The darling 'Crystal' and other insanities

It is a debatable thing, when people claim they have committed a crime under the guise of “insanity”. You hear it often, “temporary insanity” or “innocent by reason of insanity” or even “guilty, but insane.” The only way I could buy into this defense is if the person committing the crime was genuinely whacko (medical term, remember) enough that he or she did not know right from wrong. That would make sense. If a person did not know what he or she was doing was wrong, then he or she probably should not be held responsible.

Take for example a one-year-old baby throwing Mom’s diamond ring in the toilet. Baby has no clue it’s wrong or that Mom will be upset, Baby just enjoys watching the glittering, ten thousand dollar rock skitter to the bottom of the porcelain bowl. So Baby is not held responsible. Whereas, if thirty-year-old Dad throws Mom’s diamond in the toilet, well, that’s an entirely different scenario. Chances are he knows the ring is worth ten thousand dollars and that Mom will really be tweaked out of shape by his actions. That’s probably why he threw it in the john to begin with. He wanted to get even for the stack of old Playboy magazines she threw in the Safeway dumpster the week before. But again, I digress.

When a man catches his neighbor in bed with the man’s wife, gets pissed off, pulls out a gun and shoots his neighbor, then digs a hole in his rose garden and buries his neighbor to hide the crime that man knows exactly what he is doing. He is trying to disguise the crime. Why? Because he knows it is wrong to blow your neighbor away, even if the neighbor was diddling the man’s wife. He knows he will be arrested, tried, and possibly spend a hefty lump of time in an eight by eight foot cell with a room mate named “Earl” or “Bubba”.

On the other hand, if a raging schizophrenic is hearing demons and seeing the corner newsboy as an incarnation of Satan and he then runs across the street with a knife and stabs the newsboy in front of everyone, he probably isn’t responsible for his actions. At that moment he did not know right or wrong, he was acting out of terror and impulse. He did not stalk or plan the crime and he did not have the sanity to try and hide it. If he had hidden in a dark alley and stabbed the newsboy Satan in secret, when no one was watching, and then stuffed his body into a dumpster, well, it might be questionable as to whether or not he knew it was wrong to kill the newsboy. I would hold my judgment on that and let a jury decide, or a psychiatrist.

People said Jeffrey Dahmer had to be insane to capture and cannibalize his victims like he did, but I disagree. He did it in secrecy. He hid the body parts. He knew what he was doing was wrong. Same with Charles Manson. Definitely something wrong there, I won’t argue that, but he knew very well it was wrong to slaughter innocent people, even if he did have his faithful followers do his dirty work for him. He is a great actor with a severe personality disorder but he is not insane.

You hear all sorts of reasons for murder when you work in a jail, some of them are infinitely creative. It’s usually due to misplaced passion or a drug deal gone wrong. Only the names and faces change. But now and then a really interesting and creative excuse for killing another person materializes. I recall one old man who shot and killed his ex-wife and her new boyfriend because she refused to show him how to make doughnuts. She had promised him she would come over to his house and help him make a batch of doughnuts and instead she chose to spend the afternoon with her new beau. The old man simply lost it, drove over to his ex-wife’s trailer and blew her and her new guy away. Then he went and had a drink.

I can’t say he really tried to hide the crime. He knew he was in deep trouble and he tried a few feeble excuses at first, but the whole crime was solved very quickly, the same day, in fact. He may have been momentarily insane with anger or jealousy but as I recall, he did get sent to prison, so evidently the jury did not buy it. That’s probably because he had the foresight to load his rifle and drive to her trailer to commit the crime. It was seen as premeditation, or The Failed Doughnut Defense.