Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity.

The BAD part of writing a blog and having Major Bipolar is it is impossible to “stay on tract.” My mind plans out topics in sequence and then I cannot control it and it goes onto a different subject. This is not fair because I am not true to my readers. They expect one thing and I throw them a curve. The GOOD part is it is MY blog. I am not being paid to write it so I can write wherever my mind goes.

In the May 26th addition of WSJ there was an article about Jared Laughner, the man who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others leaving 6 people dead has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial. In other words: “Not guilty by reason of insanity.” Laughner was evaluated my two mental-health experts whose findings were that he was not able to understand the charges against him nor aid his attorneys in his defense. 


 The law varies from state to state, but in most courts that recognize the "insanity defense," someone is found to be legally insane if he or she meets one of three conditions (Partial list):



* Because of a mental disorder, the defendant did not   understand that what he or she was doing was illegal.


* Because of a mental disorder, the defendant did not know what he or she was doing.


* Because of a mental disorder, the defendant was compelled to commit the crime by an irresistible force.

Insanity: “Insanity is a legal term pertaining to a defendant's ability to determine right from wrong when a crime is committed. The short version of Law.Com is: Insanity. n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior.” Insanity though does nothing to define the true mental condition of the persons mental illness such as schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders (and I will wage about 80% that when this is over, Bipolar will be mentioned later in this case somewhere.)

However, the issue at hand is: If Laughner refuses treatment or medication can the Federal Government force him to take medication. Personally I am not a lawyer so I don’t know how it is from state-to-state, but in my state…you can. I know because of a personal experience of a family member of mine, but that will be another story…I think.

Ok, compared to hundreds of murderers, especially brutal and horrific serial killers, how can they ALL NOT be insane? I will copy direct excerpts from Wikipeda Encylycopdia on two Serial Killers found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“Jane Toppan: In 1901-02, after she was in custody, Jane Toppan confessed to dozens of murders. She was extremely dangerous and more than a little unhinged: she would spend the rest of her life at Taunton State Hospital, dying in 1938 at the age of 81. Her killing spree started in 1885, when she was training to be a nurse. She took to experimenting with patients, using different combinations of medicines and chemicals to tweak their nervous systems and slide them between life and death. She also later admitted to being aroused by the process of killing. Toppan got away with her deeds for a while, especially when she entered private practice, after which she started racking up more victims by killing her landlords and later her foster sister. After killing an elderly man named Alden Davis and two of his daughters, the Davis family requested a toxicology investigation, which turned up traces of the poison Toppan had used. She was eventually charged with multiple murders, but she was found not guilty and declared insane.”

“Peter Woodcock brutally murdered three young children in 1956 and 1957. Woodcock was apprehended for the murders in 1957, found not guilty by reason of insanity, and placed in Oak Ridge, an Ontario psychiatric facility located in  Penetanguishene. Following the completion of a treatment program for Woodcock and other psychopathic individuals, he was deemed  greatly improved, and sent to a medium-security hospital in Brockville, Ontario in  1991. There, Woodcock claims, he fell in love with fellow psychiatric patient Dennis  Kerr, who rejected his sexual advances. During the first hour of his very first weekend pass in thirty-five years, Woodcock stabbed Kerr to death. Woodcock was being supervised on the pass by Bruce Hamill, a former patient who killed an elderly Ottawa woman in 1977. Hamill was an accomplice in the Brockville murder, and both  men were subsequently returned to Oak Ridge. Woodcock has told how the treatment  program served only to make him more adept at manipulating others. Having spent the majority of his fifty-three years in custody at Oak Ridge, Woodcock died there on  March 5, 2010, his 71st birthday.”

Ok, what about a serial killer believed to have bipolar and found “GUILTY”

“In 1977 Robert Christian Hansen was arrested and spent five years in prison. After a customary mental evaluation, a prison psychiatrist concluded that Hansen suffered from "bipolar-effective disorder" and requested that the courts order him to take lithium to control his mood swings. Regardless, the order was never enforced and Hansen was released after serving just one year.  Later, Hansen led investigators to each grave site, heavily covered in snow, and they would mark the trees with orange paint. By the end of the day Hansen had revealed the grave sites of 12 unknown women. On February 27, Superior Court Judge Ralph E. Moody sentenced Hansen to 461 years plus life, without chance of parole. He was then remanded to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.”

Friends here is my point. The above sick individuals are nothing compared to the ones I have on file. In your wildest imagination you could not come close to the stories of hundreds of serial killers and what the did to their victims. It would make you so sick you would have nightmares for weeks. The 3 listed above is nothing! So what should the punishment be?  Prison? Death Penalty? Mental Institution? Or give them the treatment they gave their victims? All I am saying as someone who was (is?) diagnosed as Bipolar 1-serious manic depression - there is no way in the world you could convince me any serial killers are sane! NO SANE PERSON COULD DO WHAT THEY DID! Ok, so what should we do with them? I have my ideas, but I will leave them to myself.


I know, this page in my blog is unlike what I ever wrote before but no one can convince me in a million years that someone “sane” can willfully, plan out, enjoy, get excited and gratification on each and every victim and be sane. I just had to get this off my chest...sorry...mind.

This is my blog…

Laughner will either spend the rest of his life in a U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, or later if the doctors decide after treatment and/or medication he is competent he will go to trial and could get the death penalty.