1 yup AFAIK too

2 Yee-haw! lets hear it for eugenics!

The funny thing is, animals would be put to death if it was doing something "big". Meanwhile, human walks away from the crime.

It's like, you're doing it but you didn't do it because you didn't mentally aware of doing it. But it was your mental messed-up-ed-ness in the first place that was causing the unawareness. Okay, got lost rambling...

Basically, regardless if one know what one's doing, one should be held accountable for what one did.

How hard is it to pretend you've lost your mind?

Mental illness is just an excuse so that a criminal dodges being responsible for their own actions.

Galaki, you're acting as if the guy will go back to work the next day if he's found innocent by reason of mental illness and that just isn't the case.

If it is determined that the crime was the result of mental illness, they don't just get off scot free, they have to receive help for their condition. A lot of the time the results of being declared innocent by reason of mental illness can be worse than just going to prison.

Of course in this case, it has to be proven that he actually is mentally ill, and that that is what caused the incident. He very well still might be found guilty of this crime. And if he isn't, he's going to be spending an awfully long time in treatment.

People use mental illness defense when they are desperate to dodge murder or serious criminal charges.
"Voices inside me head made me do it. I was not there when the crimes were committed, I was possessed by demons who did the crime using my body. The drugs made me do it."

I know it is, because it's a legitimate defense. lots of people will attempt to fake a legitimate defense to get out of a crime. I was under Duress, I had no other option, the list goes on. The problem is it's just not as easy as saying "oh I was crazy" A lot of people who fake the crazy's are exposed, even the ones that seem pretty convincing.

 I remember hearing about a special case in law class where a guy walked in to a court building and opened fire with a machine gun, then walked around for 6 hours shooting and mumbling incoherently to himself. He pleaded not guilty by way of insanity. Well here's the thing, in the tapes of the shooting, there was an instance where he said to one of the guys he shot "I'm sorry" That there was proof that he was in a state of mind to understand that he was at the very least causing suffering. The guy was found guilty.

But again, even if your found not guilty by insanity, you're not off the hook. A prison sentence ends at a set date, mental treatment ends with sound mental health, which can take a long time (or forever) to fix. Mental Illness is no Get out of Jail free card.

link?

Because mental illness hampers a persons ability to make good choices.

Galaki and a number of responses in this thread just go to show the complete misunderstanding and ignorance so many people have regarding mental illness. Why the hell don't our schools have at least one class about this? It should almost be a part of the GE in college/university to take mental illness and psychology classes.

These people need help and medication; they don't need to be put to death or sentenced to life in prison.

Faking mental illness is a whole different ordeal, I'm not talking about that in my post, as it's fairly obvious how wrong that is.

My hat's off to you, stof. I'm glad not everyone here is so immature about this subject.

It sounds like Stof pretty much has this one covered.