A Thirst for Vengeance

Trey Smith

Reuters is reporting that "Jared Loughner, the man accused of killing six people and wounding then-U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, is set to plead guilty in a Tucson court on Tuesday, a person familiar with the case said." All in all, that's probably a good thing. It means that the surviving victims and the families of the murdered ones won't have to sit through a long trial.

But there was one aspect of this article that really caught my eye.

Loughner has been held at a U.S. Bureau of Prisons psychiatric hospital in Springfield, Missouri, where he is forcibly medicated against his will to treat psychosis and make him fit for trial.

If it is only through this medication that he might be deemed "fit for trial" AND he wasn't on said medication at the time of the shooting, how could a jury find him sane when he pulled the trigger? It would seem to be a slam dunk for the defense to show that Loughner was psychotic when he shot those people.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting that a jury would see it that way. Crimes of this nature cause most people to want to seek vengeance and "silly" notions like a defendant being psychotic at the time of the crime often don't sway a jury at all. With the prodding of the prosecution, they easily can sweep inconvenient facts like these under the nearest rug.

When you're bent on an eye for an eye, you typically can find a rationale to justify it.