How Do You Determine Crazy?

Today in Criminal Law, we began to discuss defenses to crimes. We started with insanity. My professor wanted us to talk about people we knew who were crazy, but few people volunteered. So, he told us about two past students he have had who were crazy.

And then my professor told us this story. I tried to type it up as he was talking, so here goes:

"My father was killed in WWII when his ship was torpedoed. I was sent to live with my grandmother and she made me do chores. Can you believe that? 9 years old and I had to do chores. My grandmother was a mean one. Anyway, in the winter she made me shovel the sidewalk in front of our house. And then she made me shovel the sidewalk in front of her neighbor's house. Mrs. Scott (the neighbor) was old, had a hunchback, couldn't hear, and was going blind. When she cooked her food, she would let it burn because she couldn't see it to tell when it was done, so she waited for it to smell burnt.

Mrs. Scott's husband lived with her. We always called her Mrs. Scott, but we called him Charlie. Charlie was around 80 and was often tied up. During the summer, Mrs. Scott would drag two rockers out to the front porch and tie Charlie to one of the rockers. My grandmother made my chore in the summer to go sit with them on the porch for an hour and keep them company. I used to sit next to Charlie and he would talk to me. Mrs. Scott would say, "Go get Charlie his pipe." So, I did. And then because Charlie was tied up, I would start the pipe and then smoke it when he didn't want to. And I was nine! Charlie would also talk about his time with the Rough Riders (group of soldiers under Teddy Roosevelt's leadership who fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American war). Charlie would say to me, "Boy. Go get my saber." And I would run into the house and get Charlie's saber from the war and bring it back to him. He would spend time showing me the bloodstains on the sword from the Spaniards he had killed. And I can just imagine how someone walking by would have seen: a boy, age nine, with a saber and a pipe talking to a man tied to a chair.

When Charlie wasn't tied tight enough, he would get out of his ropes, take off all his clothes and run down the street going "ARRRR!" "ARRRR!" And wherever I was in the neighborhood when I heard that noise, I would have to go get Mr. Lyne and Mr. Cooper and they would run after Charlie to bring him home. He would always run the same way - up Michigan Avenue toward Butterworth Hospital. We lived in Grand Rapids, if any of you know that area. And when Mr. Lyne and Mr. Cooper caught up with Charlie - he didn't move very fast, he was 80 after all - Charlie, tended to have a bad habit. So, all the neighborhood kids would run after them and yell, "Pee on them, Charlie!!!" "

My professor used that story to illustrate different points about the insanity defense and whether or not people should be committed. He made us vote on whether or not we thought Charlie was insane. And if he had committed a crime, should he have used a insanity defense? Criminal law is vastly more interesting than I expected.

But, in a weird way maybe, I found the story fascinating. Maybe it's the historical setting of it all - the Rough Riders? a saber? WWII? old Grand Rapids? - but it's just intriguing to me.