In Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, a student named Rashkolnikov plans a murder and then goes through with it. In the novel, Dostoyevsky analyzes the way the human mind justifies its actions and also what the nature of punishment is.

I’m not suggesting there’s a close parallel between Rashkolnikov and Castillo. However, the issue of guilt and due punishment is uppermost in my mind as I wait for the jury’s verdict in the Castillo case. I plan to write an article about punishment in the Castillo case, but first I want to analyze the essence of an “insane” crime.

The Law v Reality

Does anyone believe that the law of innocence by “reason of insanity” (a lovely phrase) is well-conceived?

Why should some mass murderers be entitled to hide behind the insanity defense while others are not? By definition aren’t all mass murderers mentally ill in some way?

I suppose a “selective” murderer might need to prove his motivation, because a selective murderer has chosen to kill a certain person for a certain “reason.”

Alvaro Castillo is not a mass murderer only because his gun jammed. (Isn’t it odd that the prosecution seems to think this defendant can make a better case for insanity when killing his father than he can for planning a Columbine-style shooting? To me this is but one of several such logical flaws in this prosecution.)

The Meaning of the Standards

Please read the article, “The Insanity Defense and Diminished Capacity,” on Cornell University’s Law School website for a clear discussion of the insanity defense from a lawyer’s perspective. I am not a lawyer, just a former English professor. What I am interested in is what the words of the law really mean.

The above article explains the McNaughton Rule: "at the time of committing the act, the accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong." (1843)

Let’s parse this.

The defense must first prove a defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind. Next, the defense must prove that because of this defect the defendant either 1) did not “know” the “nature and quality” of what he was doing, or 2) even if he did know he did not “know” it “was wrong.”

But even science cannot definitively prove a person has a mental disease. The American Psychological Association’s “bible” (the DSM-IV) does not even use the word “disease” to describe mental problems and aberrations. So, a lay jury cannot possibly decide whether or not the first requirement for the insanity defense exists.

Let’s assume that all the expert witnesses in a trial agree that the defendant has “a defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind,” the jury is still forced to determine whether either the first or both of the additional requirements were true in the defendant’s mind several months or years ago when the crimes occurred.

In addition, the jury is forced to define the terms “to know,” “nature and quality” of an act, and “wrong.”

Take the case of Naveed Haq: Even though he was a Moslem who terrorized a Jewish Center because it was a Jewish community group, since he had a prior history of psychiatric treatments he was able to prove he had a “defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind.” Of course, the Taliban in Afghanistan hold the same beliefs, but they are not considered to have diseased minds under American law.

In the Castillo case, too, it is fairly clear that the defendant had a “defect of reason,” but there seems to be some disagreement among the experts as to whether or not it resulted from “a disease of the mind.” Even so, I believe all the experts testified that science does not consider any such defects to be result of “disease of the mind,” because science does not use the word “disease” in a psychological context.

The Jury’s Dilemma

In a trial involving an insanity defense both sides concede whodunit and what crimes were committed. The jury is not asked to judge the quality of the state’s evidence against a fellow citizen. Instead the jury is asked to read the defendant’s mind – something even trained psychiatrists and psychologists cannot do.

All the lawyers in the courtroom understand that in most trials the issue of “intent” to commit a crime must be proven, even though the jury often struggles with the issue of intent during deliberations: was the killing provoked but accidental? Was the killing premeditated? Was it murder or was it manslaughter?

But in an insanity case, not even the lawyers in the room know what insanity is or can define terms such as “right” and “wrong” and “the quality and nature” of the acts. When expert witnesses (psychologists and psychiatrists) testify about the defendant’s personality test results and prior behaviors and then characterize the defendant’s state of mind “at the time of the incident” even they do not agree about diagnoses or how to evaluate the defendant’s acts in light of the standards expressed in the law.

Did Alvaro Castillo know the nature and quality of his acts? On the one hand, he clearly knew what he was doing was outrageous and illegal (the “nature,” I suppose) but did he know the “quality”? I can’t even begin to define the term “quality” in the context of patricide or a school shooting. So, perhaps he did not know the quality of his acts, any more than I do.

Did Alvaro Castillo know that what he was doing was “wrong”? Well, I suppose he knew it was a sin, since he was a devout Christian. But what a Christian calls a sin is not necessarily what the law calls “wrong.” (It may be a sin, for example, for someone to take the Lord’s name in vain, but it is not illegal or necessarily wrong.)  And he also thought that God wanted him to do these things, just the way God told Abraham to sacrifice his son. The Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not kill,” but the Bible also makes it clear that it was Abraham’s duty to follow God’s instructions to kill his son.

I am not a relativist, and I do not wish to argue that one person’s right and wrong is another person’s wrong and right, and that’s all there is to it. But it does seem as if the law assumes that a jury of one’s peers will certainly know the difference between right and wrong and all will agree on what these are.

The absurdity of the McNaughton Rule’s standard of knowing the difference between right and wrong is as absurd as the “irresistible impulse” standard, because everyone who commits a crime does so within a mental construct of what is right and wrong. A sociopath (so clearly described on the stand by Dr. Ballard) recognizes no distinction between right and wrong. A drug addict under the influence recognizes little other than the irresistible impulse that drives him. Everyone acts out of self-interest, and self-interest is by definition always right, just as altruism by definition is always right. But self-interest often conflicts with altruism: for example, it is not wrong to refuse to run back into a burning building to rescue someone else.

So, the question is: Did Alvaro Castillo consider his acts to have been either self-interested or altruistic?