Posted:
With the current episodes, the Cvs have (intentionally or not) touched upon the debatable topic of insanity defence.
Is Maya Buri or Beemar ?
I quote some excerpts from the book titled
Evil Or ill?: Justifying the Insanity Defence
By Lawrie ReznekAnybody who is interested in this topic can read this book and form your opinions in a more educated way. You can PM me if you want the pdf. You are free to apply it to Maya's case. đ Quoting from the book:
"Insanity Defence"
By insanity defence, I mean a legal device for excusing a
defendant on the basis of his mental illness.
First, there is the Cognitive Defence:
A person is NGRI (not guilty by reasons of insanity) if
and only if (1) he is suffering from a mental illness, and (2) the
mental illness causes him to be ignorant of what he is doing. This
defence says: I'm not guilty because I didn't know what I was
doing.'
Second, the Volitional Defence: A person is NGRI if and only
if (1) he is suffering from a mental illness, and (2) the mental
illness causes him to lose control of his impulses. This defence
says: I'm not guilty because I lost control.'
Third, the Causal Defence: A person is NGRI if and only if (1) he is suffering from a
mental illness, and (2) the mental illness causes his behaviour.
This defence says: I'm not guilty because my behaviour was
caused by a mental illness.'
I will argue for a fourth defence"the
Character Change Defence: A person is NGRI if and only if (1) he is
suffering from a mental illness, and (2) the mental illness causes a
change of moral character. This defence says: I'm not guilty
because I wasn't myself when I committed the offence.' While I will
argue this is a new excuse, it is already in use in our legal system.
It is implicit in many of our insanity judgements, and points the
way to a new understanding of the whole institution of excuses. If
justice is to be preserved, we must accept this novel defence.
An excerpt on character change
CHARACTER CHANGE AS AN INSANITY
DEFENCE
The excuse of a change in moral character enables us to explain
why we are inclined to excuse those cases of mental illness that do
not satisfy the traditional excuses of ignorance and compulsion.
We excuse M'Naghten ( I suggest you to read about the case of this person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M%27Naghten) even though he
knew what he was doing and was in control. This is because
the mental illness so disturbs these people that they cease to be
themselves. Their distress is so great that their values change.
What becomes most important to them in such states is to end
the distress, and therefore they act. Because their normal values
do not incline them to behave in this way, we see them as having
undergone a change in moral character, and for this reason
deserve to be excused.
It would be unjust to punish them because
they are good people who undergo a change in moral character.
Paranoid patients whose delusions do not satisfy the As-if Rule
may still have excuses because they were not themselves when
they acted. Similarly for those suffering from volitional disorders.
If depression transformed McCullough from a law-abiding person
to a person who no longer cared about the law, we would be
inclined to excuse him even if he was not overwhelmed by his
impulses. When illness makes a person act out of character, we
are inclined to excuse him on the basis of a change in moral
character. Conversely, when madness does not excuse, it is often
because there is not the requisite change in moral character.
TheNeo-Nazi who kills what he takes to be a Jew does not have an
excuse, even though psychotic, because he acts in character.
When Deidre kills the casting director because she believes she
has lost the part, we are not inclined to excuse her because she is
a callous and ruthless person. The aim of excusing, remember, is
to excuse good characters, and this explains why we are not
inclined to excuse these cases.
Psychopathy is NOT classified as a disease/illness presently for social and political reasons
If we are to explain the most central cases where mental illness
excuses, we have to resort to the novel excuse of a change in moral
character. This also explains why many cases of provocation,
duress, and automatism excuse. This raises a problem for our
drawing a line between the mad and the bad when considering
personality disordered offenders. In general, where a disease
(other than a personality disorder) changes a personality from a
good to a bad moral character, we are inclined to excuse him
whether the change is reversible or not. When a personality
disorder produces an evil character, we are much less inclined to
excuse him because there is no natural place to draw the line
between the mad and the bad. Moreover, whether we classify
psychopathy as a disease (and therefore grant psychopaths
an excuse on the basis of character change) is a matter of choice,
and at present there are good reasons for not doing so. The social
and political cost of classifying psychopathy as a disease suggests
at present that we should view it as the embodiment of evil
instead.
Quoting Wikipedia
The insanity defence is recognized in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Hong Kong, India, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and most U.S. states with the exception of Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Utah, and Vermont.
Whether Maya is a psychopath or mentally ill (e.g suffers from psychosis)remains a moot point. Also if she is ill, whether insanity defence applies to her.
Book Talk
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
