10 April 2012

How crazy do you have to be to be crazy?

Abby Ohlheiser has a Slate article about a guy who's supposedly not crazy:
Anders Behring Breivik, the man who confessed to a massacre that killed 77 people and injured hundreds in Norway last July, is not criminally insane, according to a new psychiatric assessment. The finding contradicts the conclusions of a previous assessment published in November. Breivik is scheduled to go to trial next week.
The Associated Press reports that the new assessment may mean that prosecutors can seek a prison sentence for Breivik, instead of commitment to a psychiatric ward. The court will take both reports into consideration when determining where Breivik should go. If Breivik is considered to be sane, he'll face 21 years in prison with potentially indefinite extensions.
The earlier assessment diagnosed Breivik as a paranoid schizophrenic and found that he was psychotic both during and after the attacks. In January, a second evaluation conducted by psychiatrists Terje Toerrissen and Agnar Aspaas was approved by the court, prompted by widespread criticism of the initial assessment, as the BBC explains. "Our conclusion is that he was not psychotic at the time of the actions of terrorism and he is not psychotic now," Toerrissen told the AP. The full report is confidential, so the reasoning for the different conclusion is not clear.
Breivik is "pleased" with the new assessment, the BBC reports, and has previously insisted that he is sane. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told reporters that at trial, Breivik will "regret that he didn't go further".
On 22 July 2011, Breivik detonated a fertilizer bomb outside a government building and then shot 69 people at a youth camp for Norway’s governing Labor Party while disguised as a police officer.
Breivik claims to be the leader of a Templar-like right-wing militant group, though investigators have found no evidence that the group actually exists. Breivik, according to a 1,500 page manifesto posted online the day of the attacks, believed himself to be a "crusader" against Islam and "cultural Marxism". Although Breivik has confessed to the massacre, he pleaded not guilty on the grounds that his actions were self-defense on behalf of his culture.
Rico says that 'self-defense on behalf of his culture' sounds like Zimmerman's defense...

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