Insanity

The suspect in the Colorado theater shooting may plead not guilty by reason of insanity, according to court documents filed by his attorneys. The motions filed this week on behalf of James E. Holmes call into question the constitutionality of several aspects of the state's insanity defense laws for defendants, such as Holmes, who could face the death penalty. The 25-year-old former neuroscience student is accused of storming an Aurora theater on July 20 and opening fire on the crowd which had gathered to watch the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.” Twelve people were killed and dozens of others were injured.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. - Prosecutors closed their circle of evidence against James E. Holmes on Wednesday, depicting him as a methodical and ruthless killer who plotted for months to attack as many people as possible in a packed suburban movie theater. "He didn't care who he killed or how many he killed. He wanted to kill them all," Assistant Dist. Atty. Karen Pearson said at the end of a preliminary hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence to try Holmes on 166 counts of murder, attempted murder and weapons charges in the rampage that killed 12 people and injured at least 70 others in Aurora, Colo.

A woman accused of dropping her 7-month-old son from the fourth floor of a parking structure pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity Wednesday in an Orange County courtroom, a prosecutor said. Sonia Hermosillo, who has been charged with child assault and murder in the 2011 death of her son, was evaluated by three doctors before a judge found her fit to stand trial last year. Her attorney, Jacqueline Goodman, has said that her client suffers from " postpartum psychosis . " Hermosillo drove to Children's Hospital of Orange County on Aug. 22, 2011, and parked her car on the fourth floor of a parking structure, according to prosecutors.

The Supreme Court refused this week to review the murder conviction of an Idaho man who was prevented by state law from offering an insanity defense. The court's abdication of its responsibility encourages other states to dismantle a central principle of Anglo-American law: that a defendant should not be held criminally responsible when mental illness makes it impossible for him to tell right from wrong. Contrary to what viewers of television courtroom dramas may believe, a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity is seldom asserted and usually unsuccessful.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has let stand the murder conviction of a paranoid and delusional Idaho man who was denied the opportunity to mount an insanity defense. Three justices dissented, arguing that the court should incorporate the long-standing insanity defense into the Constitution. Shortly after John Hinckley Jr. was acquitted of the attempted assassination of President Reagan by reason of insanity in 1982, Idaho and three other states abolished the insanity defense from their criminal laws.

Prison gang members are among the worst of the worst, felons who sometimes continue to kill from behind bars as they smuggle orders to other gang members on the outside. It makes sense to take special measures to protect society from such hard cases. But should that mean housing them in isolated conditions so inhumane that they can be driven insane? Amnesty International released a report last week on California prisons' isolation units for suspected gang members, calling conditions there "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, in violation of international law. " Suspected gang members are often placed in Security Housing Units, isolated cells in which they are confined with little or no human contact, released for only an hour and a half a day to exercise alone in a narrow yard.

Dr. Thomas Szasz, the New York psychiatrist whose Don Quixote-like attacks on the psychiatric profession in the 1960s and 1970s led him to a position of prominence and influence before his radical ideas fell into disrepute and he faded into obscurity, has died. He was 92. Szasz died Sept. 8 at his home in Manlius, N.Y., his family announced. He suffered from a spinal-compression fracture that resulted from a fall. He came to prominence with his 1961 book, "The Myth of Mental Illness," in which he argued that mental illness was not a disease but simply "problems in living.

If your taste for cheesy movie horror has been ill-fed by the current vogue for moody found-footage pieces, the 3-D Bollywood entry"Raaz 3" -- forged from equal parts"All About Eve," Orpheus and the blood-sex oeuvre of Hammer and Brian De Palma -- could pick up the slack. Felicitously erotic Bipasha Basu brings some old-school witchy vengeance to the part of Shanaya, a fading leading lady so unnerved by the rising prominence of a sweetly sexy newcomer (Esha Gupta) that she calls on black magic spirits -- and the help of her director boyfriend (Emraan Hashmi)

SaneBox is a service that claims it'll save you more than 100 hours a year by filtering your email inbox and showing you only the emails that truly matter when they come in. And it works. The service is surprisingly similar to Google's Gmail Important label system, which is supposed to show you emails based on how you label them. But SaneBox works better by doing the one thing Gmail won't that's taking most of the control away from the user. With Gmail, users mark how important emails are or aren't and can do so by simply clicking a button.