Telegraph (UK): ""The experts' main conclusion is that the accused, Anders Behring Breivik, is not considered to have been psychotic at the time of the actions on July 22, 2011," the Oslo district court said in a statement which reopens the debate on whether the self-confessed killer can be sent to prison."
I've been following this story because the highly regarded defense lawyer, Geir Lippestad, had almost immediately begun telling the press that his client was insane. I was curious as to whether the case would develop in a way that raised the "who decides?" issue for the defense. That is, who decides whether to argue the hopeless defense of justification (perfect or imperfect) or, on the other hand, to plead insanity? (To be clear: I am not suggesting that the mass slaughters were anything close to justified. I am simply acknowledging that the defendant apparently asserts that they were.) We saw that issue play out in the trial of Civil War era killer John Brown and in the trial of the Unabomber.
In the case in Norway, an early evaluaton suggested that the killer, Anders Breivik, was insane, which would have finessed the ethics issue (and, not incidentially, would have provided for life imprisonment rather than the surprisingly short sentence that would await Breivik for murder). Now that this report has suggested that Breivik was sane, we may see the ethics issue playing a prominent role in the future developments.
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