While bracing for new trials, let's stop the insanity

Dallas Morning News | Mark Davis:

“Dena Schlosser might get another trial. Andrea Yates definitely will, but it's on hold until June. It's time to examine what they both deserve. The insanity of the insanity defense, a cancer that has spread mightily through our court system, has denied justice to countless victims.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Davis says he isn't against the insanity defense in theory. He just wants to set the bar so high it is never granted. He certainly doesn't want it granted by a jury who has listened to hours, days, maybe weeks of expert testimony from prosecution and defense, testimony about the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime. Instead, he wants the insanity defense to be granted only by talk radio personalities who have formed their own opinion about the defendant from ... what? Reading the newspapers and talking to their call-in talk radio audience? Mr Davis argues that there is no "magic power" that allows juries to determine the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime. Yet Mr Davis shows no hesitation himself in judging mental state based on the 911 calls alone in the Schlosser and Yates cases.

Texas already has some of the nation's most restrictive conditions for application of an insanity defense. Texas' prison population is 150,000. There are approximately 68 people in the state mental hospital because they were acquited of crimes by reason of insanity. Some have been hospitalized for decades. Does this sound like a "a cancer that has spread mightily through our court system?" Or does Mr Davis sound like an Internet troll taking an extreme position in an attempt to draw attention and start an argument. Enough said.