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Notes -
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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