wemptronics
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User ID: 95
That said, I think in general that filicide (of young children) is probably a form of murder we should have more nuanced opinions about as a society
Clancy, insanity, or mitigating circumstances notwithstanding, why not hang women who kill their young children? At least the egregious cases. There can't be too many egregious cases and distinguishing them from whatever mitigating circumstances bar Clancy clears might be a good distinction. If these women are going to rot in a mental institution or prison forever, then no great loss to hang them. As a punishment for a crime it seems fair. Taking a child's life away from them is pretty high up on the unforgivable crime pole.
He is the only surviving injured party
In Clancy's case, if you want to weight the ex-husband and family to punish her that seems fine, but as a principle this is perverse. So long as he had the consent of the injured parties, or silenced them, Chris Benoit could have saved himself the trouble, stopped early in his familicide-suicide, and been well underway enjoying a born again journey by now.
psychiatric institutions may be much nicer than high security prisons, but I’m not even sure this is the case for women.
In America, for someone only mildly crazy or formerly crazy, I suspect mental institutions are preferable in both cases.
Did anyone watch the case? Was this a reasonable outcome?
Massachusetts places the burden on the state to prove a person claiming insanity as a defense was actually of sound mind during the crime. If I assume a jury makes an honest attempt to abide by these standards it seems like a really high bar to prosecute. Anti-depressants come with disclaimers of side effects, several include chance of psychosis, and that alone sounds like a reasonable enough reason to doubt a person is guilty of a crime according to the law. It's on the label. There's documented cases. Why is the state so sure someone didn't experience a side effect when the state wasn't there? Postpartum conditions, as I understand they argued, also have a chance of degrading into psychosis something witnesses testified(?) she had. Given that, were I in the position of a jury honestly attempting to apply the law, the state would have to demonstrate a lot for me to no longer consider these as plausible alternatives to the explanation that, no, her actions can only be considered as guilty of murder or manslaughter. Clancy had a lot more than a single prescription to rely upon for her defense. The state might need something that nears a confession to get a jury following the rules to convict her given all these reasonable reasons to doubt her sanity at the time.
Also, is there a good reason to allow cameras in the courtroom to live broadcast criminal trials? I think you should be able show up, bring a pen and paper, and confer with any associated press outside the courthouse to cover live proceedings, but no live feed from inside the courtroom. All I can think of is that the exposure to the attention economy could raise public accountability to proceedings-- since nobody wants to read to follow a story anymore perhaps we should broadcast all proceedings in that case. I think a judge should choose whether to sequester a jury and have cameras inside the courtroom, or choose not to not sequester a jury and disallow any live film coverage.
If we defer or heavily account for punishment by polling the will of living relatives, then all he needs is people who love him to back his insanity plea -- or kill them if not -- regardless of whether he was in a state of psychosis or not.
Punishment taking into account familial sensibilities is a sensitive consideration in a homicide. The state is willing to listen to the will of living family of a victim while some overworked prosecutor (also the state) attempts to represent the harms imposed on those in the ground. I don't think it's wrong to consider the will of living family to a victim, although in the case of filicide or familicide this is complicated. Decent people can and mostly do continue to love indecent family members -- to say nothing of decent family who have done an indecent thing -- and tend to defend their well being.
The will of living (injured as you say) family is a more meaningful consideration when the victim is not related to the accused. Deferral like this is, frankly, unfair otherwise. Yes, the ex-husband thinks his ex-wife isn't a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe that's fine, true, or just in this case, but this feels (admittedly a feeling) like an incomplete or biased representation of the injured. We can't ask a dead child whether or to what degree they might want their parent-murderer punished, but if we could and they could answer, would we consider that too?
Lock'em up and toss away the key! But, in the US we don't even do that for murderers who juries consider guilty. Our courts don't lock away people forever in an asylum; they place people in treatment until they no longer require it.
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