Crazy Person - Essay Example

Even today we still do not understand the exact causes and contributors to what makes a person “crazy.” We understand that there are a number of mental disorders and conditions that can cause people to behave in abhorrent and deviant ways completely outside their control. This was the intention of the “Insanity defense,” essentially to determine between those criminals who had the ability to determine right and wrong, the consequences of, and a clear understanding of what they have actually done. The legal insanity defense was meant to acknowledge that although a person’s behaviors may be criminal their intention, understanding, and responsibility for the crime might be compromised (Rolf, 2006). However, throughout the years this defense has become the ploy of hundreds if not 1000s, of defendants and their attorneys attempt to have their clients deemed unfit to stand trial and their incarceration might occur at a mental facility as opposed to a prison. Unfortunately, many defendants have pretended to be less competent than they are.

Jeffery Dahmer was the 1990s real-life “Hannibal Lecter.” In 1994 Jeffery Dahmer was found guilty of murdering and eating a number of young male victims. His crimes were shocking (Rolf, 2006). Serial killers are frightening enough, but cannibalism is the ultimate dehumanizing taboo in modern society. It is not hard for people to believe that he must be crazy, totally insane. Unfortunately, though he clearly suffers from mental illness, it did not prevent him from being convicted and sentenced for his crime. Dahmer’s lawyers attempted to prove that he was incapable of truly understanding or comprehending his crime; however, many would say if that was true then why did he work so hard and successfully to hide his crimes from others? That sort of premeditation takes forethought and planning. If he had truly been insane then he would have never hidden his behaviors from the rest of the world, because he would not have worried about the illegality or immorality of his crimes and therefore needing to hide them. The insanity defense is far overused. People like Jeffrey Dahmer and many serial killers prove to be sociopaths, individuals that have no emotion or sense of empathy. This emotionlessness could be perceived as soulless, bringing in a spiritual element. Many people with mental illness throughout time have often been thought to be possessed by demonic forces. At best it is likely that Dahmer, despite his crimes, was not true, legally insane. Spiritual works, for example, the Bible, teach honesty. The Bible says, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them” (Proverbs 11:3 New Revised Standard Version). It should be known that Dahmer died in prison; can anyone confirm or deny his own crookedness destroyed him? I do not discount spiritual or even supernatural elements in some cases in most cases it is a combination of biology, genetics, physiology, and environment that contribute to behaviors falling under the umbrella of mental illness.