Nightingale

Jimmy Buffett.

Not guilty by reason of insanity really is a plea of "guilty" but with the mitigating circumstance of insanity. You cannot plead insanity without first admitting that you did it, because an insanity plea says "yes, I did it, but I was crazy at the time." That's one of the major reasons that an insanity defense is not used nearly as often as the public believes. Admitting that you committed a crime, and then asking a jury to excuse you because you were nuts is a really big risk. The public is very sceptical of insanity defenses (as evidenced in this thread), and Andrea Yates took a huge risk by admitting that she did commit the crime and then relying on twelve people to believe her doctors instead of the prosecution's doctors.

That's the most touching thing I've ever read. I need a tissue. I appreciated the sentiment.

Her doctor, someone else who was supposed to be taking care of her, made a terrible call and pulled her off Haldol all at once, instead of weaning her off gradually like he was supposed to. It's well known that abruptly stopping anti-psychotic medication tends to trigger extreme psychosis. If her doctor stopped her prescription, she wouldn't have a way to get to that medication, and if she trusted her doctor to take care of her in a responsible manner, she probably wouldn't question what he told her. For a housewife with no assets of her own, who is very religious and buys into the idea of "husband is in charge, going against his will is sin", yes, "my husband made me" may be a valid reason, if she didn't have the ability (money, transportation, etc...) to acquire the medication on her own, and the person who is both aware she is mentally ill and supposed to be taking care of her tries to prevent her from getting to that medication. Evidence indicates that Rusty Yates encouraged that kind of dependency from Andrea. I don't have a problem with people having unbalanced relationships if they're happy; relationship dynamics should be up to the individuals, but the party with the power has accepted it and has a duty to use it responsibly. Andrea's religion told her to trust Rusty to make the important decisions and to take care of her, and Rusty accepted that responsibility. Psychological dependence like that is well documented. Andrea may have truly believed that she had no choice.

I thought the whole Insanity thing was not knowing if you did something wrong. Why would she feel guilty if in her mind she did nothing wrong? The insanity thing is that AT THE ITME OF THE CRIME, she didn't know she was doing something wrong. Afterwards, when she's put on meds, she's in a much closer to normal state of mind and capable of understanding. Otherwise, she'd never be able to stand trial, because she probably wouldn't be able to assist in her own defense.

A few months before the drownings, a doctor "for some inexplicable reason" took Yates off anti-psychotic medication and counseled her to have "happy thoughts," Parnham told jurors. "But for Andrea Yates being taken off anti-psychotic medication, those children would be alive today," he said." -houston chronicle She didn't choose to stop taking her meds. She was taken off her meds by a doctor who made a bad call.

Nope. I'd have convicted OJ. The DNA evidence was there. The motive was there. It all fit. The jury fell for confusing defense tactics and charisma.

OJ Simpson wasn't pleading insanity.

I don't support the burning of the flag, but i support the right to do so. There is a difference. I think so, as long as it's not done in an obnoxious way. A little apartment doesn't need a twenty foot flag that blocks the window of the guy upstairs. As long as it's a normal size flag, I think they should be able to fly/hang one.

Try buying a new house in any California suburb. You're going to be stuck with an association. to answer a question posted further up the thread, yes, when you buy a house in an area controlled by an association you agree to their standards and promise to abide by them. They can do all kinds of nasty things to you if you don't, like crazy fines, and even foreclosing on your home. My parents live in a great association. The association dues go to maintenance on the clubhouse, pool, and gym, and architectural improvements and new paint must be approved by their committee and two of your neighbors. Beyond that, unless someone's yard has gone to weed, there's awful oil stains on the driveway, or there's a broken down car parked on your lawn, they pretty much leave you alone. They do things that keep property values high, and let you live your life otherwise. Some of my friends live in awful associations. I've seen association inspectors trample through flower beds and gardens to make sure that overhead trees were no less than four feet from the roof, and writing up a citation when he didn't think they were far enough away. Amusingly, there wasn't anything at all in the association regulations about four feet distances between roofs and trees. These people walk around with clipboards twice a week writing people up for really stupid stuff. I guess they're a bunch of really bored people with nothing better to do, but they're damned annoying.

Hearsay evidence can already be used in military hearings to an extent. This is because of the logistics required in dealing with issues occurring on foreign soil. Calling a general home from Afghanistan to testify just isn't practical in many situations. That said...I'm uncomfortable with this. Under the Constitution, it clearly states that an accused has a right to face his accuser. (6th amendment). In this era of technology, there's no reason to accept hearsay evidence beyond the classic hearsay exceptions allowable in civilian courts. We have teleconferencing technology. We should use it.

...going outside to put up my flagpole.

To give you some idea of where I'm coming from with this, I'm working for a criminal prosecution office. It's the job of my office, and my job to help, to put criminals in jail. That said... First off, Andrea Yates had Post Partum PSYCHOSIS, not Post Partum Depression. There is a massive difference between the two. With PPP, you are insane. "Postpartum psychosis is a form of depression so severe that the patient loses touch with reality. Although only about 1 in 500 women will get postpartum psychosis, there is a sevenfold increase in the risk of psychiatric hospitalization within the first three months after delivery, and the risk of psychosis is 20 times higher than the pre-pregnancy rate. When delusions or hallucinations are present, they often involve the infant. A woman may have thoughts that the baby is possessed by a demon and should die. She may even hear voices (auditory hallucinations) telling her to kill her infant. This is an emergency situation, and in such cases a new mother should be taken to the hospital immediately."-healthybaby.com Andrea Yates had a long history of mental illness and had a history of post-partum depression, which made her much more likely to get PPP. She twice attempted suicide, had been hospitalized four times for psychiatric care and nursed a psychosis before the drownings that was clearly documented in thousands of pages of medical records. -time.com Someone with PPP who is off their meds is as dangerous, if not more so, than a paranoid schizophrenic off meds. They have no idea what's real and what isn't, delusions come on strongly and suddenly, and there is an incredible compulsion to act on those delusions. The delusions are almost always centered around the child or children. Andrea Yates was classic PPP. She is the kind of person that an insanity defense is made for. To be "not guilty by reason of insanity", "at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused must be labouring under such a defect of reason, arising from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong." -M'Naghten This defense is based on a principle that punishment is only reasonable if the defendant is capable of distinguishing right and wrong and has some idea of what they're doing. In most jurisdictions, a jury must find that the defendant was in an "active state of psychosis" to accept an insanity defense. By all accounts, Andrea Yates was completely nuts and was given an anti-psychotic cocktail after her arrest. Defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity are generally placed in a mental institution. Unlike defendants who are found guilty of a crime, they are not institutionalized for a fixed period, but rather they are held within the institution until authorities determine that they are no longer a threat. Authorities making this decision tend to be cautious; as a result, defendants can often spend more time there than they would have in prison (had they been convicted). -wikipedia Insanity defenses are successful less than 1% of the time. It's not easy to convince a jury that you were so nuts that you didn't know what you were doing, or that it was wrong. It's obviously not easy to convince you either, Darius. However, you were not in the courtroom, you do not have access to the evidence that the jury did, and you do not have the understanding of PPP that the experts gave the jury. Andrea Yates didn't just have to convince one person. She had to convince all twelve. Every single juror had to agree that this woman was nuts. Look at the breakdown of this thread... we've got a pretty good mix of society here. How difficult do you think it would be to get twelve people to agree to find someone who killed five kids "not guilty"?? I applaud the jury in this case. Their decision wasn't easy, but I feel it was the only choice that truly meant justice rather than vengeance.

Looking Glass Land...never heard of it. So now that you're done, are you actually going to talk about the article or not? Um... I think the original thread title would've confused me too. I vaguely remembered hearing about the previous legislation, but probably wouldn't have made the connection.

well, now that the tank's empty, perhaps I will try a salt water system again. I ran a salt water system for a year or two in a 10 gallon tank (nightmare!) but I hear it's easier with a larger tank?

I second what he said. And I just gotta ask...why do you have a huge fishtank and no fish? Ok. Breaker's off. Thank you both...I'd forgotten about that. I have a huge fish tank with no fish because the last fish died and the noise the tank makes when the water's low is so annoying that I just kept adding water. It's almost empty now and will remain that way unless I decide to put a turtle or something in there.

So, I go home for lunch. Usually home for lunch means relax and play with the kitties. Today, home for lunch meant dealing with 55 gallons of water and an unhappy electrical socket. I get home, realize that the fish tank is about 3 inches low, and the filter is making loud waterfall noises because of it. So, I hook up the hose to the faucet, set it on low and begin to fill up the tank. Then my phone rings. I turn away to answer it, completely forgetting about the tank. I remembered when I hung up. So, now I've got water everywhere and the electrical socket behind the tank is hissing. I'm guessing that's bad, but I can't get to the socket because the tank has 458.5 pounds of water in it, plus the weight of the tank itself and the hardwood dresser it's sitting on. No way in hell I can lift that. Then I asked myself why the heck I have a 55 gallon fish tank full of water but no fish. Since I couldn't answer that question with any kind of logic whatsoever, I decided to drain the tank. I've set up about 12 siphons sucking the water out of the tank, as bailing it out with a coffee cup didn't work very well, and it's about half empty now. So, hopefully, in about an hour, I can get to the socket. However, I am clueless as to what to do with the socket once I can get to it. So... what should I do? (aside from giving up on the situation entirely and pouring myself a very strong pyrat rum and coke?)

This would make a great bumper sticker. Yeah, but unlike a lot of the other stickers, that one isn't true. Liberal policies won't succeed for the same reason conservative policies won't succeed. They're too extreme. Liberals and conservatives ought to work together to find a solution they can both live with. The problem is that neither side will compromise on anything significant, so nothing gets done aside from petty bickering and finger pointing. Not true? I've heard many Liberals say exactly that. Extreme Liberal and Conservative politics don't suceed because they collapse under their own weight and are rejected by the population at large. To make the claim that they won't suceed simply because they are conservative or liberal isn't correct. Many of the laws and rights we enjoy came out of conservative and/or liberal thinking. I look at them as a counter-balance. Keeping each ideology from swinging too far either way. I said the policies wouldn't work because they were too extreme, not because they're labelled liberal or conservative. I've heard both democrats and republicans make the claim that their programs didn't work because of faulty leadership, though. I think that eventually things balance out, especially when one party controls the legislature and the other controls the executive. That way, you don't end up with runaway, out of control politics like we're seeing with the national government now and the California government pre-Arnold. I don't like Arnold, but I'm going to vote for him because I like the balance he's brought to our state government. If we get a democrat in the governor's seat with a democratically controlled legislature, things will get out of control again. Neither party can be trusted to completely run the government. I think the biggest reason I'm a libertarian is because I find the party to be a good balance between republicans and democrats. The libertarians advocate many of the social freedoms the democrats want (pro choice, gay marriage, freedom of religion) without the socialistic policies (example: laws requiring pharmacies to fill all prescriptions whether or not the business owner finds it moral or economical...one person's freedom shouldn't be at the expense of someone else's), and balance that with classic republican ideas of lower taxes and responsible spending, without the neo-con theocratic extremism.

Just another tax and spend liberal hiding under a different set of social programs That's what I was thinking... I started to write a post and gave up because I couldn't find the right words.

This would make a great bumper sticker. Yeah, but unlike a lot of the other stickers, that one isn't true. Liberal policies won't succeed for the same reason conservative policies won't succeed. They're too extreme. Liberals and conservatives ought to work together to find a solution they can both live with. The problem is that neither side will compromise on anything significant, so nothing gets done aside from petty bickering and finger pointing.

No need to have them printed. You can get most of the here: http://irregulartimes.com/santibushmisc.html My favorite is this one, though: http://www.goats.com/store/item/tshirt_rfv-1.html

those are pretty fucked prices for cafeteria quality food. $900/month to eat? My rent plus food was less than that in school. I got a job at the dining commons. They deducted, I think, $70.00 per month from my check for a meal plan that provided me with 5 meals a week plus any shift I worked. That saved me a pretty penny, I tell ya! You're lucky. The company running the cafeteria at my school didn't hire students. The cafeteria food was damn good though... Meal plans ran about $3K per year, so I guess it was a little more than half price if you paid in advance.

Most 21 year old college students are still mooching off mom and dad. Heck, my parents are paying my rent at the moment, and I'm 27. (however, I'm stuck in a lease I can't afford because of a deal my dad made with me to stay put...I could afford a cheaper place on my own). I was certainly mooching off my parents at age 20, when I was finishing college, and all my friends (a year older than I was because I skipped a grade) were certainly still mooching off their parents. In college now, you either mooch off your parents to be able to afford to eat, borrow extra money (with a co-signer because you can't get a private loan without one if you're not working) to be able to afford to eat, or you work full time to be able to afford to eat. Example: When I was in school, student workers made $5 an hour, and most places nearby wouldn't hire students because they didn't want to work around school schedules. A meal in the school cafeteria was $13.50 for dinner, and $8 for breakfast and lunch. That was $29.50 a day if you paid cash. Less if you were on a meal plan, but that had to be purchased all at once, up front. So, those kids with student work jobs had to work 6 hours a day just to eat, unless they were mooching off mom and dad or had a car to go to the grocery store (or a few free hours to take the bus). But since we weren't allowed microwaves or refrigerators (old building: appliances like that blew the circuits), there wasn't much they could buy unless they wanted to live off dry cereal or granola bars. The school itself had set things up in a way that there was no easy way for a student to work on campus and still eat, unless they had outside support. I know I was at a private school, but from what my brother tells me, CSUF wasn't much different. His assessment "sure, you can eat cheap, if you don't mind living on candy bars from the vending machines."

LOL. You've got that wrong. I went to college because my parents TOLD me I was going to college. There was simply no discussion about it; it was just expected. I probably would've been a typical short-sighted teenager and dropped out or never started to begin with, and gotten a job and moved out. Or, like many of the students I saw who were on their own, realized I just couldn't compete with the students who didn't have to work to eat, and therefore had a lot more time to study and sleep. I'm where I am now partially because of my own determination, but largely because I had parents that pushed me and supported me. And what if they never encounter that mentor? Finding a mentor isn't something you can count on.

I started college at 17. There was no way in HELL I could've managed to deal with financial aid all on my own. My parents took care of it (and educated me about it along the way) until I finished my undergrad degree. They told me what to sign, and I read the forms and signed them. I didn't start navigating the financial aid system on my own until I started grad school, and it's a lot easier for grad students. They've usually got jobs, so they don't have to worry about additional loans to cover cost of living. Federal loans don't cover everything, and private loans take co-signers to get.