James Holmes will get off...

Australia got rid of capital punishment in 1974 (I think). The last guy to be put to death was Ronald Ryan in 1967.

 

Yes he did.

If I remember rightly, he was arrested at the scene.

 

And that is a defect in your thinking.

I'm all for rehabilitation, but there are practical limitations to it. Someone who kills 35 people in a mass slaughter is way beyond rehabilitation. The threat he poses to society is simply too great should he ever relapse. Likewise, he should not be placed in a correctional facility where he might murder inmates who are salvageable and could be returned to society with some reasonable expectation of public safety provided that they are not exposed to incorrigible inmates (such as Bryant) during their term of incarceration.

The logical, moral, and practical thing to do is put him down.

 

Pretty sure Colorado still has the death penalty.

The PR storm on this there will not be a single person who does not know about the killlings.

I would almost say the prosecution is a shoe in for getting him on death row.


Here to hoping we kill the little psycho path.

 

Even if they end in a finding of not guilty, they still have a custodial disposition.

If you claim not guilty by reason of insanity, you are either going to be found guilty and put in jail, or found not guilty by reason of insanity and placed in custodial care in an institution.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Very few people - within a statistical margin of zero - successfully plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect (insanity).

So, then, if someone has an epileptic seizure while driving, runs off the road, and into a crowd of people, killing 35 of them, you think that person should be executed for having a seizure?

 

Zero percent chance of seeing the light of day. Even if a successful insanity plea occurred, the terrorism charge (i.e. efforts to kill cops with booby traps) waits in the wing as a separate charge not covered under double jeopardy.

 

Thank you. This is one of the biggest misconceptions in my practice area--that insanity defenses are somehow easy or absolve the defendant, somehow. They all end in custodial dispositions of some type.

Thank you.

The worst part is having to tell the families of people who have spent a lifetime with someone with a mental illness that the illness will not end up getting them the disposition they want and that it is best to take a plea.

 

I didn't think of that. We'll have to see if it is all considered part of the same transaction.

 

He's going to be charged with everything related to his actions that day because it is all in the same jurisdiction related to the same event. Between now and the grand jury they are going to be looking for anything and everything to pile on this case. I bet there will be at least 150 indictment counts between all of the charges.

Whether this goes federal (terrorism) or A felony murder is irrelevant, he is not stepping out of that jail alive. No way.

 

There should be no "insanity defense"...shooting this nut is no different than putting down a rabid dog.

 

How convenient to catch a guy who apparently left the Theatre thru a side exit and came back
to do his dirty with full garb and mask.How did he get back in the Threatre.
Was his mask ever taken off so as to have witness identify.
How about his Apartment.Pretty convenient to have it further booby trapped
with all kinds of incriminating evidence.
Not to forget that in 2 weeks the UN Arms Treaty will hold it's vote.
Meaning possible banning of the 2nd amendment.Obama already pledged he would
sign.Its only a few senators short of passing.
How convenient this mad act.
Not that you understood a word I posted.

 

Goes back to a comment I made earlier. Anyone leaving the emergency exit of a movie theater should activate an alarm. Either deadbeats want to see a free movie or something worse. Why do places of employment have alarms for exiting certain locations but not movie theaters?

 

When I was in my early years, one of us would buy a ticket and just as the lights went down would open an emergency exit for the remaining lads to enter free.

Now, that was 65 years ago and if the same occurs today, the alarm would be sounding every few minutes.

 

So movie goers can find a quick exit in case of fire. Safety reasons.

 

Fine, why not activate an alarm to LET OTHERS KNOW OF THE FIRE when one opens the door? It is a simple design.

 

Why shouldn't there be an insanity defense?

The cornerstone of our justice system is that we only punish people for acts where a person has a mens rea to commit the act in question.

I suspect you're ignorant of what the insanity defense actually means.

 

It means people who should be locked up forever might get out. Simple as that. I do not CARE if someone killed, cooked, and ate his neighbor because he believed Zort from the planet Frimmerbee was ordering him to do so by means of radio signals transmitted through his dog's rabies tag and picked up through the invisible implant in his scrotum. I care that he is a nut and needs to spend the rest of his life in a cell!

 

So if someone has epilepsy, they have a seizure while driving, and run up on the sidewalk and kill someone, they should be locked up forever?

 

A lot of this depends on if Colorado has what NC has -- "guilty but insane."

In my state, you can be convicted even if you're insane. I'm not sure of the exact differences between this and being convicted under normal circumstances, but we've incarcerated mentally ill people. They're usually put in solitary confinement.

Even if Colorado doesn't have this, then they'll still have him locked up indefinitely -- just in a mental ward instead of a prison.