Prosecutors grapple with alternate reality defense of the political fringe in Paul Pelosi trial
The trial has become something of a test of what happens when certain far-out strains of digital-age American radicalism collide with the criminal justice system.
If he's too crazy to be guilty, then he's too dangerous to be freed.
It's tough. He was radicalized, largely by YouTube, from what I've read. I don't believe prison should be punitive, just rehabilitative. If he really can come to terms with his radicalization, I don't see why he can't come back to reality and contribute to society.
He still needs to spend most of the rest of his life being "rehabilitated" in jail or in a psychiatric facility.
You don't simply get to inflict a potentially lethal and disabling traumatic brain injury against someone and then get out of jail free because you're "sorry" [that you got in trouble]. This man, and people like him, need to spend time away from society so that they can truly have time to process what they've done. Anything else would be an injustice to the victims.
Some brain injuries can lead to fates which are far worse than imprisonment or death; paralysis, inability to communicate, mental retardation, excrutiating and random neuropathic pain, and other things that have major implications for quality of life. And any person who would intentionally inflict such an injury on another person needs to go away for a long, long time.
I was taught growing up that we are ALL just 1 brain injury away from a drastically worse life, and it's true.
So put him in prison with nothing but NPR and PBS to rehabilitate him?
It isn't tough at all, of course he needs rehab and of course he needs to be segregated from society while he's doing it.
What's tough is that there is no such system that can do that. That is to say: the problem here isn't anything to do with this particular case, and everything to do with the prison industrial complex.
Ok, and the 5-10 million other people that are as radicalized/ if not more radicalized?
DO they get a pass because they 'live in alternative reality'?
They would gas people they don't approve of. This isn't fucking around.
I agree but it also should be protective. He did what he did and that should probably come with a very long probation once he’s out. It’s not enough to know better, we need to trust he’s able to function in the world without going back to radicalizing content even when triggered.
That's how insanity pleas are supposed to work. You don't go free, you just get locked up in a different place, and without a date set for your release.
Yeah that’s usually how insanity works. If you want to be free asap don’t plead insanity. What could’ve been over in a decade could easily be the equivalent of life probation if you’re ever deemed sane enough to be let out
Yeah that’s usually how insanity works. If you want to be free asap don’t plead insanity. What could’ve been over in a decade could easily be the equivalent of life probation if you’re ever deemed sane enough to be let out
IANAL, but my reading of this defense is different than what I’m seeing in most of the comments here.
He isn’t simply pleading insanity. The defense is trying to avoid a guilty verdict on some particular charges with large prison sentences. The defense is claiming that he did not intend to interfere with official duties.
He’s facing two charges: attempted kidnapping of a U.S. official (which requires the intent to interfere with official duties) and assault on an immediate family member of a U.S. official (which also requires the intent to interfere with or retaliate against the official over their duties). The kidnapping charge carries a 20-year prison sentence and the assault has a 30-year term.
They’re basically saying, “yes my client committed assault and kidnapping, but not for the reason required to be found guilty of those particular charges. Therefore, he is not guilty.
It doesn’t sound like their argument holds up because, even though his reasons are crazy, they still show he intended to interfere with official duties. But this is not a “put me in an insane asylum” attempt. It’s a not-guilty (of those particular charges) attempt.
Hypothetical: A carjacker takes a car while the owners are still in it. The owners happen to be the Pelosis. That would not be chargeable as "kidnapping of a US official," with that intent to interfere with official duties; the carjacker was not targeting the Pelosis because of their relationship to government.
In this case, the Pelosis were clearly the targets because of Nancy Pelosi's status as an elected official, and her purported involvment in some corruption in government.
Agreed. Good explanations.
DePape told jurors Tuesday during his rambling and tear-filled testimony that he didn’t target Pelosi to prevent her from serving in Congress. He said his real intent was to reveal a sinister plot.
“I wanted to use her to expose the truth,” DePape said, testifying that he planned to wear a unicorn costume he brought to her home and interrogate Pelosi on camera about what he believes are Democratic plots against former President Trump.
This might be Trump's biggest con yet: Rile up his followers by lying to them, then when those folks act on those lies, they end up getting treated with kid gloves because of how big the lies are, and how divorced from reality it makes them.
I just don't see how deluding yourself into believing an alternate reality is a defense. Not if you are of sound mind; which I don't think you can argue that the entire MAGA movement 'isnt of sound mind', they're easily 1:20 people in this country.
I'm pretty sure the "sound mind" thing doesn't work like that anyway. The insanity defence, for anyone who doesn't already know, is not a claim that you're too coocoo town banana pants to go to prison for crimes you have no credible defense for. The insanity plea is a claim that the defendant straight up doesn't understand, and may in fact be incapable of learning how to understand, right from wrong. They may confess immediately to a murder for instance, believing that there was no wrong in murdering, due to the severity of their own delusions.
Yeah a plea of insanity changes the conditions of everything. It is pleading guilty to the actions and acknowledging the need for the defendant to be removed from society. It’s saying “please send me to a psychiatric treatment facility instead of a prison”. Suffering from delusional thinking to the extent that you break into a representative’s house and attack their spouse with a hammer isn’t the sort of condition that gets you thrown on the streets after a little bit. It’s the sort of condition that gets you put in a prison’s psych ward for possibly life.
We don’t accept innocence by way of insanity out of the goodness of our hearts but because if we treat the criminally insane like ordinary criminals they’re just going to go out after release and do it again or they’re going to get themselves seriously hurt in prison.
Ok, but like, this final part:
believing that there was no wrong in murdering, due to the severity of their own delusions.
Can that not be extended to the actions of the insurrectionists on J6, or Trumps multiple attempts at a coup? If they truly believed the election was actually stolen? I'm not arguing this should be the case, but self believe to me isn't sufficient. Righteously believing yourself to be correct doesn't make you correct.
Also, I don't know that any kind of 'sound mind' or insanity argument really has any meaning when we're talking about a group of people on the order of, conservatively 1 million Americans, maybe as high as 15-25 million Americans? Some where between a half a percent and 15% of US citizens are basically, bat shit insane, when it comes to their material world view.
Every word uttered by a conservative or their attorney is deception. Every word.
Here's the thing I'm curious about: If this defense is even remotely successful, and they can show that his state of mind was caused by the absolute nonsense he was consuming for news, do you think laws will change about what claims can be made without proof on the internet? Screaming "fire" on the internet and whatnot.
U S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that one defendant — who surged with the Jan. 6 mob onto the Senate floor — had such a “unique stew in his mind” that she couldn’t be sure he had any idea he was breaking the law.
These are not functioning adults and they should be forcibly kept in care facilities for the rest of their natural lives.
OK, so this isn't an insanity defense, it's them arguing that the specific charges don't apply. The charges require an intent to target officials specifically for their role in government, and they argue he was targeting them because he believed they were involved in a conspiracy. So it's not the equivalent of an insanity plea, it's the equivalent of arguing that you shouldn't be charged with murder because you didn’t intend to kill someone, which would mean you should be charged with manslaughter instead.
It's still bullshit because the "conspiracy" would be one involving actions taken as a government official.
