Word: hinckleys
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...first is that contrary to what Sen. Orrin Hatch (R. -Utah) and his conservative colleagues will insist, the Hinckley verdict is not an expansion of the rights of the accused. It is novel only because the insanity defense has never worked in such a widely publicized case. The verdict, however, only reaffirms the prior knowledge free will foundation of American law. John Hinckley's inevitable consignment to a mental home does not eliminate the distinction between legal treatment of the "loons" and the "goons." Only several weeks ago, convicted assassin Sirhan B. Sirham, the murderer of Robert F. Kennedy...
People will shake their heads at the Hinckley jurors for the rest of their days. Except for the probable cheers of the American Civil Liberties Union, the dozen men and women who freed John Hinckley after four days of deliberations made no friends by pardoning his sins...
...once one abandons the initial shock at the unexpected decision the insanity defense of Hinckley's lawyers and psychiatrists seems well grounded in the Anglo-American justice tradition. That tradition punishes people for two reasons for crimes they knew they were committing, and for having had free will over the decision to commit the crime...
...insanity as in last week's case a jury implicitly argues at least one of those key reasons is absent. The truly insane may be unaware they are committing a capital offense. More frequently their disturbed mental conditions leave them with no apparent control over their actions. Whether John Hinckley was sufficiently mad as not to know or control what he did last March 30 is for experts to assess and for juries to decide, advised by those specialists in how people's minds work...
...Philadelphia radio the night of the Hinckley decision, an angry young "man in the street" was quoted as saying of the verdict: "...Yeah, and now [H.R.] Haldeman [a Nixon White House aide] is gonna be able to get a pardon by saying he committed Watergate for Jody Foster," Such analogies will be the Right's main ammunition in trying to use last week's decision to weaken controversial court practices that and defendants, like the exclusionary rule, which prohibits the use of illegally seized evidence in a trial. In defense of those liberal practices, it's worth observing two things...