Friday, February 18, 2011
Puzzling exception
A trial here in Spokane is making TV-worthy news because defendant Cole Strandberg, who is pretty clearly schizy and delusional, was spitting on his own defense lawyer. The judge required the jailers to put a burqa-like mask over his head. Good TV, I guess.
Yesterday in a preliminary hearing the judge found Strandberg legally competent to stand trial. Lots of puzzled commentary about this, but the judge is exactly right.
What's puzzling to me: Why have courts returned to a proper and rational definition of sanity after spending a couple of decades with the ACLU definition that allowed any defendant to run free "because of insanity"? On every other question, courts have continued in lockstep with ACLU's murderous chaos since 1970, but for some unknown reason they broke loose on the insanity defense and returned to the old common-law definition.
I wonder if this comes from a similar turnaround among MD psychiatrists? I don't know if this can be quantified, but my impression is that MD shrinks have also broken loose from the Satanic world of hard-left orthodoxy. In the last decade or two, articles and books written by MD psychiatrists contain lots of common sense and clear thinking about human differences; meanwhile, related professions such as PhD psychologists and MSW social workers remain in the vanguard of pure academic-left weirdness. ¶ 5:39 AM
Yesterday in a preliminary hearing the judge found Strandberg legally competent to stand trial. Lots of puzzled commentary about this, but the judge is exactly right.
What's puzzling to me: Why have courts returned to a proper and rational definition of sanity after spending a couple of decades with the ACLU definition that allowed any defendant to run free "because of insanity"? On every other question, courts have continued in lockstep with ACLU's murderous chaos since 1970, but for some unknown reason they broke loose on the insanity defense and returned to the old common-law definition.
I wonder if this comes from a similar turnaround among MD psychiatrists? I don't know if this can be quantified, but my impression is that MD shrinks have also broken loose from the Satanic world of hard-left orthodoxy. In the last decade or two, articles and books written by MD psychiatrists contain lots of common sense and clear thinking about human differences; meanwhile, related professions such as PhD psychologists and MSW social workers remain in the vanguard of pure academic-left weirdness. ¶ 5:39 AM
