This will ensure I am globally reviled.
I feel sorry for this guy:
I heard today that Jared Loughner, before he shot innocent people including a congresswoman and a nine-year old girl, went on-line to look up lethal injection. So, I suppose he knew he was going to die. He may have preferred “blue suicide,” but it looks like he’s taking the long route, the one that ends with the drugs and the table.
Here’s what I’m imagining though: I’m putting myself in the place of the schizo kid (there but for the grace of God) and imagining what’s in his head. Is there a chance the voices are clearing up now that he has no outside influences? What if his mind clears and he thinks – “Wait – I did what?”
Or, even worse, what if he’s found guilty (maybe the jury didn’t SEE the mugshot) and he takes anti-psychotic medication in prison, while he waits on death row? And what if that works, he realizes what he did and how crazy it is, and then he realizes what’s ahead for him? Or, more probably, he ends up in an institution and they do give him drugs. He’ll be like John Hinkley, no matter how sane he gets he’ll never get out.
Or maybe I’m not feeling sorry for him, I’m just finding satisfaction thinking he’ll be tortured by the realization of what he’s done.
9 responses to “Sympathy for the Devil”
I agree with your sentiments, 100%.
Of course, one could argue that ALL who murder are insane, but even backing off from that, the way the legal system defines and treats obvious insanity is insane.
That doesn’t make me feel sorry for him; that lets me know he was sane enough to know what was ahead for him. So he’s not really insane, just another wacky weirdo who killed folks.
He looks like Uncle Fester; the early years.
He knew the consequences and chose to do it anyway. Now he has to face those consequences.
If we can’t feel sympathy or at least sorrow for the most damaged (and damaging) among us, what kind of world are we building?
That’s what wrong with the legal definition of insanity. The law says you get a bye only if you didn’t know at the time that what you did was wrong. It doesn’t take into consideration the case where you knew it was wrong and there’d be consequences, but it didn’t matter to you, or where you felt that even though it was wrong, there was a higher purpose that no one else saw. That’s the case here. He knew it would probably result in his death sooner or later, but he didn’t care. That’s insanity, too, but not according to the courts. They prefer to call it depraved indifference. I.e., “badness”.
~~Silk – Well, at least they are off the streets, so they aren’t homeless and mentally ill.Amy_in_StL – But, what if the neighborhood lampost was insisting to him that he had to be a martyr? Crraaaazzzzzy. Crazy doesnt mean you no longer are capable of logic. In fact, I think it means everything feels super-logical. Think of that subway shooter who pled his own case in court and tried to show how the numbers “proved” he had to shoot those people. Zayrina – Dead on.Caroline – He knew it? Son of Sam knew the neighbor’s dog was telling him to kill people. And really, I’m not as concerned he’s going to die. I want to be sure he doesn’t get sane before it happens, just out of pity. Elsa – I know! A Crazy world! Silk – I remember the woman who drowned all her children, and Texas couldn’t make a distinction between “I knew it was wrong” and “I knew it was wrong, but I am Satan, so it’s expected.”
I always wondered the same thing about Andrea Yates- the one that drowned her 5 kids. The real punishment would come if they could give her enough of the right anti-psych drugs to make her clear thinking and allow her to realize what she’d done.
(oh and reading your last comment- I think that’s who you were talking about.)
Lawgirl – That’s exactly who I was thinking of. I can’t find out what her current mental state is, except she’s now in a psychiatric hospital and her roomate is a woman who killed her daughter.