Hi BoP,
I appreciate your thoughts on the Yates case and hope to hear from others as well.
I'm not for the death penalty in this case because I believe she was psychotic (hearing voices telling her she was the Devil and commanding her to drown her children) wwhen she committed the crime.
I'm interested in what you said here:
That some kind of mental disorder exists or existed in all of the above named individuals is a given. No sane person commits mass murder. But mass murderers do know what they do is wrong. They go to great lengths to conceal their activities.
Most of the folks you had named were 'labelable' in terms of psychiatric illness, though, for the most part, mass murderers are sociopathic (have no conscience and are connected to reality) rather than psychotic (their sense of what is real, what is expected from them, is distorted).
Sanity is a legal, not a psychiatric term, which makes things muddy as far as an insanity defense is concerned. Most mass murders are declared sane, despite the horrible acts they commit. They know there's such a thing as right and wrong, they just don't think those distinctions should apply to them.
I'm babbling a bit and need to go. I'll be out tonight but am interested in talking about this case and the death penalty in general.....
