Insanity Plea!

I watched three Law and Order episodes in a row yesterday. In two of those episodes, the defendants filed an insanity plea for their crimes, so it got me thinking: Where do we draw the line?

The Medical dictionary defines the term Legally Insane as Persistent mental disorder or derangement and Unsoundness of mind. In most jurisdictions of the law, being legally insane could pardon you from your crimes but proving that is not an easy task.

In most Legal Insanity plea trials, each side (defendant and plaintiff) would provide expert opinion in the for of a psychiatrist who will testify in open court to the defendants sanity/insanity (depends on your side) at the time of the crime. We cannot really determine which side is telling the truth and which side is not but we can agree that one of them is wrong, in essence for every such case, one of the two psychiatrists was wrong.

So whether you believe in the merits of such a term (Legally Insane), there are plenty of psychiatrists to back you up. Well I plan to take it a step further, after all this is the Fearful Thought forum. Maybe all murderers who have committed a premeditated murder are in fact insane.

To venture in this direction of the conversation we have to talk about the most important question of the hour: What makes a murderer a murderer?

Scientists from all venues of science have argued this question for years. Some scientists claim that it is purely genetic, others blame it on the upbringing of the person and some say it is a combination of both.

We clearly as a society condemn criminals and do not show them much mercy, but what if the reason they do what they do is an illness? We can all agree that being "born" a murderer is certainly a genetic illness that is beyond your control as a person. Furthermore, being raised a certain way causing you to be disturbed mentally is never something a person decides for themselves. So basically either way, a murderer did not choose to become a murderer, so instead of medical treatment, why do we treat murderers like murderers?