Billie Davis, the woman accused of stabbing an Indiana University student, pleaded not guilty and will have an insanity defense.
Her attorney claims she has a long history of severe mental illness and was seeking help up to and including the day of the alleged attack.
A competency hearing will be scheduled where two court-appointed psychiatrists will evaluate her mental health.
The judge will make the final decision about her competency, likely in about three to six months.
Here u=s the problem. People who have severe mental problems and have a history of violence are NOT kept safe away from other folks. This is a result of the expose from new York in the 1960’s of bad conditions in mental asylums’. We have gone the other way , allowing violent folks to roam off their meds until they really hurt someone
Yes, the insane now walk among us.
They always have.
The insanity defense shouldn’t even be a thing.
“But suppose, as seemed more likely, that he was so crazy that he had
never been aware that he was doing anything wrong? What then?
Well, we shoot mad dogs, don’t we?
Yes, but being crazy that way is a sickness —
I couldn’t see but two possibilities. Either he couldn’t be made well
— in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of
others — or he could be treated and made sane. In which case (it seemed to
me) if he ever became sane enough for civilized society . . . and thought
over what he had done while he was “sick” — what could be left for him but
suicide? How could he live with himself?
And suppose he escaped before he was cured and did the same thing
again? And maybe again? How do you explain that to bereaved parents? In view
of his record? I couldn’t see but one answer.”
-Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
This is the last time I will post that for a while, you’ve all seen it by now.
I like that quote because Heinlein expresses my feelings on it far more eloquently than I ever could.