In this case, I suspect the death penalty would be incorrect, but for an odd reason.
Before the trial even began, when asked by the judge if the defense intended to enter a plea of insanity, they admitted the need to plow through a mountain of evidence and psychiatric examinations to find out if he was and is insane, or at least insane enough to matter.
And the judge agreed with them.
So the defense instead presented an argument for “diminished capacity”, which basically says that they think there are mental issues involved, at least enough to figure into the hearing, but TBD if he is insane or not.
And the judge agreed with that as well.
But this makes a death sentence very problematic. The appeals courts would have a hard time swallowing that. However if found guilty and given a life sentence, the door is open for a post sentencing competency hearing to determine if he is so very insane that he needs to spend the rest of his life in a high security mental ward (i.e. sedated for 23 hours every day.)
Truthfully, I suspect that if you were to crack open his skull, you would find a lot of angry spiders in there.
“Truthfully, I suspect that if you were to crack open his skull, you would find a lot of angry spiders in there.”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I’m not totally certain that you would not find some tiny government goons in there. This is one fishy story, I can’t decide which is less believable, the official story on Holmes or the official story on Adam Lanza.