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Is blinding rage a mental defect as defined in the statutory guidelines that describe not guilty by reason of insanity defense (NGRI)?
The insanity defense refers to the time of the alleged offense.
The two most widely used tests for criminal responsibility include the McNaughton Rule and the Model Penal Code/American Law Institute Rule.
McNaughton focuses on whether a criminal defendant knew the nature of the crime or understood right from wrong at the time it was committed.
The ALI or MPC states that an “individual is not responsible for their criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.”
Most alleged perpetrators of felonious crimes are not diagnosed with a mental illness. They are responses to extreme hatred, blinding revenge, burning jealousy, and emotions that the rest of us may have experienced.
Elizabeth Nevins-Sanders from New York University School of Law has a unique perspective. Once a person appreciates societal norms (or risk of harm) against which his conduct is measured, the individual presumably can evaluate that norm and the costs/benefit of violating it. Thus the law presupposes that defendants are capable of using reason to guide their conduct. It assumes the ability to consider situations from different viewpoints and the ability to see short and long-term consequences. The question then is: In the absence of the ability to reason using societal norms, is that what a mental defect is?
None of the cases described below, for those perpetrators that lived, had ever considered using an NGRI defense. Would that have been a viable option?
The Virginia Tech shooting was a school shooting that occurred on April 16, 2007 on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in Blacksburg, Virginia. Seung-Hui Cho, an undergraduate student at the university and a U.S. resident of South Korean origin, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others with two semi-automatic pistols.
In 2005, Cho was accused of stalking two female students. A Virginia special justice declared Cho mentally ill and ordered him to attend treatment. However, because he was not institutionalized, he was still allowed to purchase guns. Had he lived, would NGRI have been an option?
Dylann Roof is a white supremacist and mass murderer convicted for perpetrating the Charleston South Carolina Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting on June 17, 2015 during a Bible study group. Roof killed nine people, all African Americans. He confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war. A website contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism along with a manifesto in which he outlined his hateful views toward black people.
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Pulse was hosting a "Latin Night" and most of the victims were Hispanic. He had also reported that he had seen two gay men kissing and was repulsed. On a website, investigators found a manifesto stating “armed attack that was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.” Did Mateen have a hatred of Latino gay men couched in an Islam belief system?
A mass shooting took place in El Paso, Texas in August 2019 at a Wal-Mart store where 23 people were killed and 23 others injured. The crime was investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime against Latinos. Patrick Crusius had written a manifesto with white nationalist and anti-immigrant themes that was posted before the attack. He was charged with capital murder. Of note, El Paso is the metropolitan immigrant gateway.
In October 2019, the Tree of Life Congregation was the target of a mass shooting in which eleven people were killed and seven injured. Robert Bowers, the perpetrator, told a SWAT officer that he wanted all Jews to die and that Jews were committing genocide against his people. He killed 11 Jews as they prayed.
In analyzing the elements of criminal responsibility using the ALI/MPC standards in each case the guilty party meets the standards. If by reason of mental illness or defect...
Can the defect in thinking include beginning a race war through White Supremacy and Neo-Nazism, identifying oneself as an Islamic State fighter, being fervently anti-immigration in a county that can barely handle immigration over the Mexican borders, fears that Jews were committing genocide against one’s own group, thus their life is at risk, be characterized as a mental defect? All are entrenched in unremitting belief systems.
The defendants lack the substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of their conduct since in their belief system these guidelines are truth, or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Is it the laws of their belief system which each treats as truth?
When an individual has become their belief system, there is no other and it is by their rules they sustain their lives.
Juries are reluctant to render a finding of NGRI because for the most part the individual will be remanded to a psychiatric hospital. It will then be up to the opinions of the doctors as to when this person is "cured" and safe to be returned to society. I have never spoken to an inmate who has told me they would rather remain in prison than in a hospital.
I am not advocating a new system of guidelines, only highlighting the confusing guidelines as they stand today in our judicial system. It is arbitrarily accepted when we talk about the legal concept of NGRI that there exists a severe and persistent mental illness leading to the lack of substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. However, the question still remains: What actually is a mental defect?
