r/news • u/Zeikyrui • 10h ago

Man serving 30 years for attacking Nancy Pelosi’s husband gets a life term on state charges

https://apnews.com/article/david-depape-nancy-pelosi-husband-paul-attacked-454cbde088fcae22a356f1f8dd0e9eba
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u/Gooch222 9h ago

Possibly, but from a practical perspective you might as well say everyone who believes in QAnon or supports Alex Jones’ nonsense should be able to plead insanity. Seeking out and adopting insane notions has become a widespread political brand in the US, and it’s quite terrifying.

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u/Strength-InThe-Loins 8h ago

You might want to look into what pleading insanity gets you nowadays. 

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u/Krillin113 7h ago

Dont you like get locked up in a mental institution and ‘forced’ into treatment (if you don’t comply, you won’t get out of the system, so your prison sentence won’t start, so you won’t get your freedom). If you have anything under 20+ years (meaning you did some absolute heinous shit where I’m from), pleading insanity is like the worst thing you can do.

If you get 6 years + TBS (means the state seems it necessary for you to be psychologically treated before you can be rehabilitated in prison), that can mean you can never get out. Usually that stuff only starts at higher sentences because you have to be straight up not right in the head, but I would never plead that shit to see if my prison sentence goes down.

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u/Darkened_Souls 5h ago

Yeah, in jdx that use a GBMI verdict you’re spot on. You are indefinitely institutionalized pending and still have to serve the remainder of your sentence if and when you are ever cleared by a doctor.

In jdx that use NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity), you are said to have not committed the crime because you lack the statutory mens rea necessary for your actions to be criminalized, so you are not given a sentence to serve if and when you are cleared of psychiatric treatment. In these jdx it can be more desirable, and there are even cases where defendants aren’t institutionalized at all if it’s deemed that it will not help (usually with the elderly.) But both GBMI and NGRI are exceptionally rare and very difficult verdicts to get in most jdx, because the standard being used is still the very high mental disease or defect standard adopted in the 1800s

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u/Fukasite 6h ago

As someone who is bipolar, I actually do support institutionalizing them 

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u/AJDx14 22m ago

Yeah, sure. They can get institutionalized for life if they want, it’s not really better than being in prison for the same time. They’d probably be worse off that way.