In evaluating how we use what God has given us "choice" and in determining the guilt or innocence of one who is accused of committing a crime whether he be insane or not, it is important to distinguish between fate and destiny.
In the prosecution of an accused criminal, it is also important to decide if the accused knowingly, willingly, and intentionally acted criminally. It can be argued the insane person lacks that ability, and also the ability to know right from wrong, but I do not believe the insane person can be so easily excused or exonerated since social order requires that a person be accountable for their actions if they live freely in society and community (to live freely they must not overtly reject or avoid their own mental health treatment and care), and if they can not competently maintain their mental health then the social system is obligated and must care for them protectively for their good or the safety of others.
Moreover, mental illness is often very treatable. Crime would decrease dramatically if instead of slurring the mentally ill as many do, we made medications other than alcohol and pot much more available and provided local easily accessible treatment. Recent mad man shooting victim Congresswoman Gifford held her congress on the corner (the site of the assassination and mass shootings)..... what if there were day to day improved mental health in and on every one’s minds at all times? When you recall all the hype and publicity providing recent flu vaccines .... why do we not see that for mental health in many different doses unavoidable as we interact in our community and with our government and others?
For the future, we should lobby to reconstruct the lagging public mental health services that our legislature has stripped of funding. The police and justice system continues to increase. Let’s address the source of what police and the justice system are feeding on. Whether or not we want it to be so, we have citizens in Arizona who are in need of treatment manifested by homelessness, child abuse, sex crimes, unemployables, severe debilitating dysfunctional disorders, spousal abuse and addiction. We have buried our heads in the sand too long refusing to believe we must deal with these issues.
If mental health is the goal and better systems provided for improved mental health in all cases there would be no crime, no victims, and no legal avoidance of guilt or consequences for individual or collective group decisions, actions, and behavior.
It is not so much that I am opposed to the insanity defense as that I am advocating improved mental health which would alleviate costly crime, the criminally harmful acts of persons lacking mental health, education, and employment. For a government to focus on negative punishments, to not provide the architecture for improved health, education, employment, and welfare of its people, is a formula for disaster and that disaster is inexcusable as well as insane. It is a formula which creates insane persons and criminals at ever increasing cost to its endangered citizens.
They do report that less than 1% use the insanity defense ..... even so how much is it used is irrelevant reasons for or against it ...with as much crime as exists in America even 1% is a large quantity ....
I was sent to the Arizona state institution via insanity defense which the public defender found to be the easiest way to satisfy all concerned and it was simply to remove me as an obstacle legally because of a fence dispute and subsequent contempt of court charge against me because my neighbor and the city was claiming my property wooden fence for my needy neighbor who they were giving (building) her a new fence as neighborhood improvements,,, to save money on my side they claimed my fence which I had just recently rebuilt as maintenance on my property line where the old fence stood, my property was taken and sacrificed politically hence I ended up in the state institution making it easier for the state to prove their false claim against my property and its true border (eventually my case won but only after hiring my own private real estate lawyer at $6000 plus cost, the newly rebuilt fence and the long established border line are legally mine (but the cost for me was exorbitant personally and financially). Virtually all others in the Arizona state institution I met there came also as a result of insanity defense cases. Many of the cases were simply political persecutions and power plays. Notable exceptions were those similar to the case of a young woman who had killed her young daughter and then was treated and released as sane and able to return to society after 2 years time.
Because of the abuses of the insanity defense and its being used as means to achieve other ends than justice (allowing political and social abuses), I am opposed to it since I have witnessed and experienced the prosecutions close up personally in the State of Arizona. The state of Arizona is flooded with either prisoners or mentally ill persons and more created daily at great cost to the citizens and that is one reason the state is billions in the red budget wise.
It is not so much that I am opposed to the insanity defense as that I am advocating improved mental health which would alleviate costly crime which are acts of persons lacking mental health, education, and employment. For a government to focus on negative punishments, to not provide the architecture for improved health, education, employment, and welfare of its people, is a formula for disaster and that disaster is inexcusable as well as insane. It is a formula which creates insane persons and criminals at ever increasing cost to the endangered citizens.
Destiny versus fate
Although the words are used interchangeably in many cases, fate and destiny can be distinguished. It depends on how narrow or broad the definitions are. Broadly speaking, fate is destiny. Narrowly and to be more accurate, traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable". Fate is used with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and that same sense of finality, projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out, is Destiny. In other words, fate relates to events of the past and is proven to be true and unalterable, whereas destiny relates to the probable to almost certain future. Note that it is only almost certain and not absolutely certain, allowing for change to occur. This can be seen in our common language usage, e.g. "His calling, his destiny is to be a doctor." Will he definitely be a doctor? Well, it remains to be seen.
In classical and European mythology, there are three goddesses dispensing fate, the "Fates" known as Moirae in Greek mythology, as Parcae in Roman mythology, and Norns in Norse mythology; they determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human destinies.
One word derivative of "fate" is "fatality", another "fatalism". Fate implies no choice, and ends fatally, with a death. Fate is an outcome determined by an outside agency acting upon a person or entity; but with destiny the entity is participating in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens willfully.
Used in the past tense, "destiny" and "fate" are both more interchangeable, both imply "one's lot" or fortunes, and include the sum of events leading up to a currently achieved outcome (e.g. "it was her destiny to be leader" and "it was her fate to be leader").
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