U lawyer types explain this 1 2 me
 

Man kills his parents. While he was in the mental hospital he said he wanted to kill his parents.

1) Why was he let out if he expressed that?

2) Why is he charged only w/2nd degree murder w/o premeditation when he explicitly said beforehand he wanted to do it?

I am not a lawyer but here are my thoughts.
He was in a mental hospital last December when he said he had thoughts of killing his parents. Mental hospitals are not jails and normally can not keep someone forever. We do not know why he was in the hospital, drug related? Premeditation is more than just a desire to kill someone, is he capable of knowing the possible consequences. What if any, is his mental health diagnosis? Maybe he was high on drugs? Some unanswered questions in the article, as usual, that I am curious about. Probably the DA just figures it would be easier to get a conviction on the 2nd degree charge. This is all a guess on my part.

Because "mens rea", legal intent, is required to charge/convict for murder-type crimes. It's not just that intent in dictionary terms exists, it has to fit in the legal definition. The specifics vary by state and I have no idea what Minnesota's is, but the standard can be something like something like "ability to understand an action is wrong and understand the outcome of the action".

Also, there may be a different standard for competence to stand trial; even if someone could be proven to have been capable of intentional killing/ not "criminally insane", they may not be stable/capable enough to understand the trial process and thus not competent to stand trial.

Finally, prosecutors have to make charging decisions based on what they can bring to trial and get convictions. Overcoming an insanity defense can be expensive because of expert testimony required and delays in the trial schedule, whether or not they can impanel a jury that will vote to convict, and purely political factors.

As to your first question, that's another creature of state law regarding psychiatric holds on potentially violent mentally ill people. These came about as reforms to abuses in mental health treatment ("warehousing"), because people could disappear into facilities for the rest of their lives. That's why California's famous "5150" code section is not in the Penal Code but Welfare and Institutions, because it limits what hospitals can do and how long they can do it. I don't know anything about Minnesota's rules about that either, and won't argue about any of this here (not that you are looking to do that).

All I can add to this dialog right now is that apparently mental health in this country has not progressed to the point of the people who work at these institutions even knowing the difference between someone who is mentally ill and someone who is not. They are often not very nice places to be, depending on the person...

In the major study I just watched the other night, when the psychiatrists psychologist (or doctors or others) in charge were NOT aware that the patients were in fact mentally healthy by all measures, they created disorders and labeled the patients with them.

When they were aware, as a kind of challenge, the person who was doing it as an experiment, sending them back, some mentally healthy and some mentally ill, they still failed to identify at least 90% who was mentally stable & who wasn't.

Finally, the most common diagnosis for people who were actors/actresses was schizophrenia I believe, or something like schizo-XXXXX...

I guess mental health either has a long way to go OR we have to recognize that it's a very different problem than bandaging up a broken bone, for example. (Sorry, casting a broken bone.)

Maybe this one case is being highlighted.

If 10 patients in a unique state of mind that is hard to understand say they would like to play the piano for people...I'm not sure how many do, but it's probably more that don't than do.

So if 10 patients say they would like to kill someone perhaps they go by the odds, and release them since saying it is a very different thing than meaning it & then doing it.

Not sure how this is talking sports :rolleyes: but the guy's name was David Rosenhan? David Rose-----?...from Stanford University that demonstrated that most of the psychological diagnoses are the norms of the culture, in a sense, being extremely uncomfortable with someone outside these norms.