What To Do With The Criminally Insane
Everybody is commenting on the release of Dena Schlosser, the mentally ill mother who killed her baby in gruesome fashion. Jacquielynn Floyd, in a column in The Dallas Morning News, wants courts to have more options than verdicts of "guilty" or "not guilty by reason of insanity." She argues for "guilty, but insane", a verdict that, she believes, would allow a court more options after the insanity is medically treated. I'm willing to go along with that, if courts really are hamstrung by the "not guilty by reason of insanity" verdict. I'd like to learn more about that. Floyd doesn't offer any details there.
Mark Davis, in an op-ed column in The Dallas Morning News, offers his own opinion in his column in The Dallas Morning News. I usually don't read Davis, as his column headlines usually tell me everything there is to know about his opinion. I suspect today's column is no exception: "Insane killers need to be locked up for life."
But my favorite comment comes from the usually easy-going, folksy, Steve Blow, who responds to Mark Davis in a blog post to The Dallas Morning News Metro blog:
"Let's take a hypothetical. Let's suppose Dena Schlosser was driving down the road, had a seizure, crashed her car and killed the baby riding with her. Would we lock her up for life for that? Of course not. Dena Schlosser doesn't have seizures. She has a brain illness of a different sort -- one that alters her thinking so radically that killing her baby seemed like obeying God. Should we lock her up for life for that? Of course not. We don't lock people up for being sick. We might forbid someone with seizures from driving. We might prevent someone with hallucinations from being alone with children. But we don't punish illness."The money quote comes in the title to Steve Blow's blog post: "Lock Mark Davis up for life."
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