[Newspoetry] The Insanity Plea and the Death Penalty

[Donald L Emerick]

Dear John...
Let me know if the following ideas help.

1.  According to our law, a person must be sane, in some sense, to want to
commit murder, or to kill unlawfully another human being, or to take (steal)
another human's life away from that other person.

2.  A person who does not have an adequate capacity for the requisite kind
of (moral) knowledge involved in the intended death of another person would,
then, be insane at the time that said act was committed.

3.  There are, thus, several kinds of  insanity related to the alleged
commission of some offense, such as murder: technically, one must know that
another might die -- and -- one must also know that causing this other death
is morally (technically, legally) wrong.

4.  Hence, for instance, Bush may be judged sane, presumptively, by this
standard, if he knows or ought to know that the natural and probable
consequences of  his actions would generally result in the death of some
other person(s).

5.  However, just because I may find some person standing over a corpse with
a smoking gun in his hands never entitles me to conclude, unwarrantedly, on
the basis of that circumstantial evidence, that the person holding that gun
is the possible culpable felon whom I may then immediately shoot,
preemptively striking down that alleged offender, and saving myself the
trouble and expense of an trial's inspection of the reasonableness of that
evidence against the requisite standard of proof.

6.  No one is entitled to become a vigilante of justice, not even the
President of the United States may make the United States into a vigilante
nation to privately enforce the UN Security Council's resolutions.
(Although, this point of law seems to be lost on many Americans these days.)

6.  Instead, the evidence must withstand the culpability standard of proof
for a verdict to be found, justly, against some alleged wrongdoer.  (And, in
this standard, for instance, is the idea that, when accused of murder, the
accuser must positively prove the accused could be seen as guilty beyond a
shadow of a doubt, when no other possible conclusion may rationally be
entertained.  Powell's case, then, before the UN thus utterly failed to meet
the standard for a criminal conviction -- because many reasonable doubts are
still extant; therefore the US has no right to presume a conviction and to
proceed to act as if the accused were convicted.)

7.  To defend himself in a fair trail, the accused must be sane for the
purposes of that trial.  How could the accused defend himself at that time,
during the trial, were he to be insane, then?  And, as one is presumptively
sane during any trial, one might allege one of the excuses of law, such as
some form of one's previous insanity (insanities), as one's defense against
culpability.  I must be sane enough now to plea, successfully, that I was
insane at the time the alleged offense against law occurred.

8.  Now, besides sanity at the time of trial, one has to retain sanity while
waiting for a sentence to be executed (which is not a euphemistic metaphor
at all in capital punishment cases in some states).  Otherwise, one would
not be able to avail one's self of one's legal rights to various post trial
appeals that may be exercisable.

9.  So, one has to be sane, from the time of the trial, right up to the
moment of execution.  Or else, if one has periods and episodes of insanity,
then the state must add to ordinary time that would have elapsed between
conviction and execution of a sentence.  This would require, in fair trial
cases, for recurrent or episodic madness, some idea of how to make perfectly
good the time the allegedly rightfully convicted person has lost (or is
losing) due to his or her illness.

10.  As a pardon or a commutation might be granted or grantable, right up to
the very last minute, for any number of legitimate reasons, and as denial of
these might void the legality of the alleged rightful conviction, and as one
could not avail oneself of all these opportunities to avoid a wrongfully
inflicted punishment, then one must be sane at the time the execution
begins.

11.  But, it seems to me to be both unusual and cruel to require a person to
know that, right at this very minute, here in this very place, you will now
most certainly die (young Luke SkyWalker.)  Sanity at that moment would only
make sense if they would give you a fighting chance, like a gladiator,
perhaps, against a hundred lions in the Coliseum.  (Well, perhaps, a hundred
would make the chance too illusory.)

12.  Nonetheless, those who adhere to the idea of punishment as a form for
vindicating righteous vengeance think that vengeance would require sanity,
as well.  For, they ask, how could I truly enjoy your death, as a spectacle,
unless I might see you weep and cry, plead for a mercy that I will cruelly
never grant (like Bush when Governor of Texas), thus having you mentally
breaking down just as your body is to be broken down, forever?

13.  So, is Bush sane?  Yes.  Is he a murderer?  Yes, if you never allow the
defense of state power (*the will of the (devil) state makes me do it* or
*what's wrong for other persons is not wrong for a king who acts for those
persons, collectively (oxymoronically so)*).  Should Bush, then, be
convicted of possessing the tools and instrumentalities for committing his
crimes, for being engaged in a diabolical conspiracy to commit murder?  Why,
yes!  Yes, indeed! -- Why not preemptive justice against this war criminal?

14.  So, why doesn't Bush -- who insists that Hussein is a madman -- insist
that Hussein be made sane before he would destroy him?  That would be
perfectly legal according to the standard of the Fourth Circuit of Appeals
of the United States Government.  And, thus, again, bush would be violator
of Hussein's trial rights were he not to insist that Hussein be made sane
before any possible trial against him even begins!

16.  Well, now, I pardon myself for speaking as I do, but I thought your
question was worth answering, by speaking to some of the larger bugs that
creep around my thinking on this question.  I hope you will pardon me, too,
though I may not deserve your mercy.  But, mercy is always undeserved -- for
if it were deserved, it would be, rather merit, which is a rather distinctly
different thing.

Thanks for listening
Donald L Emerick