Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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.
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.
Many people found Hitler to be quite charming in person.
You can't seem to look into any infamous crazy serial killer without comments from shocked neighbors and friends who talk about how normal he seemed.
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.
Insanity is a legal definition, not a medical one. Insanity is a defense that states that the defendant was not capable of understanding the gravity of the crime due to an acute mental illness. It is rarely successful, since only acute psychosis or a cognitive disability (very low IQ) could really make someone, even with a severe mental illness, not understand that what they were doing was a crime. Schizophrenia would apply, but personality disorders, which is what it appears that Holmes suffers from, do not. Since Holmes carefully prepared the attack over months, it is obvious that he knew what he was doing and that it was malicious. Jared Loughner, in contrast, probably could have argued an insanity defense since it was obvious that he was having severe difficulties with psychosis (Loughner didn't use that defense and simply pled guilty).
You can't seem to look into any infamous crazy serial killer without comments from shocked neighbors and friends who talk about how normal he seemed.
I always wonder whether the culprit in some infamous deed was also shocked. Could it be that any of us "normal" types could find ourselves committing an outrage, even though we think we really are the nice quiet boy everyone thinks we are? Or do cold-blooded killers know they are such, and just keep it hidden for years?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hitler was charismatic, but nobody thought he was "normal". They just thought they could use him longer than he could use them.
"Eh, you never know what you're capable of. I never thought I could shoot down a German plane, but last year I proved myself wrong." - Abe J. Simpson
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
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?
This is just an allegation, come up with some proof next time.
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),
The eyewitness sees or thinks he has seen a second man armed and dressed "in black" in a darkened theater where every motion is in the shadows, colors are muted, all is confusion and his sight lines were restricted.
Initially, few in the audience considered the masked figure a threat. He appeared to be wearing a costume, like other audience members who had dressed up for the screening [of "The Dark Knight Rises."]
Some believed that the gunman was playing a prank, while others thought that he was part of a special effects installation set up for the film's premiere .
It is also alleged that the gunman threw two canisters emitting a gas or smoke, partially obscuring the audience members' vision, making their throats and skin itch, and causing eye irritation.
Witnesses said the multiplex's fire alarm system began sounding soon after the attack began and staff told people in theater 8 to evacuate One witness said that she was hesitant to leave because someone yelled that there was someone shooting in the lobby and that they shouldn't leave.
2012 Aurora shooting
In Aurora, Holmes lived on Paris Street in a one-bedroom apartment, in a building with other students involved in health studies.
James Eagan Holmes
Seventy wounded. Twelve fatally. Ten dead at the scene.
That implies ballistic evidence that would make it obvious almost immediately whether there was more than one gun man.
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001000
The whole summary appears to have been authored by Bing Translate.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
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.
There is a generally dysfunctional relation between the electorate and the government it chooses. And if there is no government to effectively rule, other, unelected people will fill in the void. There is only one way out of it: Stop the delight in seeing the government fail. Hold everyone elected responsible for everything that happens in the government and also for everything that doesn't happen. He was elected to do a job, and deliberately failing at it should never be a recommendation for another term. Never cheer for people running on a platform of governmental failings. They are hired by the electorate to do their task in government, and not for putting blame on someone else.
I'm going to throw this one out to the conspiracy theorists and see what they can conjure up.
It wasn't a mass shooting, it was a mass suicide, caused by 3D printed open source models of Scientology's E-meter, which the cinemascopic theater was testing to enhance the audience's senses in a Dolby Hallucinogenic way, because movie cinema attendance is down, since folks are downloading films from the Kim Dot Com wearing William Shatner's hair Giga Dump Load site, which is hosted in North Korea by Kim Jong Un Dot Com and receives Hollywood movies implanted, smuggled and delivered by Dennis Rodman in the remnants of his brain, who plans to use the profits to buy the Pope election, which will be indicated by the color of the smoke from the Pope Cave matching Rodman's hair color du Jour, and will be followed by a wacky romp in a newly pimped Popemobile piloted by an ethanol fueled hybrid Lindsay Lohan, which triggered the Batman theater movie audience to confuse the Batmobile with the Popemobile.
A heavily LSD "Fringed" James Holmes nods, and says, "Yeah, that was it," and then speculates what would have been, if had had been born with a Louisville Slugger penis, and entered the porn industry instead, and . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
Doesn't matter, he still has rights. You take away his rights, you take away yours, too.
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
He also had a 100-round drum clip for the AR-15 and two Glock pistols.
Wounding 70 people with that and the shotgun is quite doable by one person when you account for spread, firing speed (even though the drum clip jammed), secondary wounds from bullet penetration and ricochets.
People that don't understand guns always say there must have been a second gunman in scenarios like this. But the fact is that with a bit of practice, even a bolt gun can shoot several rounds a minute.
Also, if Holmes had any of those magic bullets they used to kill JFK, he'd have a +5 THACO.
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.
The grand total for the number of rounds fired, based on spent cases found on the scene, is:
12ga - 6 rounds
Certainly quite doable for a lone gunman.
And, indeed both .223 and 12ga would be likely to wound more than one person if shot into a crowd.