Demons in a death penalty case – Ellen Goodman writes in the Boston Globe about the peculiar practice of forcibly medicating mad prisoners.
I am particularly struck by the ruling in Ford v. Wainwright that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to put to death someone who was mentally incompetent – so incompetent that he didn’t understand his fate or the meaning of death or why he was condemned. I agree that it’s cruel to kill someone without letting him know why; but, y’know, if I were about to die but too addled to know what ‘die’ means, I think I’d rather be left in that state than have it ‘mercifully’ explained to me.
Goodman also asks: “What happens when a defendant comes to court ‘cured’ and the jury sees a ‘different person’ than the one who committed a crime?” Can they fairly judge whether the accused was the sort of person to do it? Perhaps the answer is to divide the trial into two phases, Mad and Sane, just as some tribal councils (I hope they’re not all fictional) have been said to debate every important question twice, drunk and sober.
Since writing the above I have re-read the story that mentioned drunken councils: The Fallible Fiend by Sprague de Camp; and learned that he probably got it from what Herodotus said about the Persians.