding to discussions in the course of their jobs, something talked about pretty openly on some boards I've looked at, and you could have the basis of his feelings of being "watched".

I made a half joking post to this effect in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, based on a couple things I heard, and then got a little chill when I read everything available at that time.

Just a thought.
 
I've noted several in this thread have questioned why he was not judicious in taking his meds since he was mentally ill. Meds for paranoid schizophrenia improve the symptoms dramatic, but they do not remove them completely in many cases.

What ends up happening in many cases is the person becomes paranoid and begins to think the meds are part of an attempt to control his mind so quits taking them. I've always felt that anyone who has a history of violence with paranoid schizophrenia should be given the medication via injections that are long-term and time released and failing to come in for the medication should be reason enough for a very limited involuntary commitment to get the person medicated. Many tragedies like this one would be prevented by such a system.
 
I'm no expert of schizophrenia, but I do know that some of the meds make people taking them feel so slow and fuzzy that they stop. And I did know someone very well who suffered from manic-depression with three-year arcs. She saw a psychiatrist and also knew the symptoms and was in the medical field herself, but part of her disease was not being able to phone the shrink and do what she had to do.

In Loughner's case part of the problem was that various agencies and institutions couldn't talk to each other because of HIPAA and FERPA. The New York Times ran a series of articles on him, and I was struck by how similar the dilemma was for the folks at Virginia Tech who knew that that guy was insane but couldn't speak up.
 
Frolicking Dinosaurs said:
I've noted several in this thread have questioned why he was not judicious in taking his meds since he was mentally ill. Meds for paranoid schizophrenia improve the symptoms dramatic, but they do not remove them completely in many cases.

What ends up happening in many cases is the person becomes paranoid and begins to think the meds are part of an attempt to control his mind so quits taking them. I've always felt that anyone who has a history of violence with paranoid schizophrenia should be given the medication via injections that are long-term and time released and failing to come in for the medication should be reason enough for a very limited involuntary commitment to get the person medicated. Many tragedies like this one would be prevented by such a system.
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"What statues dont love them anymore." LOL I love the onion.

 
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