The "insanity" defense

While I am on the subject, here is my stance about the "insanity defense" for egregious crimes. I am not inclined to believe any insanity defense if the person planned the crime beforehand and/or if the person hid the crime's commission to any extent.

Let's be all grown up and smart about this. If someone "hides" that they did a crime, since they know that it was either a wrong thing to do or at least understand that people will be angry and punish them, they are NOT innocent due to insanity. How difficult is that to understand? If someone sneaks around doing a crime, then the mere fact of them sneaking around means that they know that it is wrong to do. It is the same with planning a crime. To have the faculties to plan a crime means that the person is not in the grip of insanity.

Yes, I view true insanity as the total unbalancing of the mind so that the person cannot tell right from wrong and has no concept of the consequences. If they "know" that it is wrong and they "do it anyway," that is not an insanity defense, no matter how mentally or emotionally damaged that person may be in a diagnostic context.

What many of you confuse is "mitigating circumstances." If someone is totally raving messed up because they were abused as a child, etc etc that is a mitigating circumstance during the punishment phase of the trial, not an insanity defense. If they are still sitting there and planning and conducting a crime that they know is wrong, it is not an insanity defense. But when they are found guilty of the crime, one who is wise and merciful will then factor in their mental and emotional disorders, and personal history, as "mitigating circumstances" regarding the type of punishment and/or treatment that they receive.

I am not sympathetic at all toward, for example, criminals who feel that "God," "the devil" or "aliens" etc. "told them" to commit a crime, and who then sneak around to do the crime knowing full well that it is against the law. A truly insane person would shout from the rooftop and run down the street announcing their "special message" and run like a bat out of you know where to do the crime, since they would not comprehend that it was a crime. So just because someone has a mental illness or a very traumatic personal history does not mean they have an "insanity defense."

During my internship in psychiatric outpatient services I've talked to some pretty crazy people. All of them have much more self restraint potential than they would ever admit. You can see this regarding addiction relapses, just to use a common example. Many of them are very mindful and decisive about their relapses, though they would later claim they "could not help it." I'm not minimizing the power of addiction, far from it. I am maximizing how people are much more in control than they let on, and the need for society to once again emphasize self control and discipline rather than "Oh dear, tut, tut, he had such a bad life and he's bipolar, he can't help it" or "Oh, she hears voices, she could not help it, because they 'told' her to do it." Um, if they are fully functional enough to plan and hide their activities, don't be a dumb stooge, recognize that they are not legitimate claimants to the "insanity defense."