WhiteNachos said:
Insane is a legal term though, it roughly means 'too mentally ill to be legally responsible for their actions'. So I guess maybe if you know you're insane you know you can get away with things but I don't know if that makes you sane.
I'm not a lawyer a psychologist and I haven't read catch 22 so I'm no expert.
Being found inculpable for a crime on the basis of poor mental health is not an eexample of Catch-22 ...
Catch-22 is a case where you can ONLY be dismissed from duty due to insanity, but given the duty is perilous it is considered good judgement to want to be dismissed. Therefore wanting to be dismissed from duty on grounds of poor mental health is a sign that you are showing good judgement, and therefore fit for duty.
A Catch-22 in a judicial sense would be:
1: Person has to be mentally unfit to avoid their test of innocence against a jury of their peers.
2: Sound judgement would be for a defendant to delay their court hearing.
.'. For a person to declare mental instability to defend themselves is a sign of stable mental health.
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For an insanity plea to work in most of the West, there has to e a few criterion. One is either a lack of premeditation (and thus calculation) ... the second is whether the motive of the slaying was rational or not.
A person who is a 'little off' in terms of psychology will still get fit up for murder if they wait outside a person's house (of whom they are known to have poor relations), kidnapping them, killing them, and then dumping their ody in a river. Now if it turns out the faeries told him to do it, fair enough. Bonkers. But if it is apparent the murdered party was owed considerable monies, or something else along the lines of rational intent to commit homicide ... well then you get banged up.
Premeditation and motive... so even scumbag lunatics who murder in the name of religion, and the like ... well they'll never get an insanity plea to work. Premeditation and motive will get you banged up, not necessarily the state of your mental health alone.