Quote:A box of ammo (you don't need the whole box) or a bit of electricity is much cheaper.  Just sayin'.

Yeah, but all those appeals...attorneys ain't cheap, and I'm pretty sure Holmes isn't paying for his own defenders.

 

Quote:That's a lot of words, but it seems that you agree with me. "What were Holmes' motives? Who cares." So you can't ascribe a motive to his actions, but he was sane? He brought only pain and misery to himself, but he was sane? Dance as much as you like - what, he had "depression"? - you can't make the case for sanity.

 

No, I don't expect you to change your mind, even though you seem to agree. I understand the societal pressures to be tough and cool. I mean, what would your buddies think? They might think you're getting soft.

 

And if you don't think the Sandy Hook shooter wasn't insane perhaps you need the help of a mental health care professional.

 

Oh, and I love that - "he'll be treated for whatever mental illness he may have while in prison" - hahahahaha. Good one.

So what would you do with Holmes, hmm? Send him to a mental hospital where he'll be placed on meds for ten years then released back into the population?

 

Holmes clearly has mental health issues. I won't argue you on that. Did his mental health issues keep him from understanding the difference between right and wrong? No, and he said as much to a psychiatrist during the course of his evaluations. His motives don't matter. What matters is that he stepped into a movie theater packed with 400 people, threw smoke grenades to increase the chaos, then walked around shooting innocent people, and he was aware that what he was doing was wrong. That is the legal standard applied to a plea of insanity: does the defendant know that what they're doing is wrong?

 

I'm anti-death penalty, so I suppose my preference would be that he spend the rest of his life in prison, used by the general population as I suggested in my OP. In this case, however, I won't complain too loudly if he gets the death penalty. In fact, I won't really complain at all. Will locking him up for life and/or executing him stop the next psycho from committing the same crime? No, but it'll make damn sure that he doesn't do it again.

 

One can be a sociopath and a murderer without being clinically insane. Holmes' motives may have been as simple as a quote that seems very apropos here: "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

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