LafayetteLady
Posts: 7683
Joined: 5/2/2007
From: Northern New Jersey
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ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3
Few are sane, often temporary insanity is used as a defence.
It would be unlikely that this child would meet the criteria for "temporary insanity." That term does not mean simply that someone was "out of their mind" at the time of the incident. It would mean there was a temporary psychotic break where they were unaware of right and wrong at that moment. The fact that the kid waited hours for his stepdad to come home will defeat a "temporary insanity" plea. Further, someone who is suffering from what the law considers "temporary insanity" would not have conducted themself the way this boy did after the fact. Why? Because "temporary" means just that.
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I doubt any of these people are sane I guess you have to gauge how well they understand the consequences of what they do and go from there. It doesn't mean you can't remove them from society for being insane, you just can't expect them to be judged at a trial; in terms of their motives for committing a crime.
Actually we can and have judged those killers at trial. Not one of the murderers mentioned was aquitted.
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Whenever I've seen parents physically chastising in public it appears to me as the parent getting to the end of their tether and just losing it rather than a dispassionate attempt to guide the children to better ways of living. I see it as a nonsense justification and it creates this inability of the authorities to decide what counts as legitimate chastisement. If you think children learn to respect you and what you say when using this tactic then I can tell you for a fact that for certain types it'll have the opposite effect and they'll lose all respect for what you say from the first time you do it. It only teaches people that disagreements can be resolved with violence, if you can’t reason with them then you have plenty of other ingenious ways to punish them considering they are dependants and so enjoy a standard of living based on what you choose to provide them with.
Yes, quite often a parent disciplining their child in public is doing so because they are at the end of their rope. Children start at a very early age to "push buttons" and also will learn quite quickly what will and won't "fly" as the struggle for power between parent and child begins.
You are quite right that all children respond differently to different punishments. Some don't respond well to time outs, others don't respond well to a swat on the behind. But if you honestly believe that you reason with a two year old who is about to touch a hot stove rather than slap their hand and say no, you are likely to get a child with a burned hand. Most two year olds don't have the ability to reason, that is the parent's job.
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Good that you know all the facts of the case and it's background from a single police interview, I like to keep an open mind and see people as innocent until after all the facts are established and made public.
Actually, there is no question that the kid isn't innocent. He admitted to the shootings. There is no question of guilt or innocence in this case. You can keep an open mind as long as you want, but his attorneys aren't going to suddenly start saying that this kid didn't do it. His attorneys will not likely put on a defense to absolve him of guilt. They will be arguing for lesser charges.
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Well it doesn't seem sane to me to use that excuse because a sane person would know such triviality would not be seen by authorities as justification for murder. It would be like him saying god told him to do it, the motive has to fit the magnitude of the crime for the trial process to work. When police are looking for motives to build a case do ‘household chores’ often figure? The whole trial process is based on finding evidence that the crime was committed by this person and then indicating realistic motives for why he did it. Motives have to be understood in terms of realistic gains from what the suspect had before the crime, realistic in a way that we could all see. I.e. he killed for money we all want a pay rise. Or he killed someone to stop opposition to a business deal. Something tangible that we as a jury could condemn him for because there are legal ways to achieve the same or if not we’d be prepared to face the music rather than kill. We have to be able to judge the way he goes through life in the context of the alternative legal way we approach it, to condemn.
It would seem that you are woefully misinformed about our legal system. When someone admits to committing a crime, there is no search for motive. In fact, motive would be used as the defense to attempt to justify what the kid did. Motive would be used by the prosecution not to make the jury understand why. In this case, the prosecution doesn't need to provide a motive and there likely won't be a trial to determine guilt or innocence. There will be sentencing and it may or may not go before a jury. If they win the right to charge him as an adult, his attorneys still have the right to waive a jury trial, which might be in the best interest of their client. Considering there can't be a jury of his "peers" and anyone who is a parent is likely to be horrified at a child shooting their parents. If they are not granted the right to charge him as an adult, there will be no jury. There are not juries in juvenile matters.
Motives not only don't need to be understood, but are not typically presented in real life cases. They make for good television, but in reality, the motive, especially when there is no question of whether or not the defendant actually committed the crime is wholly unnecessary.
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RE: 14 Year-Old Boy Admits To Killing Parents To Get Ou... - 
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