Talk:Insanity

Insanity and the law and jury duty in America.

It turns out that if a defendant (at least in the state of the US of A that I lived in then) is found in court to be "not guilty by way of insanity" and gets committed to an institution for the criminally insane, that they can petition the court (or someone) after a while and get a jury trial to decide whether or not they are no longer insane and should be turned loose - back into the world populated by the rest of us. So that was the jury that I got picked for.

We were not told, could not be told, what it was that got him (okay, yes, it was a male) locked up to begin with, but I did some post jury-duty research and discovered that he was the "Robin Hood of Flint," robbing banks at gun point and then giving the loot away to poor folks. So picking a panel such as I was on - besides the fact that I was picked to be the foreman (this was before "forepersons") - seems like a pretty dicy way to determine sanity.

For example, when we were being vetted to decide whether we could/should be empanneled we - potential jurors -were all asked if we had had past dealings with either the legal or mental institutional establishments and we all said "No". We were picked, along with an alternate, who was later dismissed when she was no longer needed and one of my co-jurors let put a hugh """SIGH""" and said that she did not know what she was going to do if the alternate got a say on the jury's decision because she - the juror talking - had been attacked with a knife in a high school cafeteria by the then gone alternative who had in turn ended up in a mental institution. There were also racial implications here, but that's a better story, along with my other jury, for another place.

But I digress. So the issue of whether to let the defendant out or not seemed to us to hinge around whether or not he would take his medication regularly or not. Because everyone agreed that he was a nice enough fellow sedated to the gills, but got a little weird when straight. So his mother took the stand and swore on everything that she held sacred that she would make sure he took his meds, but we were not convinced. So, we sent him back up the river.

As i was leaving the courthouse I was waiting for the elevator and suddenly his mother walked around the corner and saw me. And recognized me. And rushed at me and just when I'm thinking "Oh f**k" she bursts into a chorus of "Thank-you so much. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you."

And she shook my hand.

Insanity and the law and jury duty in America. Carptrash 15:43, 28 September 2008 (EDT)