Are you crazy? Then go ahead and commit a crime

The insanity defense. The “Washington Post” defines it as “a plea that defendants are not guilty because they lacked the mental capacity to realize that they committed a wrong or appreciate why it was wrong.” The “Post” goes on to say that some states allow the insanity defense to be used when the individual on trial knew he or she was committing a crime but was unable to control his or her actions.

Last week, Mike Plumadore of Indiana brutally murdered and dismembered his 9-year-old neighbor Aliahna Lemmon, who was partially deaf and blind. In the “old days,” the courts would have speedily convicted this murderer and either presented him with the death penalty or sentenced him to a life in prison, giving him up to the mercy of other convicts.

Today? His defense attorney has already spoken to TV personality Nancy Grace about the insanity defense the team of lawyers is working on.

I think that most uses of the insanity defense are just as crazy as the criminals’ lawyers say their clients are. Never mind that regardless of your mental state, you still took the life of another person. Why does saying you don’t remember the event or were not in control of yourself make it OK to ruin not just one, but dozens of other peoples’ lives?

There may, in fact, be individuals who have committed crimes because they legitimately had no idea what they were doing. I’m still not sure why that entitles them to a free ride, but that isn’t the point of this editorial. The whole idea of an insanity defense has sparked a slew of insanity pleas across the country, with lawyers’ hunting through their clients’ medical histories, interviewing close friends and family members and pressing the defendants for any hint of a former mental glitch. Once they unearth a popped antidepressant, a visit to a psychiatrist or even a fit of rage in their client’s past, that piece of information is presented to a jury as insanity gold.

If an individual is found guilty but mentally ill, guilty but not criminally responsible by reason of insanity or not guilty by reason of insanity, he or she may be committed to a treatment center until he or she is no longer considered to pose a danger to anyone.

Just humor me for a second and consider that it is possible that a criminal, desperate to not be left at the mercy of other inmates who just might not look kindly on a grown man’s bludgeoning to death and then dismembering a little girl, could work with his lawyer to “prove” that he was too crazy to know what he was doing. If he can pretend that he’s crazy, you’d better be sure he can fake being healthy again when he’s ready to get out and do it all over again.