The Insanity Inside
Contents:
Its currency was the financial means of the insane or their relatives and friends. Accordingly, and broadly speaking, certain social groups tended to utilise certain asylums. It was within this institutional marketplace that private and voluntary asylums were eventually compelled to compete. Yet, the lunacy inspectors paradoxically castigated these proprietors for their attempts to provide less expensive accommodation, arguing that these low rates were insufficient to finance even the most basic accommodation and care, let alone generate profits.
The motivations of proprietors who continued to offer lower rates remain remote. In the English context, Parry-Jones has suggested that some proprietors felt a benevolent duty to retain patients who in reality could no longer afford expensive private accommodation. Those involved in the establishment and management of the voluntary asylums met with a comparatively warm response both from the national press and the lunacy inspectors. These managing bodies flaunted the charitable nature of their initiatives—the ultimate symbol of their benevolence resting in their professed disregard for profit.
As with private asylums, however, good reputation was an essential prerequisite for voluntary asylums hoping to attract a high-spending clientele. These asylums were also considered a more acceptable alternative to the expensive private establishments. This book has provided the first comparative study of the social profile of fee-paying patients in Irish asylums. In doing so, it complements and expands on existing analyses of patient populations in Ireland and Britain. Gender presents an interesting conundrum.
Historians including MacKenzie, in the English context, and Walsh, in the Irish, have presented families as being less than willing to invest in asylum care for their female relatives. Further proof of the existence of a market for expensive female asylum care lies in the fact that some voluntary and private asylums limited their provision to women only. Inside the asylum, gender trumped class, as women and men were segregated by sex before social status. Women were defined by their performance in the domestic sphere, while men were measured against their roles in the public sphere—often the workplace.
A key area of difference between paying patients and their pauper counterparts was occupational profile. By comparison, paying patients in district asylums were more precariously positioned. Many occupied the socio-economic stratum just above the level of the pauper patients, while others were slightly better off, such as clerks, policemen and shop owners.
Religious tensions were also more liable to surface in district asylums than in voluntary or private ones, as the Protestant minority struggled to coexist with the Catholic majority. He has never been provided any educational or additional recreation opportunities in accordance with his juvenile status at the time of capture. He has never been allowed to speak with — let alone see — any of his family members during his more than six years in U.
As of February , he was "approved to leave" by U. Since his arrest, Walid has had very little contact with his family, who thought he was dead until, several years after his initial detention, he was able to send them a postcard. He has not, to his attorney's knowledge, been able to speak with any of his family members. Since learning of his whereabouts in , his family has been writing to him and has sent him photos, including pictures of nieces and nephews he has never met. Around or he went on a hunger strike for 20 months and was force-fed through intubation.
At one point Walid, who is approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed only 96 pounds. His attorneys report that they have long been worried about Walid's mental health, which they believe has been deteriorating over time. They describe him as lethargic, listless and distracted, and took the following notes of his speech:. I feel like they're my family I knew an Indian woman in Gaza — she talked a witch language.
I won't tell you her name because she might send me a witch curse Tarzan is a lovely person — very polite — he's my friend, though he doesn't [know] it. I don't watch for entertainment but for another reason — a secret — I won't tell you I live in heaven, heaven is in my chest. I love Jesus, I want to see him, and all the mermaids around them.
Raise your reputation to Honored with the Bloodsail Buccaneers, and Exalted with Booty Bay, Everlook, Gadgetzan, Ratchet, Darkmoon Faire, and Ravenholdt. Easy to follow/fast guide for the "the insane" title if you're in a party of 3+, but works fine if you decide to go solo. It's a matter of days!.
They asked Matthews to prepare a questionnaire by which he could do a proxy psychological assessment. From the results of this questionnaire, Matthews concluded that Walid appears to have developed schizophrenia and suffers from delusions, significant anxiety and depression. In a group of 18 Uighurs , an ethnic minority from Xinjiang province in western China, was living together in a camp in Afghanistan when the coalition bombing started.
They claim that they fled to the Afghan mountains, were led across the border to Pakistan by some other travelers, and were sold to the United States for bounty money. But instead of receiving a or day punishment, as is common in U. As of April — almost a year later — these men were moved to their own wing of the camp, where they are reportedly allowed to keep the meal slots in the door open most of the day, so that they can more easily speak to each other without shouting.
Military officials also claim that they are now being granted additional recreation time, including the chance to go into a single recreation pen with another detainee, and that ultimately they will be able to leave their cells during the day and mingle in the common space in the pods. For now, however, they still spend the majority of their days locked in their totally enclosed, windowless cells, unable to congregate for meals or prayer time, and unable to see each other as they talk through the meal slots.
More Reading
In April, before being moved to the "Uighur wing," one of the Uighurs, Huzaifa Parhat, described his daily routine to his attorney, who wrote:. Go back to sleep. Walk in circles -- north, south, east, west -- around his 6-by foot cell for an hour. Go back to sleep for another two or more hours. Wake up and read the Koran or look at a magazine written in a language that he does not understand. Walk in circles once more. Walk in circles or look at a magazine again, in a foreign language. The chances of a jury buying it were generally low. The episode "Committed" showed the aftermath of one these: Attempted by Serial Killer Nate Haskell in CSI , who argues that a combination of childhood abuse and possessing the MAOA gene which has been linked to an increased propensity for violence turned him into a sadistic psychopath.
What is the definition of insanity?
His Arch-Enemy Ray Langston shoots him down in court by announcing that he also had an abusive childhood and also possesses the gene, but he became a doctor rather than a murderer, and Haskell later admits in private that he made a conscious decision in his youth to blame everything on the two in the event he was caught. There's a lot of Fridge Logic involved in the case — it is strongly implied that if Haskell were found insane, he would actually be let out of custody , despite his entire defense boiling down to "I'm a sadistic, murdering psychopath. And I'll probably do it again.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: This turns out to be something they made up entirely. He was actually there for extreme social anxiety, which he still suffers from. In "Act of Terror", a Marine guard is charged for murder after he shot a terrorist suspect during a prisoner transfer, on live TV. Given that the show deals exclusively with cases involving The Mentally Ill in some capacity, many of its perpetrators would be judged not fit to stand trial, not guilty by reason of insanity, or to have suffered from diminished capacity. The episode "No Traveller Returns" is dedicated to establishing whether cannibal murderer Mandar Kush, who has spent eleven years in an institution, can be released into society.
The answer is yes. Used in an episode of Psych. Interestingly, the episode begins after the defense has been used and the sentence passed.
Lassiter becomes enraged by the verdict and thinks the defendant was faking it, so he sends Shawn to investigate. The defendant was actually insane, but wasn't actually the murderer. Discussed in "Stephen's Story". Stephen's attorney wants him to get a psychiatric examination so they can prove he was insane at the time of his crime he's clearly a schizophrenic. Stephen refuses, though, denying he's mentally ill and claiming what happened was justified to defend himself and his family.
This doesn't work, and he gets convicted of attempted murder. Played with in the second and final episode of Made In Jersey. Martina defends a severely schizophrenic young woman who took an insanity plea for murder, but now wants a retrial so she can go home. She's innocent and Martina successfully gets her acquitted. Roy Brown's " Butcher Pete "; Well, they put him in jail again They tried to give him life Pete beat the case, he pleaded insane They gave him back his same ole knife. The jury found only insanity So his head stayed in prison but his body went free. One arc of Funky Winkerbean has Lisa start working at the local public defenders' office.
She's assigned a death row inmate as a client and attempts to get his sentence at least commuted by suggesting he was having a PTSD-induced blackout at the time of the murder , thereby making him not competent. This fails, she sits witness to his execution, and quits. Unfortunately, it was many years before he was considered fit to be released. The eponymous tabard is a fake, created as physical therapy in the asylum, and used as bait to trap the villain.
Oh, and the revenge thing didn't turn out so well, not being satisfying at all. Addressed in at least two editions of Champions , thanks to Hero author Steven Long also being a practicing attorney. Game-world legal precedents have established that dressing up in a silly costume does not count as insanity, and neither does committing bizarre crimes.
The villain Foxbat, who genuinely believes that he is a character in a comic book, is listed as an example of someone who could use the insanity defense. Ace Attorney had an Amoral Attorney pressure his client into using an insanity defense. It worked, but the defendant's life was ruined as a result, when he could have been found Not Guilty because he hadn't committed the crime.
So he killed the attorney fifteen years later. In Knights of the Old Republic , if you let the lawyer appointed to you handle the trial without telling him that you have evidence of a Sith plot after you've broken into the Sith embassy in Manaan , then he'll try this as a last defense. It fails, and you're executed in a Nonstandard Game Over. In Remember11 , Keiko Inubushi avoided going to prison after murdering twelve people due to suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. In Corpse Party , this is how Yoshikazu Yanagihori avoided going to jail for abducting four children and killing three of him.
He actually was pretty insane at that point and he wasn't even the real killer, just an accomplice to the real killer, who was manipulating him , so a mental hospital was probably the best place for him. Unfortunately, security was not very good it was Japan and he ended up breaking out.
He then broke into the school where the children were killed and hanged himself. In The Caligula Effect , this turns out to have been used in a similar manner to the Ace Attorney example above, with it being used for Kouki Tadokoro after he assaulted Himari Minamide and drove her to suicide. The difference is that he really did commit the crime, but this defense employed by Eiji, no less still ruined his life. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One strip has a man defending his insanity plea with "Well, I killed a whole bunch of people.
Crazy enough for ya?
He accuses the jury of being insane. In Freefall , Sam is a larcenous, silver-tongued alien squid.
He mentions that spending more than three weeks with him is legally grounds for an individual insanity plea. In the Futurama episode "Insane in the Mainframe", Simple Country Lawyer Hyperchicken uses the insanity defense in favor of Fry and Bender, and offers as proof the fact that "they done hired me as their lawyer. Note that this in a country where being poor has recently been classified as a mental illness.
Insanity Defense
Judy suggests using this excuse when Doug is framed for stealing Mr. Doug mentions that someone else actually tried that before but still got in trouble and had to go to the school counselor every day.
In Archer , Cheryl uses this tactic effectively to avoid jail time, instead being thrown into a mental hospital for ten months. She urges her friends to follow her lead in order to avoid getting arrested for trespassing. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: Subverted in an episode. Harvey tries to use this defense to acquit his client, and it looked like the jury was going to buy it Harvey was defending a man in a lawsuit. He successfully argued that Fred suffered from Identity Amnesia and only thought he was a mafia boss.
Then it turns out that despite all clues to the contrary, Fred never was The Don. In most Christian Denominations, insanity reduces or outright eliminates someone's responsibility for a sin he commits. In Catholicism the three requirements for a sin to be mortal i.
Since insanity takes away the second two, people who are insane are incapable of committing mortal sins. In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is recorded as saying the following with regards to this trope. Louis Riel 's lawyers wanted him to plead insanity to be found not guilty of treason. People will never know if it would have worked, because Riel wanted to use his time in court as a final opportunity to make public the natives' problems.
He was found guilty and hanged. Former Supervisor Dan White's defense team was able to convince the jury that he was in such a mental state as to be incapable of premeditation, so he ended up being convicted of voluntary manslaughter causing riots by San Francisco gay men who saw this as an inadequate outcome motivated by homophobia.
Among other things, they cited White's shift from health nut to junk food addict as evidence of his declining mental state. The references to junk food led to the coining of the term "Twinkie Defense". The term "Twinkie Defense" has now entered the language to describe a frivolously thin defence of insanity, with a common belief being that White's lawyers claimed that he should be let off because he did the killings while on a sugar high.
Nothing like such an argument was actually used by the defense and Twinkies were mentioned only in passing , but people think it was. A man in Alberta, Canada who beheaded and partially cannibalized a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in was found not criminally responsible because he was insane. He was, however, deemed a significant risk and institutionalized.
A lot of people were angry that he wasn't found guilty, though others argued the verdict's meaning was misunderstood and that while the defendant might not be in an actual prison he'd spend a lot longer in a psychiatric institution — essentially spending the rest of his life in a rubber room instead of "life with chance of parole in some number of years".
It turned out, however, that he was granted an absolute discharge in , just 9 years later. A man strangled his wife in his sleep and was released as it was decided that his sleep disorder meant that he wasn't responsible for this act. New Scientist has included a discussion of how you can show whether or not someone has a sleep disorder after staying awake for 25 hours, a given tone woke up all the sleep-disordered positive people and none of the healthy controls.
The verdict led to widespread dismay; as a result, the U. Congress and a number of states rewrote laws regarding the insanity defense. Idaho, Montana, and Utah have abolished the defense altogether. The dismay is ironic, as he has been in a mental institution for over 30 years, probably more time than he would have spent in prison if convicted, certainly longer than many "sane" murderers spend in prison. Judging by what he did before the attempt and the way he defended himself during trial, he had been everything but sane.
Unfortunately, the only way to be sure is to release him now and provide the logistics needed to trace back his obsession — Jodie Foster — if he could cling to it for 35 years and still not give up , he's too insane to count. In August , it was announced that Hinckley would be released, so we'll possibly see now.
The US Supreme Court ruled that people who are insane cannot be executed, on the grounds that someone who is to be executed must be capable of comprehending the gravity of their own death. Therefore, if medication can make someone sane, they can be forced to take it so they can be executed. The lawyers of Serial Killer Herbert Mullin tried this. It didn't work, as it was considered that his crimes were too well-planned to be the work of an insane person.
Although he was a paranoid schizophrenic, he was found to be mentally ill but legally sane, and thus sentenced to life imprisonment. A common myth is that Mullin carried out his killings because he believed he was preventing earthquakes; while he did indeed claim this in court as part of his defence, and also argued that it worked, because there had been no earthquakes since he started killing people , his victims were people he either felt had wronged him personally such as selling him drugs or who annoyed him somehow such as four teenage boys he told not to sit on the grass who were doing so , and one reason the prosecutors argued he was not insane is that once he killed a woman and her children seemingly just because they could link him to other murders.
He also entertained any number of paranoid conspiracy theories and afterwards gave all kinds of bizarre excuses for the murders he once claimed that his first victim, a homeless man, was Jonah from the Bible and that he had telepathically requested he be murdered , all of which makes it unlikely that "preventing earthquakes" was his sole motive if he really believed it at all.
Jared Loughner is an interesting example of just how hard it is to pull this off in real life. Prior to killing six people, he'd been forced out of college and told he couldn't come back unless he could maintain a mental health clearance proving he wasn't a danger to himself and others.
- The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Public, Voluntary and Private Asylum Care.!
- .
- Death by Foreclosure.
- A Gift of My Own: A Journey Into the Spiritual Realm of Reality.
The sheer incoherence of his political and philosophical ramblings got him ejected from abovetopsecret. He has since been medicated and pleaded guilty. An interesting case is an ongoing thread of Jon Ronson's book The Psychopath Test , where he meets a man who pleaded insanity in the expectation that this would be a lighter sentence. Ronson has a TED talk where he discusses this case. The lawyers of the British child-killer Ian Brady tried this, basically relying on circular reasoning: He since survived a murder attempt by another inmate, which left him blind in one eye, before dying in while still incarcerated.
It seems safe to say being deemed insane didn't given him any better treatment than in prison. James Holmes, the perpetrator of the Aurora Colorado shootings, has apparently been called this by his defense attorney. Holmes had also dyed his hair orange and was referring to himself as "the Joker".