Comments on Mall Maldonado

Not planning can also be a sign of lead poisoning.

Yes, planning can be a sign of an imbalance... a different kind of imbalance. His lawyers would have to have experts show that he's obsessive. It's a fine line between extremes of crazy... are you the crazy person who snaps and goes on a rampage or are you the crazy person who meticulously plans each and every step working and reworking it over weeks or months, plotting each step, each moment?

Or are you your average, run of the mill sane person who plotted out how you wanted to commit your crime?

It's up to your lawyers to show one thing, their lawyers to show the other, and the jury to decide who put up the best case.

honey bucket is neither a psychologist or a lawyer, therefore his opinion is full of shit.

I plan all of my one night stands. That makes me normal, not a cold-hearted slut. Right?

I hear GWB can be trusted in a mall.

He never plans anything and has no idea what to do if it isn't all rosy like he thinks.

In fact, he even ignores the non-rosy nature after all these years of non-rosiness.

What you would commonly consider insane and what would fit the legal definition of insanity are very different things. If you are sane enough to know right from wrong, legal from illegal, and you do something wrong and illegal anyway, then even if you are a screaming nutjob, you are guilty in the eyes of the law.

It's all about the necktie parties, in the end.

And this is why America is number one for total people imprisoned - the entire world combined isn't even close to number two.

USA! USA! USA!

as a law student, i have learned that one should never assume that the law expresses as it is, as it should be, or in any manner except that that is what the judge/jury says it is

Everybody knows he's a nutcase, but if the jury found him insane he'd be sent to a state facility and one of their fine, fine quality staff would let him out in a year when they "cured" him. Which is why so many insane people are found sane.

Legal insanity is not the same thing ad actual insanity. Generally the threshold for being legally insane is the inability to tell right from wrong. A somewhat related corollary that can absolve someone of guilt is the inability to control ones actions. So an person who is delusional and cannot judge the rightness of their actions is legally insane, whereas a person who has a seizure while driving and mows down schools children, while not insane, is not guilty.

A person who is say just paranoid and hatches a plan knowing that plan is in violation of the law is not insane, not unable to control their actions.

seems to me that having the nut cases out on the street (those who can't control their actions appropriately or or delusional) is more dangerous than the "guilty" who go to prison. If the jury had freed this guy because he didn't "plan" this attack, it would be a much sorrier world we live in.