I am still in a semi-legal mode of thought (see below) and in particular I am vexed by the question of motive in crime. Detectives are traditionally required to find their suspects by checking on whether or not they had means, motive and opportunity. However, I am not concerned here with the obvious motive of "I bumped off great-aunt Matilda because I knew I was in her will for for half a mill." No, what I am concerned with is what is now called psychological motivation. In the 19th c. this was barely given any consideration beyond, perhaps, examples in which A killed B because of his hatred engendered by the fact that B was sleeping with his wife. At that very basic level of causation a jury could understand and rely on what they were being told. Today it is a very different and much more ambiguous exercise, not to say, a very much bigger enterprise which has grown hand-in-hand with the extension of influence wielded by what I shall call, the 'psychos'. Despite most sensible folk consigning Freud and his daft, non-scientific ideas to the dustbin of history, that wretched man's influence has become so great that they actually teach psycho-babble in schools and universities. In an age in which our academies appear to spend most of their time inculcating our young with non-subjects, I suppose 'psycho-babble' fits in nicely!
Partly, these ruminations are provoked by the current 'Hogan case' in which a father first threw his son off a 50' high balcony and then jumped himself holding his daughter, although I should make clear that my remarks are not based specifically on this case about which I know very little. But suppose that Father (F) in an emotionally over-wrought state does attempt to kill both himself and his children and let us say that he succeeds in killing one of them. This is such a rare occurrence that the temptation is to dismiss him as being mad, because surely no-one in their right mind would do such a thing. Thus, a defence lawyer will plead on behalf of 'F' that he acted whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed. Well, when you think about it for more than a millisecond, that is obviously true, but is it a mitigation? I mean, is it sufficient to say that under the onslaught of a great passion, 'F' gave way to it and murdered another totally innocent person and that constitutes an excuse for what he did? Of course, lawyers are unlikely to talk of a "great passion", smacking as it does of Victorian novels, instead, they haul in a 'psycho' or two who will categorise the particular passion concerned and provide it with a suitably impressive name, well, impressive enough to justify their spurious air of learning, to say nothing of their fees!
Anyway, such an approach is surely inhumane in that it denies the very essence of human life, that is, free will. What, in effect, the 'psychos' are saying is that 'F', whilst suffering with 'abc', became nothing more than an automatum and, most important of all, cannot therefor be responsible for his actions. Well I don't think responsibility can be shucked off that easily. To use an example I have resorted to in the past, if a man from an early age goes around dressed as Napoleon and insists on being addressed as Emperor he is obviously insane, by which I mean that he has no, or very little, connection to reality and it is fairly obvious that he cannot be held responsible for his actions. But that cannot be applied to 'F' who, say, has run his own successful business and who hitherto has appeared to friends and family to be as normal as anyone else.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that the dead, notwithstanding endless protestations to the contrary, are very quickly forgotten by those not directly involved. Instead, minds (and hearts) are quickly directed to the plight of the living. It then becomes a tussle between the prosecution attempting to blacken the actions of the defendant and highlight the plight of the bereaved, and the defence to invoke every last piece of psycho-babble to indicate that the defendant was temporarily insane. Suffice to say that I do not accept that a state or condition of temporary insanity exists. All that has occurred, in my view, is that a man, or woman, has given way to their passion and that such lack of control should be punished by society. After all, if we permitted that sort of excuse to stand up in court then very soon the murder statistics would begin to rise and rise ... er, oh dear, bless my soul, so they have. Q.E.D., I think!
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