Bipolar Made Me Do It: Steal money from a terminally ill child
Dear God. What's worse than taking money from a dying kid? Murdering a kitten? Biting a puppy? I can't conceive of a bigger crime. The perpetrator, Julie Buchanan, former president of the PTA (this is starting to sound like an episode of Weeds), stole $145,000 from a Nashville elementary school, and callously refused to give the promised money to the dead kid's family. She claimed bipolar made her behave this way, but the judge sentenced her to up to 15 years.
Someone posted this comment in response to a newspaper story: "Hope she becomes somebody's beeeotch real soon! She's disgusting."
[Photo of Buchanan copyright Tennessean.]
Comments
It is a sad irony that some defendants resort to what can be the last defense of the scoundrel, mental illness, when the very consumers who have a long history of suffering from the same are largely prohibited from using this defense in the very system that provides their treatment. Here the illness justification for any behavior or lack of a behavior is most often challenged and dismissed. Instead an action or lack of the same will likely be considered a willful, purposeful expression of non-compliance, "acting-out" or reflective of being treatment refractory. The standards for personal responsibility appear significantly different in the mental health and legal systems. In the former one is presumptively personally responsible for all and in the other it a a question of facts and circumstances.
Posted by: Joe | February 21, 2007 01:21 PM
I'm reading a book about Vietnam dissenters who went north to Canada to escape the draft. The author cited that "manic depressive" was the most common medical excuse to get out of the war. Now there's a good use of the disorder as an excuse, in my opinion.
But I'm really getting tired of people using it as an excuse to engage in criminal activities. Most people with the disorder are more likely to just be arrested for being a public nuisance while manic. This criminal had it planned out. I just hate how it represents bipolar disorder to the public.
Posted by: Annette | February 21, 2007 03:04 PM
Personally, I'd like to see any person middle-aged or older who is charged with a crime be prohibited from using an insanity defense unless they already had some kind of involvement with the mental health system. The chances of someone with a genuine psychiatric problem reaching middle age without bumping into the system in some way seem incredibly small to me, given how that system seems to be so thoroughly involved in all aspects of life in the U.S. When people who had previously been considered "normal" suddenly discover that they might be crazy after they have been charged with a crime, it is like a libel on all the people who have been considered crazy for most of their lives without being involved in the criminal justice system.
Posted by: Kent | February 21, 2007 06:33 PM