[Dion]

Originally Posted by T@T

No we should be more careful on who gets off with murder claiming mental health problems. I have a friend who knows this guy. he called him a jealous meathead idiot and couldn't believe he claimed what he did and got away with it.

Consider this study

Insanity defence hardly a handy way to escape justice: study

The notion that cold-blooded killers and violent offenders are taking advantage of a soft-on-crime justice system by feigning psychiatric illness to win a verdict of not criminally responsible and avoid punishment is a myth, a new study finds.

For one thing, the study published Thursday by the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry concludes, only a tiny fraction — less than 0.2 per cent of criminal cases in a given year — will receive a verdict of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, which used to be known as not guilty by reason of insanity.

"(Such) cases can conjure thoughts of violent offenders faking a mental illness to avoid prison time, shortened hospital stays with early release into the community accompanied by fears the individual will reoffend," the article states.

However, data from the national trajectory project, which tracked 1,800 not-criminally responsible men and women from May 2000 to April 2005 in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, paints a much different picture.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/insa...tudy-1.3001947