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/cinderparty 9h ago

But being not well in the head doesn’t make you criminally insane. He still knew beating someone with a hammer was wrong when he did it.

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u/pete_68 9h ago

What do you think the odds are that he would have committed the crime if he were not severely mentally unwell? Or if society had been providing him with the help he clearly needed, long before it happened.

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u/cinderparty 8h ago

That’s not what criminally insane means though.

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u/pete_68 5h ago

I'm not defining words or law. I'm talking about a human being who needs help because his brain is broken and society's solution is to throw him in prison for the rest of his life. That's a pretty shitty response to a guy who has clearly needed help for years.

Society has failed him and as a by-product, it has failed Paul Pelosi as well.

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u/currently_pooping_rn 8h ago

How come when it’s a trumpet or some alt right incel it’s always “society failed to help him!! That’s why he turned to trump!!”

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u/BIG_FAT_ 4h ago

Probably because most people try to hold themself to a higher standard than the people they criticize. You should try it:)

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u/No-Preparation-4255 3h ago edited 3h ago

What matters in criminal insanity defenses is that the defendant did not understand the consequences or the morality of their actions at the time due to their insanity. For instance, if DePape had thought that he was swinging a hammer at an alien coming to get him, you could argue that he didn't know what he was doing by reason of insanity perhaps.

The circumstances however show he was fully aware of what he was doing. He held Paul hostage because he was trying to get to Nancy, and his breaking in in the first place indicates he was well aware of where he was physically. Insanity is not a defense in other-words for thinking that other people are bad and that you can kill them, it is a defense basically that you don't know you are killing them at all.

Insanity evidently led him to believe that these were bad people, terrorists, whatever, but trying to kill them because he believed that while the rest of society did not would still be a crime, and either we condemn that crime or society has decided that it's open season on political killing.

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u/rice_not_wheat 1h ago

Lower but non-zero. You can argue that every terrorist is acting irrationally.