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Using Truth Serum To Confirm Insanity
xclr8r writes "James Holmes representation did not enter a plea today in with regards to the Aurora, Co. Movie theater shooting so the Judge entered a plea of not guilty for James that could be changed at a later date by Holmes' attorney. The judge entered an advisory that if the plea was changed to Not Guilty by insanity that Holmes would be subject to a 'narcoanalytic interview' with the possibility of medically appropriate substances could be used e.g. so called truth serums. Holmes defense looks to have initially objected to this but as the previous article seems to infer that some compromises are being worked out. This certainly raises legal questions on how this is being played out 5th, 14th amendments. The legal expert in the second article states this is legal under Co. law but admits there's not a huge amount of cases regarding this. I was only able to find Harper v State where a defendant willingly underwent truth serum and wanted to submit the interview on his behalf but was rejected due to the judge not recognizing sufficient scientific basis to admit the evidence."
If he's willing to submit to drug-enhanced interrogation, he's certified crazy!
Neddy: "You're mad, mad I tell you!"
Bluebottle: "Little does he know that I'm as sane as the next man."
Eccles: "Little does HE know that I'm the next man!"
"This certainly raises legal questions on how this is being played out 5th, 14th amendments."
How about a little less of the colloquial and a little more grammar?
So while somebody like that (walks into a crowded theatre and shoots people) may be insane. How about somebody who sends a drone to drop bombs on civilians, kills civilians, including children. That's just normal, right? But one does what he does because he is probably crazy and the other one because he is crazy on power and wants to 'stimulate economy' by buying and dropping bombs.
Even if only one is insane, aren't both criminal?
You can't handle the truth.
He had roomates (news said he didn't), there was at least one other person there dressed in all black holding weapons (news never mentioned this but eye-witness testimonials revealed that this is the case), Holmes was perfectly normal and was a great student, well loved, and so forth. How does one switch so quickly? I'm going to throw this one out to the conspiracy theorists and see what they can conjure up.
News at 11.
If you willingly undergo such stuff and try to submit it on your behalf it's "unscientific" but if it may be used against you it's suddenly negotiably fine?
Yes, compromises abound. I'd say that indeed, the very system is entirely compromised to the point of no longer being a "justice" system any longer--assuming it ever was. QV the justice department's approach to prosecution: To suicide and beyond!
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Sure it's a pretty well known fact that the more I depress your CNS the less you are going to be capable of rationalization and higher thought to answer a question "creatively". However such an undertaking is not reliable or scientific at all, because there is a point at which I can get you to agree with and pretty much answer anything I want you to. Sigh. Americans and their obsession with torture. After all this is just torture in another guise, instead of using pain to interrogate, I am shutting down part of your brain. Either way you are being forced to confess and give testimony against yourself. Whatever happened to I dunno, finding EVIDENCE?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, you lot voted for the latter, not the former. In a republic, no less.
Thus, the popular vote says it's fine to do the latter, not the former, and since that is what the government is founded upon, yes, it's fully justified. With your vote, even if you voted for the other guy. For see here now, it's not mob rule, y'see now?
Anyhow, you got to vote (even if it was a Diebold vote) so you got no grounds for complaining. The dead guys, they didn't get no vote. Clearly, they shouldn't've been born UnAmerican, so it's their own damn fault too.
Of course, since if you are American, if you disagree, your founding father-given recourse is to take up bear arms. So go out and shoot us some bears, or some pinko commie gays, since they's calling themselves bears too or some sort of malarky, it's the duty of a true patriot!
But seriously, these days, if you really want to do something about it, you need to vote with your wallet. Kickstarter is your friend; go out and buy yourself some representation.
How can he be meaningfully represented by an attorney when he's too stoned out of his gourd on pentathal to be sure which disembodied voice is the lawyer and which is the interrogator?
Are they willing to grant blanket immunity to anything else he might confess? Given that the doses of pentathal used make the person compliant, how do they distinguish an inconvenient truth he might tell from a fabrication he tells because it seems like what the interrogator wants to hear? There's a reason it's not actually used anymore. Perhaps the judge takes TV much too seriously!
I'd claim it undermines my faith in the criminal justice system, but that ship sailed long ago.
They should try the Poligrip test Beavis and Butthead vs the lie detector
Considering the trend, Judicial Ouija boards migh be coming out soon. We will then discover that, what seemed to be mere gibberish before, in others instances, was actually Ouija NOLA.
There was (probably, still is) a tribe in Africa that had a "magic needle" in the Justice God's dark hut. Difficult cases had the suspects introduced one at a time. When the guilty individual stepped in, the magic needle would jump to life and start attacking the suspect all over - until he confessed. Or, at least, that is what the locals and a few other outsiders claimed to have seen.
The US is on the fast track, for that one - or something a lot like it.
There's no possible positive outcome for him. And it shows utter lack of empathy. And it doesn't really achieve any goals. I mean, the 9/11 terrorists at least believed they would be getting heaven (with virgins on top), empathized with people back home, and achieved the goal of getting some kind of message out and terrorizing the US. He achieved nothing remotely close to any of that.
That's not to say he shouldn't be judged though. Killers are killers, all are some kind of insane.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
12 dead bodies. Plenty of witnesses. His home is full of weapons.
This fucker is guilty, but the defense is preempting very early to result in an insanity outcome. They're trying to shape the degree of guiltiness. It's extremely hard to get an insanity defense in the US, only because so many people have tried it.
The only testimony they want is to determine if he's genuinely insane or just pretending. Either way, he's going to be locked up in prison or in a mental institution and I bet he's hoping for the latter in order to continue his "Joker" character fantasy.
James Holmes representation
Sounds like the name of a law firm. I assume what was meant was "James Holmes's representation."
did not enter a plea today in with regards to the Aurora, Co. Movie theater shooting
Whut?
The judge entered an advisory that if the plea was changed to Not Guilty by insanity that Holmes would be subject to a 'narcoanalytic interview'
Too many "that"s.
with the possibility of medically appropriate substances could be used
Either "with the possibility that..." or "...being used."
Holmes defense
"Holmes's defense"
but as the previous article seems to infer that some compromises are being worked out.
This one's hard to parse. Is it "but as the previous article seems to infer, some compromises are being worked out."? Also, which "previous" article? I wouldn't be surprised if you've got "infer" and "imply" mixed up as well, but as I can't work out which article is being referred to, I can't check this.
This certainly raises legal questions on how this is being played out 5th, 14th amendments.
Err, yes, it does. Wait, what?
Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So - a 'masked man' allegedly committed this crime - no CCTV footage whatsoever, of ANYBODY entering the cinema through the normal, front entrance, the police ALLEGEDLY found Holmes sitting in a car - in a DRUGGED STATE, out the back of the cinema, and in the car were some weapons.
Holmes was clearly drugged out of his skull while in court, as can clearly be seen by the video footage. What really happened?
Probably the same as at Sandy Hook - nothing at all. Probably nobody was shot, this never happened, it's just another sick attempt by the U.S. government to take guns off their 'cattle'...
$40,000+/year to house, feed, and medicate him, tens of thousands in legal and court fees, hours of people's lives lost...
Everyone knows he did it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and if he had been shot by police at the scene, it would have saved us more money than I and my 10 co-workers pay in taxes each year. I can think of thousands of things that would be better to spend those tax dollars on.
Insane or not, Low IQ or not, the death penalty should be used for these people who have no shot at ever getting out of prison.
So the next time they find a body lodged underneath a house with 600 bullets in it, we can use this on the police officers involved? "Sorry guys, we were on patrol and found a kid who backtalked us. We chased him and shot him hundreds of times, then planted a weapon on his remains."
Or is this only for use on non-cops, non-government and non-ruling-class?
One danger is that they may give him too much and he starts saying weird things about frogs...(Apologies to DNA)
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001000
If they judge him insane, then he can claim that he was incapable of making the decision to allow the truth serum
If they judge him sane, then he can claim that any information gathered under truth serum is tainted; since he was already sane, the truth serum can only make him less sane.
Testimony Given under Duress or coercion is usually tossed out. How is this any different? I'm not defending this guy but I see a huge problem with the tactic
" Holmes defense looks to have initially objected to this but as the previous article seems to infer that some compromises are being worked out"
it is as effective as Roman emperors diving the future from the study of chicken entrails.
That's fairly natural. The point of most discussion in the USoA has nothing to do with what it says on the tin. The real issue is simply which side you're on, for on any one issue, there's only room for two sides in that big country yonder. Want more choice? Just add issues.
And why that? Why, to villify the other side, of course! What other point could there be?
So big ticket issues become trench warfare, where movement back and forth is guaranteed to be minute and always at gigantic cost. This is the modern interpretation of an "inefficient government"; its very purpose is to be ponderous, and since so many people funnel so much effort to butt heads with the other side on increasingly trivial things, expensive to boot. Also because of the pork barrelling, of course, for why should other people get all the money?
In other words, if you want any one issue to be efficiently resolved, you have to game the system somehow, for it is the system that requires costing a lot while resolving nothing.
You can easily see that this is not inherent in politics, just in American[tm] politics, by looking over the borders. For example, there's countries that decide to not ever even give life sentences, nevermind death penalty. Norway is a good example.
On the other hand, there's countries like those with the Sharia, where you'll get your head lopped off no sweat. Or like China used to do: Shoot the accused and charge the family for the bullet spent. Now they just drive death vans around, with Yu Di, MD in attendance.
If you really wanted efficient, you could have it. So one could conclude that doing your level best to not have efficient means that having efficient is simply not important here.
If he doesn't want his words used against him, he doesn't have to have the drugs. Or even say anything in his defence. But if he volunteered to say something, he can't call "backsies" because he didn't volunteer it thinking it would be incriminating.
This is a little off topic but I've had a somewhat relevant thought over the years: I think every death row inmate should be required to take a polygraph (with or without any drugs and blood tests you like) before they can be executed. If the inmate passes the exam, there should be an automatic indefinite delay in execution, and the case should be re-opened. There are dozens of documented cases of wrongful executions, the people on death row usually (yes, I read "usually" somewhere) get public defenders who have been or will be disbarred, many are unable to help themselves intelligently, and some are intimidated into confessions. I'm not keen on execution to begin with, but if we're going to have it, a redundant test of guilt would be a very good thing.
Seems to me the bastard didn't care much about the rights of anyone in the theater when when he kicked in the and started shooting people. Insane or not, public hanging ftw.
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It is known that testimony under truth serum is not 100% correct. I found the timing of this interesting. I had just watched an old episode of Perry Mason
where the defendant admitted to killing someone under truth serum but it was not the truth. Only the truth was not the truth, nor the whole truth.
So I did some research and found that it is not a reliable method to obtain information. You can do your own searches and make your own opinion.
Take him out of society. Harvest his organs. Move on.
It is obvious to anyone with a brain that this guy Holmes is
seriously wacko.
But a lot of "good, God-fearing" Americans want REVENGE,
which means that they want to see Holmes given the death
penalty, and they cannot get that if the guy is declared insane.
If you expect a chance that you will receive anything approaching
justice under the US court system, you're insane. The US court
system is all about :
1) Keeping the peasants in line. Fear is used to do this.
2) Going easy on people who have power and influence.
Examples would be the pardon of that piece of shit Nixon,
or the fact that William Kennedy Smith never did time for rape.
3) Social engineering which puts a lot of the underclasses in prison
for excessive periods of time for minor offenses. The "war on drugs"
which is based on false premises and is about as fascist as policy
gets, is a good example of this.
4) Political gain for prosecutors and US attorneys who
grandstand for the media in order to achieve more political
capital which they can use later to run for higher office.
I have no more respect for the US court system than I have for
the last shit I took. In both cases flushing is the proper solution.
fast-penta
There's actually no scientific reason to believe that so-called "truth serum" makes someone tell the truth. As suggested in the original article, what these drugs really do is lower inhibitions, which may, in some cases, cause a suspect to drop their guard and say things they otherwise wouldn't. Of course, you could just get them drunk and the results would be about the same, since alcohol also lowers inhibitions. As the ancients said – in vino, veritas.
Just sayin'.
How do you explain that his hands, arms, and clothing were completely saturated with burned gunpowder residue consistent with the the amount of, and brands of ammo that was used in the shooting?
Why? Because once they lock you up for being insane, they treat you FAR worse than being a mere criminal prisoner. Also, (unlike Batman's world) it is generally much harder to get of the insane asylum than it is to get parole.
What criminals typically try to plead is 'temporary insanity', where you claim you were insane, but aren't anymore. But Judges and Juries typically only grant that when they think the victim deserved it - as in "When that drug dealer raped and killed my 12 year old daughter I went temporarily insane and shot him in the head 14 times. But I'm feeling much better now."
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The whole batman thing reads like a Doctor Strange Glove Version 2 or How I stopped worrying about the pervasiveness of mind altering medications from drug companies and learned to love chaos in society.
Nothing was covered about that in the news, all of these recent killers are on mind altering medications when they committed these acts of violence.
Hey I got an idea, instead of taking our guns away, why don't we stop putting people on these needless medications like Rittalin, and stop these corporations which wrote the Health Care bill under more scrutiny?
*sarcasm*No conflict of interest there.*/sarcasm*
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What proof are they? Some of my friends when they get drunk tell you things you didn't even want to know.
Since the government does whatever it wants, why not just kill him?
By using an insanity defense you automatically give up your 5th amendment rights as your taking the the burden of proof upon yourself. You can't claim insanity and not testify.
If you are legally insane you can't even know if your incriminating yourself. That's pretty much the definition of legally insane.
Disclaimer - I have a BS in Psychology but it was a long time ago and I'm not a psychologist. Having qualified my forthcoming comments here they are.
I can see using this to "prove a negative" in that it may show if he's faking his claim of insanity. When the higher brain functions are reduced he may not be able to keep up a pretense of insanity if he is faking his behaviours. It isn't definitive confirmation one way or the other but if he's found to be coherent and meets a criteria for competent when he's not fully in control of the examination then it would be interesting evidence.
This is a variant of "in vino, veritas" where lowered inhibitions results in saying and doing things you repress when you're in full control.
I'd put him in the Hannibal Lector restraints before lowering his inhibitions tho. Common sense and all that.
If an animal is considered insane we kill it, if a human is considered insane it's a free out of jail ticket.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Functional MRI. Cannot fake it. Must hold still - or be pharmacologically paralyzed. Rumors CIA uses this. Subject does not need to answer - if they hear the question the pattern of brain activation can give you true or false answer.
Says it all
here in the sane (= also psychiatrist-free) world, we do not only know how to cure schizophrenia, but we can do so, easily, effectively, and quickly. All it takes, is proper super-intense sensory stimulation and intense supportive nurturing
You sound psychotic. Or Scientologic. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
Truth serum does not fucking work, period, at all. This has been known for many decades now. If it worked, we would've been using it against Bad Guys in Secret Prisons, and we're not. We're not because it doesn't fucking work and everyone knows that.
Except apparently the people in this court room.
Actually, there is one compound that might be considered effective as a "truth serum", and that's scopolamine. Read up on the way it has been used by criminals, for instance this link:
http://digitaljournal.com/article/324779 or this one: http://rense.com/general38/frug.htm or just google it.
I have personal experience with this drug, having been involuntarily dosed with it once, and it's effects were scary indeed, in a way no other substance has ever come close to matching. Essentially it wipes out your short-term memory completely, and I do mean completely. You start to say something but by the end of the sentence you literally can't remember what it was you were trying to say. You have no idea where you are or how you got there, and you tend to believe whatever you're told if there's someone there to "helpfully" fill in the blanks. People empty their bank account to strangers, give up passwords and PIN numbers, it's crazy. The thing is, it's only short-term memory that's affected, everything else is still there. So I don't see any reason why you couldn't be questioned about past criminal behavior as easily as your financial secrets. Having experienced this stuff first hand, I have no doubt it could be used as a truth drug, given the right setting and an experienced interrogator. That said, I'm absolutely against the whole idea and believe this is a treacherous road for the legal system to be going down. Voluntarily or otherwise, chemical interrogation has no place in American courtrooms.
You're on to something there - there have been several psychological experiments showing that almost everyone* is capable of truly atrocious behavior in the right circumstances. Sadly I can't remember the names of the studies, but here's the salient details:
- upwards of 80% of subjects studied continue administer increasingly intense electric shocks to fellow volunteers (actually actors posing as such) in the next room despite hearing their screaming, begging, claims of a bad heart, and eventual complete silence. All it takes is an authority figure saying it's alright, and that you won't be held accountable for any consequences.
- A group of volunteers is randomly divided into "prisoners" and "guards" and placed in a mock prison scenario with minimal apparent oversight or accountability. Within weeks virtually all the "guards" will be regularly administering gitmo-style psychological and physical torture to the "prisoners", whose mental stability is rapidly collapsing.
We all have the seeds of monstrosity within us, the question is only whether we will ever find ourselves in a situation where they can flourish.
* results may vary between cultures. Most psychological study subjects are American college students, while recent studies suggest that on a global stage Westerners are psychological outliers, and Americans are outliers even among Westerners.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The man was obviously, (to anybody properly paying attention), drugged, mind-programmed and set loose with the help of accomplices.
There's no chance in hell of this guy getting anything even close to a fair trial.
Read the details of this case. Sift out the inserted loonies designed to poison the message, and what you get is something you can actually discuss.
He was wound up and set loose in a very controlled manner.
All to keep the American public in a state of high anxiety so that they wouldn't notice the loss of their freedoms. When this and the whole Sandy Hook thing happened, I wondered, "I wonder what they're building up to?"
I believe it was the legalizing of assassination of American citizens.
If anything, "says that stuff when not under the influence of drugs" is sort of the standard criterion; "says funny things while under the influence of drugs" just means "yep, drugs."
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, Dianne Feinstein's no friend of the 2nd Amendment (in spite of believing that politicians should be able to get gun permits), but to be fair and balanced about it, she's no friend of the First or Fourth Amendments either, and is a big fan of the drug war.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It does not even matter that truth serum does not work.
5th Amendment "[...] nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, [...]"
Subjected involuntarily to an inhibition-reducing drug while one's statements are on the record (or could influence the outcome of the trial in any way) is 'compelled'.
Even knowledge that one will be or has been subjected to this form of coercion satisfies the definition of 'compelled'.
A moratorium against this tactic on Constitutional grounds must be upheld to ensure that all persons on trial must be able to present themselves in their natural (untouched) state of mind.
Failure to do so will usher in a new era of supposedly-neutral but actually-corrupt pharmacology applied to ALL criminal and (why the hell not) civil cases. Today's 'insanity test' is tomorrows 'fishing expedition' is the next day's 'Ministry of Love'.
It just gags me out that a judge who upholds modern law and would gladly see a drug-date rapist convicted, would fail to recognize that assault by drug as a form of violence.
Regardless of the insanity finding and the verdict, this one should be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
I am personally opposed to insanity pleas to begin with. First degree murderers should all be equal under the law. If we have the stomach to put down a 'sane' man or man-killer dog, it should cover everything in between.
I'd even rather see a monster like this get off scot free --- than invite any procedure of involuntary drug coercion into our justice system.
That would take us quickly to a place that is bad beyond words.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Just to add to the voodoo 'justice', the judge also wants a polygraph. Never mind that the polygraph has been thoroughly debunked when used in mentally healthy people, even if it worked there we have no baseline for the responses of a psychotic.
Perhaps the judge should just do whippits until he can pronounce God's judgement directly and save the jury some time.