Andrea Yates verdict - huh?

[--Pete]

Hi,

This gets us into the field of vigilantes and the antihero. The correct thing to do is what you believe to be morally correct, but that also causes problems. If everyone had the same moral beliefs, it would not be a problem to essentially try to match the law with the morality, and allow juries to act on good faith. But since that is not the case, we need to hold people accountable to the law even if they are doing what they believe to be morally right. Otherwise, we get to the point where the law has no teeth.

Exactly. We have a whole generation that has been raised on Hollywood pap where the vigilantes or anti-heroes break every law in the book, and at the end, they walk off scot-free and often with the thanks and blessing of the authorities. The message is clear that one can do what one wants and there will be no repercussions as long as one's heart is pure. I think Jack Kevorkian would tell people that the reality is different. As he, and so many others before and since, well know, civil disobedience for a cause often has a steep price.

However,

Another point that was brought up, I believe by Doc (but I may be wrong there) is that she knew it was legally wrong, but still believed it was right.

is a bit ambiguous. The working of an insane mind are not the same (by definition) as those of a sane mind. In a sane mind, knowing that something is legally wrong but believing that it is right is the equivalent of believing that the law itself is wrong. That is the basis for the whole anti-hero, civic protester, etc. behavior; an attempt to change an unjust law or condition by bringing it to the attention of the public, even of the world. But in an insane mind, who can really tell what is happening? Does a Son of Sam forget that murder is unlawful? Or does that fact simply not have any influence on his actions? Or is the answer somewhere in between and adds to the stress or puts an element of anguish into his situation. The only way to know is to ask the person, but, given that they either are insane, or were insane at the time they performed the actions they did, they are not necessarily the best equipped to explain.

However those issues are addressed, I think (paraphrasing Yogi Barra's son) the similarities between insanity and civic protest are mostly different. I think most revolutions (the ultimate form of civil protest) are started by sane (but perhaps not practical) people who have rational goals in mind. And the test of that is that these revolutionaries can persuade a sufficient number of (presumably) sane people to follow them and a majority of those that do not follow them to 'get out of the way' (most successful revolutions are carried out with a small fraction of the population actively engaging but the majority at least not objecting).

I seriously doubt that any 'slack' granted to the insane would cause any slippery-slope effect on the sane civic protesters. The two are just too different (usually, but then the Unibomber comes to mind).

--Pete