M
Michael McMahon
Guest
“A rugby player sobbed as he was handed a three-year suspended prison sentence for the manslaughter of a pensioner in a one-punch attack in a pub... Judge O Donnabháin said he felt O'Sullivan's remorse was genuine.” -Independent
“A son has been jailed for life for brutally stabbing his father to death during a "trivial" row over broadband speed. Stephen Gallagher, 55, repeatedly stabbed his 76-year-old father Thomas, originally from Achill, Co Mayo, more than a dozen times with a knife after losing his temper... Stephen Gallagher was sentenced to life in prison, and was told he must serve at least 13 years and four months before he can apply for release - though the judge told him: “You may, in fact, never be released.”” - Irish Mirror
I don’t know anything about these two cases. The degree of culpability may well be quite different. But on first impression are they really different enough to justify perhaps up to a 20 year variation in the jail sentence? While these are specific examples, my argument isn’t really referring to particular cases. It’s meant more in general. Jail sentencing for mitigating factors should be equal for all defendants. Loopholes could be easily exploited. We can’t over-indulge in preferential treatment. It's not a popularity contest so whether the victim was a moral or immoral person during their life is not relevant. Provocation is not only individually subjective but it's also relative to the culture of a region in the sense that I might not find a statement very insulting in the same way that someone else in a different country would where they've a different emphasis on values. So there can be ambiguity in the extent of the provocation even if there was some amount of provocation.
A difficulty with provocation is that we can’t always understand the tone of a situation by the mere content of what was said. For example, a veiled threat might not look like a threat on paper. For instance it’s possible to disguise threats in the form of body language, false accusations, intrusion within your striking distance or a loud voice as a pretext to attack someone. Conversely a defendant could try to exaggerate the intended meaning of what was said. Therefore it’d be very hard to properly understand situations where there’s provocation on both sides. I do appreciate that provocation might take the form of a threat and not just an insulting statement. A verbal threat of assault or blackmail are examples. In those instances I feel that the pain caused by physical violence is still disproportionate and often worse than emotional harm even though both are terrible. Furthermore in the case of manslaughter the dead person can’t give their side of the argument.
I understand that there can be extenuating circumstances that were factors in a crime. But having a negligent mindset of not thinking about the consequences of a crime before carrying it out is sometimes itself caused by an active decision to be apathetic towards the victim. In essence they’d be deciding not to properly analyse their actions nor to resist their angry feelings. Ideally there’d be a standard sentence as a benchmark; not a mandatory sentence by politicians but a recommended sentence from fellow judges. The aggravating and mitigating circumstances would then add to or subtract from that jail term like a maths formula. I concede that there’ll be some degree of subjective leeway and intuition needed in determining their capacity for change and repentance in reducing a sentence. But one-off provocation is highly subjective and risks giving too much power to only one particular judge. A group of judges will always be more impartial than one judge by being able to balance each other out. It’s often not feasible to have multiple judges at only one trial. But precedence can fill in as a reflection of group wisdom.
Precedence allows us to see the bigger picture and accurately rank the severity crime in the whole scheme of things. It’s easier to expose a bad precedent than an individual bad sentence. For instance I read that a person was initially sentenced to 6 years for tax evasion on garlic produce although it was reduced to 2 years on appeal. I’m not downplaying the severity of lost revenue for vital government services. But keep in mind that when we focus on the ethics of one case in isolation we can lose sight of the fact that there will always be more severe and less severe crimes. There’s no limit on the amount of evil criminals can inflict. There’s not really a single gravest crime in the strict sense. As gruesome as it is for someone who broke another’s leg there’ll always be a second criminal somewhere who breaks both their legs. Truth be told some sentences for manslaughter where someone is actually killed are significantly less than those initial 6 years. Even in dissimilar cases precedence can help us use counterfactual circumstances to gauge the relative severity of a crime and create a lower margin of error when considering a sentence. With that particular case it was admittedly a huge tax figure of over €1 million. Then again there’s no way to quantify the monetary value of a lost eye in an assault for instance seeing as it’s technologically irreplaceable. When you think about it the lifetime costs of medical expenses from the victim, their lost working productivity, the salary of forensic analysts, detectives and legal fees probably would end up costing the state a colossal amount of money even if it’s not quite a million euros.
A crime is a crime no matter who commits it. Yet I sometimes get the impression that it can be viewed as a milder or more severe crime depending on how it suits the conflicting social or political images of different courts. A liberal judge naturally aims for a forgiving justice system while a conservative judge wants a strict sentence. The difference between lone judges and both politicians or juries is there’s no majority rule mechanism in handing out sentences. Precedence is an indirect form of democracy among representative judges. The ideal of overall consistency and equality trumps other ideals so it’s not enough to say the amount of strict sentences roughly balances out the number of lenient ones. While it’s not always the case I can’t help but spot these possible inconsistencies: for example there might be large compensation for workplace accidents but a sometimes significantly softer attitude towards vehicular accidents, or payouts for libel without always having an equivalently stern attitude towards verbal assault. That is to say an insult can be damaging whether it has some basis in reality or not. Case law can hopefully assist in preventing the undertones of politics. Precedence is being used as a guideline and not a rule.
“Two teenagers who attacked another three teens with acid in Waterford last year will not face criminal charges after an earlier decision to caution them instead has been upheld on review.” - Independent Precedence isn’t perfect. I’m not trying to be unrealistic. It’s indeed possible for there to be a bad precedent on certain issues. There might be cases where precedence isn’t the best fit even if it suffices. In such cases it can be updated. But an advantage with precedence is that it places a limit on the potential amount of distress or uncertainty because it’d have to be applied across the board. So in the above example they’d be compelled to relieve criminal charges to all other perpetrators of this crime. That would become untenable due to the severity of other cases. Therefore they’d have to find a general compromise that’s not harsh or too lenient to deal with a multitude of these incidents. Even if a precedent isn’t 100% optimal for a given situation it still deserves to be emphasised out of pragmatism. I think it’s better to be consistently average than it is to risk poor sentences so as to get an occasional perfect sentence. Time is finite and valuable. So it’s a bit of a balancing act. We don’t want to subject a criminal to excessive wasted time in a jail cell if they’re already sincere. Likewise we don’t want to waste more of the victims energy and time with unnecessary worry.
The individual is the primary victim rather than just the state. This means if there’s enough evidence you’d imagine there should at least be an initial court case for everyone to first debate the matter rather than the director of public prosecutions unilaterally opting not to press charges. The state is giving itself too much power in choosing to side with some victims rather than others. I never actually intended to get involved in these matters. I’m not a lawyer but I can’t help finding some counterintuitive sentences very worrying when I read about them. I understand that newspapers don’t know everything about the confidential contents of a court’s decision. Maybe there’s mitigating factors that are kept secret and so we’re not aware of them. But in such cases one would imagine an exceptionally light sentence should require an exceptionally unusual excuse to justify a lesser sentence than the average convict. I believe victims of the same crime class are entitled to an equal sentence and the onus is on the court to justify a different sentence. All else being equal then the sentence should be equal. We can’t be prioritising the pain of some victims over others. People are entitled to an equal consideration of their defensive rights on behalf of a court irrespective of the personal character of those involved. It’s virtuous to be forgiving but not to the extent where it’s at the expense of the victim’s well-being and security.
What’s troubling about suspended sentences with severe crimes is not the fact most of the sentence can be suspended but that occasionally the entire sentence is suspended. It’s as if it’s all or nothing where a certain judge appears to feel that to jail the person even temporarily would be an admission of leniency and it’d be best to have no jail time as a sign of complete repentance or innocence. I think that’s over-ambitious. If someone wants to rehabilitate manslaughter perpetrators then that’s fair enough but they’ll have to be consistent and rehabilitate murderers too. We can’t be selectively rehabilitating some people and not others. Otherwise there’s a risk of arbitrariness. Even if it means some murderers would go under-punished, it’d at least lead to more justice overall by limiting anomalies.
Hypothetically if someone slapped me and then got a week-long jail sentence, that's fine and were I to slap anyone afterwards while saying "care to explain yourself", then I should also really get no more than a week-long jail sentence either! I'm criticising vigilantes as much as I am criminals. What I'm saying is that people's pain perception are equal and hence deserving of equal protection in the justice system. Most people are good not because they can't commit evil but that they choose not to commit evil.
“A spectator at a golf tournament who sued after he was hit on the head by a golf ball and knocked unconscious has lost his High Court action. Colm Campbell had claimed he is in constant pain and his life has totally changed after he was struck on the left side of his forehead during the West of Ireland Championship for amateur golfers held at County Sligo Golf Club at Rosses Point, Sligo, five years ago.” -IrishExaminer
I don’t know the details of this case or the exact aftermath of the incident. Nor do I know anything about golf or where spectators should stand. Neither do I know how hard it is to dodge a golf ball relative to it’s speed even if they saw it coming. Anyway what caught my attention is that even in a complete accident you’d imagine there’d still have to be some form of compensation. For example if someone stepped back and broke something in a shop you won’t be criminally prosecuted for theft or fined an excess amount for vandalism but you’d nonetheless have to pay the bare cost price of the item. Similarly if you cause an accident there’s a trace level of responsibility by mere involvement even if there wasn’t any negligence. So it’s not unfair to have to at the very least contribute to their medical expenses and time out of paid work or activity even if there’s no added punitive damages. I concede that there’s a public health system that will cover a lot of the costs. Nevertheless if someone ends up being hurt as a result of your actions then it’s normally your moral responsibility as a gesture of charity and goodwill to ensure they’re helped and not to abandon them. Judges are given far too much discretion. This case is very much at odds with other compensation settlements where someone might be injured by tripping on something. It's a lot harder to see a golf ball in the air than a patch of ice or an uneven hole in the ground. I wasn't trying to be smart or sarcastic by making comparisons in compensation rewards but the judge seemed a bit smart-aleck and unsympathetic herself in her concluding statements.
“Paediatric nurse Morley, who smothered her three young children at their family home, has been found not guilty of their murders by reason of insanity.” (breakingnews ie)
- To be honest I don’t particularly agree with this logic. Morley was indeed suffering a lot of anguish. Nonetheless both the severity and the innocence of the victims’ pain outweighs the pain of the perpetrator. I’m not saying that people with psychotic disorders have never committed crimes. But if they do commit a crime then they still have to be held responsible. Once a threshold is reached it’s not always clear how much positive feedback there is between evil actions and mental instability. People in the process of committing crimes can be unnerved by their actions if they’re experiencing conflicting sensations such as anger and guilt. People make mistakes and can gain the insight to change a negative mindset. If their symptoms subside then they might find it much easier to understand their mistaken vantage point. If they are repentant then that is a big mitigating factor as it’d be for all other defendants. I believe that mental illnesses can be extremely painful and as I wrote elsewhere that suicide is unfortunate and regrettable but it isn’t in any way evil or immoral. Yes I do find it very odd and ironical that I’ve to defend suicide while at the same time being skeptical of overusing the insanity defence. I’m not sure if the insanity defence is having a negative effect on mental health awareness. Self-harm is clearly not a crime but harming others as a form of scapegoating really is a crime. If suicide were made a crime then at least you could launch an appeal with the insanity defence! To be conciliatory I’ll say that it might not be too harmful to view provocation, negligence or mental illness as a mitigating factor and as a form of repentance but not as a completely blameless exoneration. I don’t know all the evidence heard at court in the aforementioned case. Nonetheless she left notes to confess to her crime and didn’t resist arrest or hide evidence which can all be seen as mitigating factors...
Deirdre Morley Case - John Bowe
I think that mental health services should be available to those who were mentally ill during a crime but I don't think it really excuses all of their actions. There's no reason why any criminal for that matter shouldn't be allowed to meet with psychologists and psychiatrists seeing as there's probably a tinge of instability in all crimes. Some mental illnesses like autism do revolve around empathy deficits in how people relate to others but that doesn't condone psychopathic incidents simply because someone can err on the side of caution before acting on angry thoughts. Other illnesses might disorient a person's perception but it's often not instantaneous so they must of had a window of opportunity to reveal their thoughts before actually acting on them. I think the insanity defence is a mitigating factor in these sorts of crimes because they were not committed out of sadism like other serial killers. But we nonetheless have to ensure that people with violent obsessive thoughts cannot expect to be completely let off the hook should they give in to temptation and must try their best to resist their impulses. Moreover I feel these sentences are unsustainable. It's not about what would've happened if it were the father instead who was the perpetrator as the man in the video suggested but rather what if the victims were random strangers on the street? Even if the perpetrator is in pain we've still to demand adherence to the law because when the crime is unprovoked it'll become terribly difficult to regulate in a fair way which criminal is more deserving of the insanity defence. Mental illness exists on wide spectrum that can affect each patient differently. Everyone after all can go through periods of ups and downs in their mood or experience problems controlling anger and frustration though perhaps not to the extent that it warrants a clinical diagnosis. There's probably many criminals convicted without an insanity defence even though they might suffer elements of emotional dysfunction or mild, undiagnosed PTSD. Should the insanity defence itself exist on a spectrum of leniency from partial defence to major mitigating factor?
“A mother of four who drove her car at speed on a footpath in an attempt to run down two teenage girls who had attacked her 14-year-old daughter has been given a three-year suspended jail sentence. A judge said the accused, Mary Lawrence, had taken “the law into her own hands” after being annoyed with the way gardaí had handled the incident involving her daughter.” (irishexaminer)
I feel this is a confused outlook. I’m no legal expert but it’s frustrating because it must be relatively easy for highly qualified judges to be consistent when they want to follow precedence. The answer to a cycle of violence is to nip it in the bud. It’s not to take into account her grievance at previous garda actions. That’s totally separate to this case even if it was her motive. If there’s mutual non-defensive violence then criminalise both people in my opinion instead of concluding that they’re now even and calling it quits. If it’s a crime for most people to drive on footpaths than it must logically be a crime for all. Otherwise just forget criminalising it and make it legal for everyone to drive on footpaths! Any crime by a non-demonic entity that's committed in accordance with the impartial laws of physics will be tolerated. Otherwise we've a right to file a complaint with the Physics Department, 2A Pearly Gates, Heaven. I didn’t want to be so sarcastic but consistency appears to be increasingly challenging. Even though that quoted example is a minor incident it’s still important to maintain balance so as to be better able to deal with more complex cases like robbery or murder. I’m not disagreeing with the need for forgiveness. I’m merely saying we must endeavour to be equally forgiving to all repentant criminals as a collective group in a crime category rather than just individually to ensure sustainability. The dilemma is that forgiveness can be subjective and personal while ideally the court aims to be impersonal. We can always attempt to be more even by spreading out that forgiveness.
“A son has been jailed for life for brutally stabbing his father to death during a "trivial" row over broadband speed. Stephen Gallagher, 55, repeatedly stabbed his 76-year-old father Thomas, originally from Achill, Co Mayo, more than a dozen times with a knife after losing his temper... Stephen Gallagher was sentenced to life in prison, and was told he must serve at least 13 years and four months before he can apply for release - though the judge told him: “You may, in fact, never be released.”” - Irish Mirror
I don’t know anything about these two cases. The degree of culpability may well be quite different. But on first impression are they really different enough to justify perhaps up to a 20 year variation in the jail sentence? While these are specific examples, my argument isn’t really referring to particular cases. It’s meant more in general. Jail sentencing for mitigating factors should be equal for all defendants. Loopholes could be easily exploited. We can’t over-indulge in preferential treatment. It's not a popularity contest so whether the victim was a moral or immoral person during their life is not relevant. Provocation is not only individually subjective but it's also relative to the culture of a region in the sense that I might not find a statement very insulting in the same way that someone else in a different country would where they've a different emphasis on values. So there can be ambiguity in the extent of the provocation even if there was some amount of provocation.
A difficulty with provocation is that we can’t always understand the tone of a situation by the mere content of what was said. For example, a veiled threat might not look like a threat on paper. For instance it’s possible to disguise threats in the form of body language, false accusations, intrusion within your striking distance or a loud voice as a pretext to attack someone. Conversely a defendant could try to exaggerate the intended meaning of what was said. Therefore it’d be very hard to properly understand situations where there’s provocation on both sides. I do appreciate that provocation might take the form of a threat and not just an insulting statement. A verbal threat of assault or blackmail are examples. In those instances I feel that the pain caused by physical violence is still disproportionate and often worse than emotional harm even though both are terrible. Furthermore in the case of manslaughter the dead person can’t give their side of the argument.
I understand that there can be extenuating circumstances that were factors in a crime. But having a negligent mindset of not thinking about the consequences of a crime before carrying it out is sometimes itself caused by an active decision to be apathetic towards the victim. In essence they’d be deciding not to properly analyse their actions nor to resist their angry feelings. Ideally there’d be a standard sentence as a benchmark; not a mandatory sentence by politicians but a recommended sentence from fellow judges. The aggravating and mitigating circumstances would then add to or subtract from that jail term like a maths formula. I concede that there’ll be some degree of subjective leeway and intuition needed in determining their capacity for change and repentance in reducing a sentence. But one-off provocation is highly subjective and risks giving too much power to only one particular judge. A group of judges will always be more impartial than one judge by being able to balance each other out. It’s often not feasible to have multiple judges at only one trial. But precedence can fill in as a reflection of group wisdom.
Precedence allows us to see the bigger picture and accurately rank the severity crime in the whole scheme of things. It’s easier to expose a bad precedent than an individual bad sentence. For instance I read that a person was initially sentenced to 6 years for tax evasion on garlic produce although it was reduced to 2 years on appeal. I’m not downplaying the severity of lost revenue for vital government services. But keep in mind that when we focus on the ethics of one case in isolation we can lose sight of the fact that there will always be more severe and less severe crimes. There’s no limit on the amount of evil criminals can inflict. There’s not really a single gravest crime in the strict sense. As gruesome as it is for someone who broke another’s leg there’ll always be a second criminal somewhere who breaks both their legs. Truth be told some sentences for manslaughter where someone is actually killed are significantly less than those initial 6 years. Even in dissimilar cases precedence can help us use counterfactual circumstances to gauge the relative severity of a crime and create a lower margin of error when considering a sentence. With that particular case it was admittedly a huge tax figure of over €1 million. Then again there’s no way to quantify the monetary value of a lost eye in an assault for instance seeing as it’s technologically irreplaceable. When you think about it the lifetime costs of medical expenses from the victim, their lost working productivity, the salary of forensic analysts, detectives and legal fees probably would end up costing the state a colossal amount of money even if it’s not quite a million euros.
A crime is a crime no matter who commits it. Yet I sometimes get the impression that it can be viewed as a milder or more severe crime depending on how it suits the conflicting social or political images of different courts. A liberal judge naturally aims for a forgiving justice system while a conservative judge wants a strict sentence. The difference between lone judges and both politicians or juries is there’s no majority rule mechanism in handing out sentences. Precedence is an indirect form of democracy among representative judges. The ideal of overall consistency and equality trumps other ideals so it’s not enough to say the amount of strict sentences roughly balances out the number of lenient ones. While it’s not always the case I can’t help but spot these possible inconsistencies: for example there might be large compensation for workplace accidents but a sometimes significantly softer attitude towards vehicular accidents, or payouts for libel without always having an equivalently stern attitude towards verbal assault. That is to say an insult can be damaging whether it has some basis in reality or not. Case law can hopefully assist in preventing the undertones of politics. Precedence is being used as a guideline and not a rule.
“Two teenagers who attacked another three teens with acid in Waterford last year will not face criminal charges after an earlier decision to caution them instead has been upheld on review.” - Independent Precedence isn’t perfect. I’m not trying to be unrealistic. It’s indeed possible for there to be a bad precedent on certain issues. There might be cases where precedence isn’t the best fit even if it suffices. In such cases it can be updated. But an advantage with precedence is that it places a limit on the potential amount of distress or uncertainty because it’d have to be applied across the board. So in the above example they’d be compelled to relieve criminal charges to all other perpetrators of this crime. That would become untenable due to the severity of other cases. Therefore they’d have to find a general compromise that’s not harsh or too lenient to deal with a multitude of these incidents. Even if a precedent isn’t 100% optimal for a given situation it still deserves to be emphasised out of pragmatism. I think it’s better to be consistently average than it is to risk poor sentences so as to get an occasional perfect sentence. Time is finite and valuable. So it’s a bit of a balancing act. We don’t want to subject a criminal to excessive wasted time in a jail cell if they’re already sincere. Likewise we don’t want to waste more of the victims energy and time with unnecessary worry.
The individual is the primary victim rather than just the state. This means if there’s enough evidence you’d imagine there should at least be an initial court case for everyone to first debate the matter rather than the director of public prosecutions unilaterally opting not to press charges. The state is giving itself too much power in choosing to side with some victims rather than others. I never actually intended to get involved in these matters. I’m not a lawyer but I can’t help finding some counterintuitive sentences very worrying when I read about them. I understand that newspapers don’t know everything about the confidential contents of a court’s decision. Maybe there’s mitigating factors that are kept secret and so we’re not aware of them. But in such cases one would imagine an exceptionally light sentence should require an exceptionally unusual excuse to justify a lesser sentence than the average convict. I believe victims of the same crime class are entitled to an equal sentence and the onus is on the court to justify a different sentence. All else being equal then the sentence should be equal. We can’t be prioritising the pain of some victims over others. People are entitled to an equal consideration of their defensive rights on behalf of a court irrespective of the personal character of those involved. It’s virtuous to be forgiving but not to the extent where it’s at the expense of the victim’s well-being and security.
What’s troubling about suspended sentences with severe crimes is not the fact most of the sentence can be suspended but that occasionally the entire sentence is suspended. It’s as if it’s all or nothing where a certain judge appears to feel that to jail the person even temporarily would be an admission of leniency and it’d be best to have no jail time as a sign of complete repentance or innocence. I think that’s over-ambitious. If someone wants to rehabilitate manslaughter perpetrators then that’s fair enough but they’ll have to be consistent and rehabilitate murderers too. We can’t be selectively rehabilitating some people and not others. Otherwise there’s a risk of arbitrariness. Even if it means some murderers would go under-punished, it’d at least lead to more justice overall by limiting anomalies.
Hypothetically if someone slapped me and then got a week-long jail sentence, that's fine and were I to slap anyone afterwards while saying "care to explain yourself", then I should also really get no more than a week-long jail sentence either! I'm criticising vigilantes as much as I am criminals. What I'm saying is that people's pain perception are equal and hence deserving of equal protection in the justice system. Most people are good not because they can't commit evil but that they choose not to commit evil.
“A spectator at a golf tournament who sued after he was hit on the head by a golf ball and knocked unconscious has lost his High Court action. Colm Campbell had claimed he is in constant pain and his life has totally changed after he was struck on the left side of his forehead during the West of Ireland Championship for amateur golfers held at County Sligo Golf Club at Rosses Point, Sligo, five years ago.” -IrishExaminer
I don’t know the details of this case or the exact aftermath of the incident. Nor do I know anything about golf or where spectators should stand. Neither do I know how hard it is to dodge a golf ball relative to it’s speed even if they saw it coming. Anyway what caught my attention is that even in a complete accident you’d imagine there’d still have to be some form of compensation. For example if someone stepped back and broke something in a shop you won’t be criminally prosecuted for theft or fined an excess amount for vandalism but you’d nonetheless have to pay the bare cost price of the item. Similarly if you cause an accident there’s a trace level of responsibility by mere involvement even if there wasn’t any negligence. So it’s not unfair to have to at the very least contribute to their medical expenses and time out of paid work or activity even if there’s no added punitive damages. I concede that there’s a public health system that will cover a lot of the costs. Nevertheless if someone ends up being hurt as a result of your actions then it’s normally your moral responsibility as a gesture of charity and goodwill to ensure they’re helped and not to abandon them. Judges are given far too much discretion. This case is very much at odds with other compensation settlements where someone might be injured by tripping on something. It's a lot harder to see a golf ball in the air than a patch of ice or an uneven hole in the ground. I wasn't trying to be smart or sarcastic by making comparisons in compensation rewards but the judge seemed a bit smart-aleck and unsympathetic herself in her concluding statements.
“Paediatric nurse Morley, who smothered her three young children at their family home, has been found not guilty of their murders by reason of insanity.” (breakingnews ie)
- To be honest I don’t particularly agree with this logic. Morley was indeed suffering a lot of anguish. Nonetheless both the severity and the innocence of the victims’ pain outweighs the pain of the perpetrator. I’m not saying that people with psychotic disorders have never committed crimes. But if they do commit a crime then they still have to be held responsible. Once a threshold is reached it’s not always clear how much positive feedback there is between evil actions and mental instability. People in the process of committing crimes can be unnerved by their actions if they’re experiencing conflicting sensations such as anger and guilt. People make mistakes and can gain the insight to change a negative mindset. If their symptoms subside then they might find it much easier to understand their mistaken vantage point. If they are repentant then that is a big mitigating factor as it’d be for all other defendants. I believe that mental illnesses can be extremely painful and as I wrote elsewhere that suicide is unfortunate and regrettable but it isn’t in any way evil or immoral. Yes I do find it very odd and ironical that I’ve to defend suicide while at the same time being skeptical of overusing the insanity defence. I’m not sure if the insanity defence is having a negative effect on mental health awareness. Self-harm is clearly not a crime but harming others as a form of scapegoating really is a crime. If suicide were made a crime then at least you could launch an appeal with the insanity defence! To be conciliatory I’ll say that it might not be too harmful to view provocation, negligence or mental illness as a mitigating factor and as a form of repentance but not as a completely blameless exoneration. I don’t know all the evidence heard at court in the aforementioned case. Nonetheless she left notes to confess to her crime and didn’t resist arrest or hide evidence which can all be seen as mitigating factors...
Deirdre Morley Case - John Bowe
I think that mental health services should be available to those who were mentally ill during a crime but I don't think it really excuses all of their actions. There's no reason why any criminal for that matter shouldn't be allowed to meet with psychologists and psychiatrists seeing as there's probably a tinge of instability in all crimes. Some mental illnesses like autism do revolve around empathy deficits in how people relate to others but that doesn't condone psychopathic incidents simply because someone can err on the side of caution before acting on angry thoughts. Other illnesses might disorient a person's perception but it's often not instantaneous so they must of had a window of opportunity to reveal their thoughts before actually acting on them. I think the insanity defence is a mitigating factor in these sorts of crimes because they were not committed out of sadism like other serial killers. But we nonetheless have to ensure that people with violent obsessive thoughts cannot expect to be completely let off the hook should they give in to temptation and must try their best to resist their impulses. Moreover I feel these sentences are unsustainable. It's not about what would've happened if it were the father instead who was the perpetrator as the man in the video suggested but rather what if the victims were random strangers on the street? Even if the perpetrator is in pain we've still to demand adherence to the law because when the crime is unprovoked it'll become terribly difficult to regulate in a fair way which criminal is more deserving of the insanity defence. Mental illness exists on wide spectrum that can affect each patient differently. Everyone after all can go through periods of ups and downs in their mood or experience problems controlling anger and frustration though perhaps not to the extent that it warrants a clinical diagnosis. There's probably many criminals convicted without an insanity defence even though they might suffer elements of emotional dysfunction or mild, undiagnosed PTSD. Should the insanity defence itself exist on a spectrum of leniency from partial defence to major mitigating factor?
“A mother of four who drove her car at speed on a footpath in an attempt to run down two teenage girls who had attacked her 14-year-old daughter has been given a three-year suspended jail sentence. A judge said the accused, Mary Lawrence, had taken “the law into her own hands” after being annoyed with the way gardaí had handled the incident involving her daughter.” (irishexaminer)
I feel this is a confused outlook. I’m no legal expert but it’s frustrating because it must be relatively easy for highly qualified judges to be consistent when they want to follow precedence. The answer to a cycle of violence is to nip it in the bud. It’s not to take into account her grievance at previous garda actions. That’s totally separate to this case even if it was her motive. If there’s mutual non-defensive violence then criminalise both people in my opinion instead of concluding that they’re now even and calling it quits. If it’s a crime for most people to drive on footpaths than it must logically be a crime for all. Otherwise just forget criminalising it and make it legal for everyone to drive on footpaths! Any crime by a non-demonic entity that's committed in accordance with the impartial laws of physics will be tolerated. Otherwise we've a right to file a complaint with the Physics Department, 2A Pearly Gates, Heaven. I didn’t want to be so sarcastic but consistency appears to be increasingly challenging. Even though that quoted example is a minor incident it’s still important to maintain balance so as to be better able to deal with more complex cases like robbery or murder. I’m not disagreeing with the need for forgiveness. I’m merely saying we must endeavour to be equally forgiving to all repentant criminals as a collective group in a crime category rather than just individually to ensure sustainability. The dilemma is that forgiveness can be subjective and personal while ideally the court aims to be impersonal. We can always attempt to be more even by spreading out that forgiveness.
