It’s going to be a while before Jerry Sandusky’s lawyers start mounting his defense, but there already are hints about some of what they’ll say.
CNN reported Monday, the trial’s first day, that Sandusky’s lawyers will try to explain away some apparently creepy letters Sandusky wrote his accusers by offering testimony that Sandusky has something called “histrionic personality disorder.”
The CNN story said the “disorder” is part of a class of conditions called dramatic personality disorders, which are marked by unstable emotions and distorted self-images, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
“For these people, self-esteem doesn’t come from true feelings of self-worth, but rather from the approval from other people, and those suffering from this disorder will often engage in dramatic or inappropriate behaviors to call attention to themselves.”
In other words, Sandusky’s lawyers are going to justify the letters by saying their client is what is commonly known as a drama queen. My guess is that will rank right up there with the defense that Sandusky’s rapes of children were really just “horseplay,” but it certainly sets the stage for the dreary courtroom spectacle of dueling psychologists.
Assuming Sandusky’s guilty (I certainly think he is), he’s obviously a severely twisted guy. If he really was raping little boys, he wasn’t just a quirky drama queen. He was doing something most people on earth are hard-wired not to do.
But is he crazy? Not a chance. At least not by the legal definition.
People tend to get the vapors over claims of insanity. Since a lot of folks get the majority of their information on the justice system from “Law and Order” episodes and movies of varying quality, they think it’s some sort of magic bullet to let the guilty walk free. In fact, it’s not.
Some sources say that the insanity defense is used in less than 1 percent of all court cases. And even when it is used, it succeeds only about a quarter of the time. You also have to consider that when somebody is found not guilty by reason of insanity, it doesn’t mean the court kicks them loose. Generally, somebody who’s found insane is committed for treatment, which can take years.
The reason that insanity isn’t a common defense in criminal cases is that in court, the concept is defined not medically but legally.
The test in court isn’t whether the defendant froths at the mouth or has a nasty tendency toward cannibalism. Courts use something called the M’Naghten rule, named for a guy who tried to kill the prime minister of England in 1843 but instead killed the man’s secretary. M’Naghten was acquitted after medical experts testified that he was psychotic.
The M’Naghten rule says that a person is not guilty by reason of insanity of at the time of the crime he did not know the nature or quality of his actions or did not know what he was doing was wrong. In plain English and in practice, that means that in order to be acquitted by reason of insanity, the person has to be virtually barking mad.
Probably the last time that happened in a high-profile case was when John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in hopes of romancing Jody Foster. Hinckley still resides at the laughing academy.
But there are plenty of other, more horrifying cases where legal insanity wasn’t even an issue. Take Jeffrey Dahmer, for example. Now, by any reasonable medical standard, Dahmer was mad as a hatter (aside from being just incredibly evil). You’ve got to be a little bent – a lot bent, actually – to do the things he did. But insanity as a defense was never an issue with him, because as much as he enjoyed what he did, he obviously knew it was wrong. Practically speaking, the fact that he committed his horrors in the privacy of his apartment shows that he knew most people wouldn’t just give him a pass on cannibalism and necrophilia. But more important for this discussion, legally speaking he could not have proved insanity because he tried to cover up what he was doing. He lied to the cops when they asked him why he was chasing a half-naked man down the street. He “appreciated the quality of his acts,” that quality being that no matter how much he enjoyed them, they were illegal.
The concept of legal insanity is somewhat like the process used to involuntarily commit someone to mental health treatment. If you’ve ever been faced with that situation, one of the first things you learn is that the bar is set pretty high. In order to be committed, a person basically has to be shown to be a danger to himself or others. You can be deeply mentally ill without hitting that point. That’s one of the most heartbreaking things about having a severely mentally ill family member; you know that bad things will happen eventually, but unless you can prove the person is actively doing something that will bring those bad things on, they can’t be forcibly committed.
Sad as that is, it’s probably as it should be. In totalitarian countries, those who oppose the government are often stashed away in asylums and it’s just too easy to have that happen. There are good reasons the bar is set so high. But that’s of little comfort to those who have to watch a family member descend into insanity in baby steps.
My guess, though, is that when the verdict comes in, no matter how bent or neurotic or histrionic Jerry Sandusky is, he’ll still be called to account for his crimes. His lawyers can make him look like the biggest drama queen in history, but that still won’t excuse the rape of children.