"The last Nazi was there. I shot and killed him. And Hitler was there. I shot and killed him."
April 12, 2002 12:54 PM   Subscribe

"The last Nazi was there. I shot and killed him. And Hitler was there. I shot and killed him." Is this the Godwin's Law defense? If the trial isn't therefore automatically over, and if Michael McDermott isn't crazy, at least he seems to have started planning his defense for quite a while - his first words when arrested were "I don't speak German".
posted by yhbc (49 comments total)
 
Wow, that is hard-core crazy. How does something like that happen to your head? Seriously, assuming it isn't a BS defense tactic, what could cause someone to have such a profound break with consensus reality?
posted by donkeymon at 1:13 PM on April 12, 2002


Scam. "I'm looking for human resources." ?

So far as I know, the OKW didn't have a "human resources" division. He was a depressed underutilized genius-intelligence but socially-inept mook who got canned and snapped after a couple bucketsfull of vodka and pills. It always amazes me when people take seriously wild claims of arrest-instigated sudden insanity onset syndrome.

Occam's razor (along with the rest of Occam's toilet kit, for that matter) should be one of the primary tools used in courts of law.
posted by UncleFes at 1:15 PM on April 12, 2002


Insane or not... some people merit removing from the world. Pity Massachusetts doesn't provide for that...
posted by dissent at 1:32 PM on April 12, 2002


I hope your kids never get mentally ill, dissent.

Then again, maybe I don't.
posted by jpoulos at 1:52 PM on April 12, 2002


dissent:

It never fails to amaze me how people can openly advocate the taking of lives of others regardless of context. Killing is either wrong or it isn't. If it's not wrong then what "Mucko" did isn't wrong, if it is wrong then killing "Mucko" is wrong. You can play with grey areas all you like but decide simply, "Is killing OK?" with no qualifiers.
posted by shagoth at 2:05 PM on April 12, 2002


Advocating the death penalty for a murderer whose "insanity" is not only dramatically specious but seemingly instant-onset? Not OK.

Advocating that fellow mefi's children become afflicted with mental illness? Apparently OK!

That's awfully special.
posted by UncleFes at 2:11 PM on April 12, 2002


Mental incapacity is not an excuse for anything, rather it is just yet another reason to handle things expiditiously.

Mental illness is ssooooooo misunderstood....... BULLSHIT!

What a copout.
posted by a3matrix at 2:15 PM on April 12, 2002


It never fails to amaze me how people can take an issue like death and try to make it a right/wrong decision with no grey areas.

Would killing a person who has a gun aimed at small children be equated with killing those same children?

Would killing in self defense be the same as murdering some one in cold blood?

Then how can you expect people to take "Is killing OK? With no qualifiers." seriously.

Killing/death is not a moral absolute, despite what some special top 10 list would have you believe.
posted by grum@work at 2:17 PM on April 12, 2002


You can play with grey areas all you like but decide simply, "Is killing OK?" with no qualifiers.

Oh come now. While I agree with your general point, this is (if you don't mind me gettin' all latin with it) reductio ad absurdum. Have you decided "Is killing OK?" with no qualifiers? If your answer was "yes" then what's stopping you? If your answer was "no," please clue us in on the secret to photosynthesis because otherwise I don't know where you're gettin' your calories.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 2:17 PM on April 12, 2002


Killing is NOT either wrong or not. Each case of killing must be taken on its own merits. Some are horribly wrong. Some are justifiable. Some are praiseworthy. "Killing" is not innately wrong... it depends on whom is being killed.

I don't consider mental illness an excuse. I would eliminate those unable to distinguish right from wrong simply because they are too dangerous to be allowed to live, not worth the effort to cure... and might hurt or kill someone I actually give a damn about. No prison can guarantee a killer will not kill again... death certainly can.

As to my prospective children... I would consider it my duty to make sure... by whatever means... they did not kill if they began to psychologically resemble "Mucko".
posted by dissent at 2:24 PM on April 12, 2002


While I agree that killing can sometimes be justified, giving said power to the State scares the bejeebers out of me.
posted by signal at 2:34 PM on April 12, 2002


Who else would you give it to??
posted by UncleFes at 2:47 PM on April 12, 2002


it's not mine to give, but I don't like the state having it, nor do I think anybody should have it bestowed upon them unless his codename starts with 00.
posted by signal at 3:02 PM on April 12, 2002


Nope. Killing always wrong. Killing to protect innocents may be necessary, but then you have failed to avoid the situation that made you kill. Society has no more right to take the life of this man that he did to take the lives of others, just because we as a society have yet to adequately devise deterents and therapies that work to prevent and rehabilitate murders does not mitigate our responsibility or aleviate our guilt with regard to killing. We owe it to ourselves and our children to say nothing of society at large to keep our hands free of the blood of others.

I've been bashed for this opinion before, and likely will be again. The idea that killing is wrong is immutable. How we as individuals rationalize it doesn't change that and making up the excuse that a killing was justified doesn't make it less wrong, it only speaks to our own weaknesses at being unable to avoid the situation.


posted by shagoth at 3:09 PM on April 12, 2002


that picture of him on the first linked article, reminds me of that old farside cartoon...the one about Natures Way of saying Don't Touch.

if he is a genius, he could easily fake being insane. The two states of mind are very similar. Either way, lock him up for the rest of his life. Free food, lots of books, spare time, he will probably be happy for the first time in his life--and society will be safe from him.

a few more fragmented thoughts...Be nice to programmers....and...i can't help but think that is sort of what i've always pictured steven den beste to look like...the maniacal engineer thing you know. Which is exactly why i'll never say anything bad about him [sdb].
posted by th3ph17 at 3:14 PM on April 12, 2002


Shagoth- I would go further than to say society has the right to eliminate such individuals. I would say other individuals have that right, at the individual level, not the collective level.

100% of one's life can not be devoted to preventing the evil of others... therefore, when said others violate the common trust to the extent that they prove a violent threat to other individuals... I would maintain it is an inalienable individual right to eliminate the one who poses a threat, and a further inalienable right, to remove from the face of the earth as an abomination, one who has proven to be such a threat.

Preventative killing... that which removes the threat before it can harm innocents... is worthy of the highest praise.

Killing wrong? Heh. Yeah, right. Some people need it. Others are worth protecting. Stay out of the way of those who would protect, Shagoth.
posted by dissent at 3:27 PM on April 12, 2002


The story is somewhat similar the plot of the movie Frailty which opens this weekend.
posted by euphorb at 3:34 PM on April 12, 2002


dissent: The problem with Preventative killing is that it totally depends on your perspective as to who consititutes a threat. Justifying killing is a slippery slope down which you rapidly slide into rounding up large numbers of people to protect against an ill defined threat. There is NO clear line. Those who trust society or self-appoint themselves as the arbiters of death have fooled themselves into believing that this is easily defined.
posted by shagoth at 3:37 PM on April 12, 2002


I'll support those who scale the slope. I'll back those who walk the line. Easily defined? Maybe not. But worth defining... and worth risking, in order to protect that which is worth protecting.

Your philosophy is weak. It can not protect itself, and it leeches off the stronger philosophy, that allows force, for its very survival.

Fine, survive... but don't expect respect, for you and your philosophy are freeloading on the blood and effort of others.
posted by dissent at 3:44 PM on April 12, 2002


I've been bashed for this opinion before, and likely will be again.

As long as you pretend to believe that there is some moral absolute in this argument, shagoth, I too expect you to be bashed for this opinion.

Killing is always wrong and this is an immutable fact, you say. What do you subsist on, water and multi-vitamins? If you consume anything else then your insistence that killing is never justified rings false.

Well, perhaps you meant that taking human life is always wrong. That's a qualification -- something you emphatically urged other people to avoid when pondering this question -- but we'll let it slide. So I presume that you are against abortion in all cases and against euthanasia as well -- because if you weren't then you would have to qualify some more.

Now, on to preventive killing. You are attacked by someone who, for whatever reason, is intent on killing you. You, for some reason, have a gun. You shoot, the attacker dies. This is absolutely wrong, according to you. It speaks to your own weaknesses at being unable to avoid the situation. You may have only been sitting in your cubicle when some ex-co-worker of yours barged in with a machine gun and a grudge, but it's your fault for not foreseeing the attack and calling in sick, apparently.

C'mon. You don't believe this any more that I do. I, like you, am against the death penalty, but I don't pretend that there are any absolutes in an issue as complex as this one.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 3:55 PM on April 12, 2002


dissent: hardly. I can accept my guilt and work toward an ideal without violence. In the meantime I can accept that as a society and as individuals we fail daily. I merely oppose intentionally compounding our mistakes rather than recognizing them and working to prevent them.

But, lest dissent and I compound the hijacking of the thread, I'll back away now.
posted by shagoth at 3:57 PM on April 12, 2002


Killing to protect innocents may be necessary, but then you have failed to avoid the situation that made you kill.

So some psycho breaks into my kitchen, grabs a chef's knife and holds it at my throat, and it's a failure on my behalf or the police's behalf when he's taken out before he kills me? No, I don't think so.

There is NO clear line.

Sure there is -- when there is a clear and obvious risk of imminent death of an innocent party. In fact, an argument can be made that if you have the capacity to stop the killing of an innocent yet fail to do so, you hold culpability right along with the murderer.
posted by Dreama at 4:02 PM on April 12, 2002


dissent:Your philosophy is weak.

Yeah, and your philosophy is purple. Categories, anybody?
posted by signal at 4:02 PM on April 12, 2002


I WONDER IF HE USES LINUX


posted by Settle at 4:18 PM on April 12, 2002


A Christmas day eclipse was one of those signs, he said.
"They had created a sign just for me," he said.


Shit, what if he's telling the truth??
posted by Settle at 4:22 PM on April 12, 2002


Society has no more right to take the life of this man that he did to take the lives of others

Actually, there are times when a society not only has the right, but the obligation to take the lives of others.

In order to stay healthy, a society needs some way of removing harm from itself, just as we treat "cells gone bad" (cancer) in our body by killing them.

If the cancer is left untreated, it spreads and kills the body.

Likewise, if we do not remove cancerous persons from our society, our society can only be harmed.

In a similar vein, a society that is at risk of being exterminated by another society is obligated to fight back, lethally, in order to continue its existence. Heck, we had a couple of World Wars to prevent a particularly dangerous "infection" from spreading.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:35 PM on April 12, 2002


While I agree that killing can sometimes be justified, giving said power to the State scares the bejeebers out of me.

This is really how we have to define the state, as having a monopoly on legitimate violence. If they didn't have it, someone else either would or would attain it through such a process, and then they would be the state.
posted by j.edwards at 4:55 PM on April 12, 2002


I thought this might turn into a death penalty thread - hey, it goes where it goes. What I thought was more interesting is the ambiguity I feel on the defense.

Mucko says the angel Gabriel told him he was going to be sent back in time to kill Hitler and his generals, in order to gain a soul. I agree that everything in Occam's entire bathroom says the prosecution's story - that he killed the co-workers he thought were wronging him in a fit of anger and perceived vengeance - is the more likely truth. Predictably, today's cross-examination focused on his purchases of books about how to fake mental illness and his long history of playing D&D and other role-playing games.

However, if you suddenly snapped and killed a bunch of people you thought were wronging you, would you have the presence of mind to start setting up an insanity defense as soon as the cops came to arrest you? But wouldn't that presence of mind indicate that you weren't insane? But then, why would you "snap" in the first place?

In the end, it may be a moot point - even if he was "nuts", and believes all that he's been saying, I haven't seen anything that indicates that he was legally insane - that he didn't know the difference between right and wrong, and wasn't able to control his actions.
posted by yhbc at 5:37 PM on April 12, 2002


So today it's about the morality of killing....

~chuckle~

Our friend shagoth is right, of course. There is no justification whatsoever, under any circumstances, for killing other sentient beings.

Some of our other friends have questions. Here are the answers:

Would killing a person who has a gun aimed at small children be equated with killing those same children?

Yes.

Would killing in self defense be the same as murdering some one in cold blood?

Yes.

So some psycho breaks into my kitchen, grabs a chef's knife and holds it at my throat, and it's a failure on my behalf or the police's behalf when he's taken out before he kills me?

Yes.

There are an infinite number of actions that will halt or prevent violence. How sad that some think killing is the only way.

If the cancer is left untreated, it spreads and kills the body.

Exactly. The cancer is violence. Let's cure it.

We will not cure it by creating more cancer cells.

Your philosophy is weak. It can not protect itself, and it leeches off the stronger philosophy, that allows force, for its very survival.

No. It is infinitely stronger than any philosophy that huddles in the dark with gun in hand, whimpering insanely that only killing stops killing.

Fine, survive... but don't expect respect, for you and your philosophy are freeloading on the blood and effort of others.

No. It is the violent who drain the world. And there is no value in "respect" from those who, in their fear and ignorance, merely propagate more violence.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:56 PM on April 12, 2002


Killing is either wrong or it isn't.

Says who? Why?

Killing always wrong.

Rather than just make a claim, why not offer at least SOME argument supporting it? Truth is arrived at through a process of reason, not of shouting the same phrase over and over with one's fingers in one's ears. Your claims seem preposterous to a large number of us. So convince us, don't just keep telling us.
posted by rushmc at 7:14 PM on April 12, 2002


yhbc: Here's a strange one for you. Russell Weston, who killed two Capitol guards during his mission to uncover a conspiracy involving cannibalism, a clone of the president, a ruby satellite that reverses time, and the deadliest disease known to man: the Black Heva.
posted by Dean King at 7:54 PM on April 12, 2002


Here is a hypothetical for all the moral absolutists out there. Say you are captured by a psycho and given two choices:
(1) you kill a person of his choosing in a specified time frame
(2) the psycho kills that person instead.

Here's the catch; if you go with (1) you are set free, and if you go with (2) the psycho, after killing the other person, subjects you to the most horrible torture imaginable to you for the rest of your life. Now, you fully believe that (1) or (2) are the only choices - the psycho has arranged everything so carefully that there is absolutely no way to get out. The question is what do you do? If you choose (1), then you must not think that killing is wrong, for you'd be choosing to do something that you believe is wrong when you don’t have to. If you choose (2), may the force be with you – you’ll need it.
posted by epimorph at 8:12 PM on April 12, 2002


Hmm, I meant the Force... sorry, Luke.
posted by epimorph at 8:27 PM on April 12, 2002


What if he tripped up his words and accidentally said customer service? Would he have ended up in 1950 instead?
posted by trioperative at 8:55 PM on April 12, 2002


I really don't know and don't care whether he's crazy or not. He's simply too dangerous to ever be allowed even the tiniest chance of walking free ever again.
If someone had noticed him going insane earlier on and taken the correct steps at the time, I'd be completely in favor of getting him help. Unfortunately, no one did and seven innocent people are dead.
Get it through your skulls, It's not about sane or insane, rehabilitation or punishment, It's about keeping those humans who have proven themselves isolated where they can't harm the rest of us.
posted by jonmc at 8:56 PM on April 12, 2002


ummm..there should be "the most dangerous" after that "proven"...sorry
posted by jonmc at 8:57 PM on April 12, 2002


Toast 'em.
posted by evanizer at 9:38 PM on April 12, 2002


Would killing a person who has a gun aimed at small children be equated with killing those same children?
Yes.

Would killing in self defense be the same as murdering some one in cold blood?
Yes.

So some psycho breaks into my kitchen, grabs a chef's knife and holds it at my throat, and it's a failure on my behalf or the police's behalf when he's taken out before he kills me?
Yes.

There are an infinite number of actions that will halt or prevent violence. How sad that some think killing is the only way.


f&m, while I have not been wholly in agreement with your opinions in the past (which concerns you not in the slightest, which I admire), I have often thought your opinions were thought-provoking. And your absolute blind dedication to the preservation of sentience above and beyond any other imperative is touching, if occasionally disturbing (which suggestion on my part affects you not a whit, which I also duly admire).

However, you make no allowance for reality in your equation. At the very least, random, causeless, anonymous violence seems a basis for defending oneself. And in the heat of defending oneself, death might perhaps ensue. Would you really not defend yourself? I am not saying you have a gun, for I know you would not. Just physically defending yourself, which might lead to some sort of trauma resulting in the death of your attacker. Do you hold yourself in less regard than someone attacking you? It is nice to say steps should have been taken, and society has failed in its mandate, and violence begets blah, blah, blah... but would you really not defend yourself? Would you hurl these pithy nuggets of wisdom and screeds of natural philosophy at someone in lieu of trying to keep them from gouging out your eyes with a melonballer?

I am reminded of D. Keith Mano's book 'The Bridge' in which the ecologists of the world deem that the destruction of animalcules and protozoans caused by man's merely breathing warranted species-wide suicide. I realize that suicide also has no place in your worldview, so that image is not befitting, but it springs to mind nonetheless.
posted by umberto at 10:05 PM on April 12, 2002


The English common law has set aside madmen from full responsibility for their actions for several centuries. The law distinguishes between people who fly into an ecstatic rage and commit murder from those who have had a psychotic break. Drunkenness, for example, doesn't excuse you from the law, but perceiving your body as made of glass, or truly seeing people on the street as hats and cloaks draped over evil robots - for years- might.

This seems to me like a very important legal idea - foundational to the liberal project of Western culture. But today it is being vitiated both by the cynical efforts of defense attorneys to shield their clients from the law, and by a public whose philosophy of punishment has decayed from the application of justice to the love of vengeance.

Consider the case of James Calvin Brady. The only Google link I can find for him is clearly from crackpots, but I recall the case as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mr. Brady, about 20 years ago, presented himself at a Georgia public clinic. He claimed that he was in crisis and afraid that he was going to hurt people. He was turned away, and, a few days later, shot up a mall food court, killing several people. In trial, his attorneys presented evidence that Brady believed his enemies in California had implanted a device in his stomach, and were attempting to gain control over him through it to accomplish their scheme of assasinating the Governer. The killings in the mall, from Brady's point of view, were the only way to foil their plan. Although he had asked for help with his last shred of sanity, Brady was convicted, and sentenced to Reidsville for life, where I hope he gets some kind of treatment. Judging by Google, he appears to be totally forgotten.

Shysters who plead insanity for jealous spouses or drunken hotheads shorten the patience of the public for worthy insanity pleas. I don't know which side of the line McDermott falls on, but I don't like his chances.
posted by crunchburger at 10:07 PM on April 12, 2002


This really reminds me of Vanilla Sky. The dude should be calling for tech support, not human resources.
posted by kindall at 11:44 PM on April 12, 2002


I realize that suicide also has no place in your worldview, so that image is not befitting, but it springs to mind nonetheless.
You missed his defense of euthanasia a while back.
posted by darukaru at 7:14 AM on April 13, 2002


Violence is not the cancer... properly wielded, it's the scalpel that cures the cancer. Of course, a scalpel can be misused... but cancer can not be used.
posted by dissent at 10:47 AM on April 13, 2002


This seems to me like a very important legal idea - foundational to the liberal project of Western culture.

Worrying over the fate of violent, destructive, useless maniacs doesn't seem foundational to anything but idiocy to me.
posted by dissent at 11:13 AM on April 13, 2002


I bet dissent is too chickenshit to kill mucko. I bet he'll go online and see he'd like to see it happen.

(goading)
posted by Settle at 12:12 PM on April 13, 2002


I bet he'll go online and see he'd like to see it happen.

Huh? Please rephrase. If I'm being goaded, I need to understand the goading before I can explode in a properly bombastic tirade.
posted by dissent at 12:19 PM on April 13, 2002


dissent : Worrying over the fate of violent, destructive, useless maniacs doesn't seem foundational to anything but idiocy to me.

Hang on...so people who have reduced reality perception via mental illness (quite often through no fault of their own) don't deserve to live if they're possibly violent? Ahem! (Nazi?) Cough!...
posted by boneybaloney at 11:38 PM on April 14, 2002


It's not about fault... it's about threat.

Nazi? Hardly.

The Nazis killed people just for being a member of an ethnic group, even without ANY UNFAVORABLE BEHAVIOR. Hello, I'm talking about a killer here, and killers in general.

I don't care what your mental state is, multiple murders of innocents should give one a one-way ticket straight out of this existence.

As to nonviolently, non-criminally insane individuals... for them I advocate the best... and kindest... treatment that can possibly be given them.

Nazi? I call foul. And I call you, dear boneybaloney, to task.

Now, go to hell.
posted by dissent at 11:17 AM on April 15, 2002


for the record:
they didn't buy the insanity defense
gave him life without parole
posted by Dean King at 8:00 PM on April 24, 2002


you guys arguing about the death penalty (again) when it was never an option to begin with
posted by Dean King at 8:08 PM on April 24, 2002


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