James Holmes declared guilty: insanity not found

[shadowmoon522]

Contradiction much? Justice has very much to do with determining the most fair outcome. Also, I'm surprised (if you're in the US) how you describe your prison system because here I am in Canada and your prison system scares me. In a max security prison, cells are tiny! Also, prison food is just messed up. According to this dude at San Quentin (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-food-like-in-prison) there's just no quality control with food being undercooked/overcooked/served in dirty dishes. It's supposed to be cheap, and in places where catering has been privatized, nobody gives a muk about quality. Like, being Chinese I can appreciate free muk and all, but there really comes a point when the muk's so bad that even being free can't be considered a positive.

justice is just behavior or treatment, while fairness is the quality of making judgments that are free from discrimination. to put it into better perspective for you, someone killing someone who killed their loved one is a form of justice, but is not fair due to the revenge seeker's judgement being clouded by emotion. theres quite a few things that people think are the same, but really are not. like right & good and envy & jealousy.
as for the food thing, its not that hard to dull your taste bubs & get over the disgust. i honestly wouldn't be surprised if this guy was eating bugs before he got locked up, he set up preparations before he even committed the crime

 

[Her]

different people live different lives & get different ideas of whats cruel or not and what is just or not. what i stated was not justice, it was the most fair punishment for the crime committed. death is to much of an unknown variable to be a proper punishment, being sent to prison with 14 kills under his belt? in a place where people brag about their offenses while getting free food, shelter, education and cable? being on protective custody in a jail more of a punishment then that and is actually worse then what i stated. i'd rather have the needles then to go though that. its easier to get a tolerance of pain then it is to deal with isolation.

...A maximum security prison is far from the criminal dreamland you've described. It's naive to think that he would have access to cable, for one thing. But I digress - he'd still be living in the prison for life and would have the unending burden of all that life in prison has to offer. Is that not enough? The lingering act of evil he committed provokes the want for a proportionate response, but the proportionate response should not be a proportionate act of evil, which is all that torture is. Likewise, putting him into the general population knowing that he'd be either raped or assaulted or murdered and possibly all three in that order is unquestionably cruel as well. If I lived in America, I'd prefer my money go towards keeping Holmes permanently subdued in the prison system with his own thoughts, the loathing of everyone who will ever lay eyes on him again and the knowledge that he will die in there through age or illness, rather than supporting a system which devises its own divine punishment as it sees fit.

 

[Sir Codin]

I want to take this time to voice my thoughts on the whole "insanity plea" thing in general.

I don't really like it being used, especially in this case. If you want to defend the idea of "insanity" being a way to reduce a sentence, then be prepared to make the case that there are sane people out there who, after much deliberation and reflection, decided it was a good idea to abuse a right (possession of firearms-and by extension giving gun owners in general a bad name), go out and shoot up a theater/school/etc.

You will find there isn't a single sane person who would do this, because as far as I'm concerned, doing what he did isn't "sane" by any definition of the word, no matter how much mental gymnastics you want to spin. The point I'm trying to make is "insanity" is a bullshit defense in cases like this because if he were sane, he wouldn't be where he is right now.

 

[Kanzler]

But, for the purposes of the court, he was sane. So, according to the jury, he is one of at least one sane person who would commit mass murder at a cinema. Pleading insanity allows one to be removed from guilt altogether, but that was not the case for Holmes.

 

[Sir Codin]

But, for the purposes of the court, he was sane. So, according to the jury, he is one of at least one sane person who would commit mass murder at a cinema. Pleading insanity allows one to be removed from guilt altogether, but that was not the case for Holmes.

Yeah, which doesn't make sense to me as far as semantics go. As far as the law was concerned, he was sane, but I personally don't consider what he did the act of someone who has all the cards in their deck.

 

[shadowmoon522]

I want to take this time to voice my thoughts on the whole "insanity plea" thing in general.

I don't really like it being used, especially in this case. If you want to defend the idea of "insanity" being a way to reduce a sentence, then be prepared to make the case that there are sane people out there who, after much deliberation and reflection, decided it was a good idea to abuse a right (possession of firearms-and by extension giving gun owners in general a bad name), go out and shoot up a theater/school/etc.

You will find there isn't a single sane person who would do this, because as far as I'm concerned, doing what he did isn't "sane" by any definition of the word, no matter how much mental gymnastics you want to spin. The point I'm trying to make is "insanity" is a bullmuk defense in cases like this because if he were sane, he wouldn't be where he is right now.

the insanity plea is flawed in nature because there is no such thing as a sane human being, some are just crazier then others.

 

[Tlachtli]

I have always been of the opinion that capital punishments should reflect the crime committed. If he shot and killed 12 people, he should be shot 12 times (with only the final being fatal). Plus, twelve 9mm rounds would be much cheaper and less time consuming than that potassium chloride cocktail they use. If you want to deter someone from committing capital crimes in the first place, don't promise them life on the state's dime; promise that they'll experience what they do to their victims.

An eye for an eye makes the world blind convinces people really quick that eye-stabbing is a bad idea.

 

[shadowmoon522]

I have always been of the opinion that capital punishments should reflect the crime committed. If he shot and killed 12 people, he should be shot 12 times (with only the final being fatal). Plus, twelve 9mm rounds would be much cheaper and less time consuming than that potassium chloride cocktail they use. If you want to deter someone from committing capital crimes in the first place, don't promise them life on the state's dime; promise that they'll experience what they do to their victims.

An eye for an eye makes the world blind convinces people really quick that eye-stabbing is a bad idea.

funny thing about this is the fact that the world became more blinded after the killing decreased.

 

[Her]

Question: would there ever be a scenario in which someone can be found legally insane and be deemed guilty? Or does one cancel the other out in every case?

 

[shadowmoon522]

Question: would there ever be a scenario in which someone can be found legally insane and be deemed guilty? Or does one cancel the other out in every case?

I'm pretty sure the ones that get the insanity thing are always counted as being guilty, but because their considered nuttier then a squirrel on crack in a mountain of acorns they get away with it a bit more then the rest of the people in prison for the same crime as insanity is counted as being something of a mental disease..

 

[Her]

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/07/us/james-holmes-movie-theater-shooting-jury/

Surprisingly, he avoided the death penalty. Life in prison instead.

 

[Sir Codin]

And thus he got an even worse punishment....

 

[shadowmoon522]

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/07/us/james-holmes-movie-theater-shooting-jury/

Surprisingly, he avoided the death penalty. Life in prison instead.

its not that surprising, anyone who gives out the death penalty has to live with knowing her or she killed someone.
a lot of people can say they can kill someone & everyone has the capability to do so.
but not everyone can live without suffering from killing someone, hence the reason why the vast majority see killers as being evil now days.
if any of the jury would have condemned him to death other then the one who voted for his death, well the best term for it would be legally justified accomplices to murder.

 

[mikey]

Life in prison. What an absolute joke. He should have gotten the death penalty. It's an insult to all the victims and their families. He shouldn't be breathing.

 

[Her]

its not that surprising, anyone who gives out the death penalty has to live with knowing her or she killed someone.
a lot of people can say they can kill someone & everyone has the capability to do so.
but not everyone can live without suffering from killing someone, hence the reason why the vast majority see killers as being evil now days.
if any of the jury would have condemned him to death other then the one who voted for his death, well the best term for it would be legally justified accomplices to murder.

I was surprised based on how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been sentenced to death a few months ago. I figured the jury would go for a vindictive death penalty as is so often the case in high profile mass killings.

Whether a jury should be considered accomplices to murder is not something I wish to entertain. I certainly abhor the death penalty, but I wouldn't go that far.

 

[Danny0317]

there was no doubt this douche was guilty.. would've saved a lot of time and money if they just shot the prick in the back of the head instead of this whole trial. lol

 

[Kanzler]

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/07/us/james-holmes-movie-theater-shooting-jury/

Surprisingly, he avoided the death penalty. Life in prison instead.

Shame there aren't many dissenting opinions on this topic. I'm one!

Surprising? Not in my opinion. The jury could not come to a consensus on giving Holmes death, which is what I imagined would happened (after entertaining that the jury would hand him a vindictive death sentence) and personally what I felt to be the most just decision. I felt that his mental circumstances clouded the waters sufficiently to deter me from believing death was appropriate, and it appears that some of the jurors felt the same as well.

 

[Spacy]

Let him go to prison. He'll die much faster there.

I think the real problem, though, is that it took 3 years to get to this point.

I think it's hard to define if someone is insane enough to get out of trouble for doing something awful. Insanity isn't one thing with one layer. A person could hear and see things that aren't there without having an uncontrollable desire to kill, which is it's own form of Insanity.

Now for my response to the above quote.

Yes, three years is a long time and yes, it should have been done with faster. But one thing to keep in mind is that rushing justice too much is a really bad idea. Maybe they really needed three years.