AS defense to murder fails

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http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO47063/
"CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A 16-year-old boy charged with fatally stabbing a high school classmate has been found competent to stand trial by a court-appointed psychiatrist...Odgren has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism, and hyperactivity disorder, and was in a special needs program housed at the high school."

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO141113/
"WOBURN, Mass. -- A jury has found John Odgren guilty of murdering a classmate at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.

Odgren appeared emotionless as the guilty decision was read around 2 p.m. Thursday.

Under Massachusetts law, the maximum penalty for first-degree murder is life in prison without parole.

"In first-degree murder, there is only one penalty. That is life without parole," said 7News legal analyst Thomas Hoopes."

Glad to hear AS wasn't accepted as an excuse for killing somebody. He didn't even know the kid he killed, that kid had never bullied him or anything. It was also reported earlier that he was depressed, but I couldn't find that article.

Guilty of murder, yes. But I can't blame his defense lawyer for using AS as a defense. If I was his defense lawyer, I would have done the exact same thing.

Dang, so much for that revenge plan I had...

But this is the kind of crap that makes people scared of us....obviously this guy had some type of co existing psychosis to murder someone!

If you know right from wrong then there is no defense

I'm very glad he didn't get away with this.

The worrying this is, people are still going to read that he has aspergers, even if it has been thrown out as an excuse. The fact is that it has been mentioned as a cause, and will probably be again (as Janissy says, lawyers will try and use anything). One day it may even succeed and that sets a very worrying precedent.

At the end of the day, it is people like this who give the syndrome a bad reputation, far more than Autism Speaks or any organisation.

editi: I am quite annoyed at the first article; it mentions at the beginning that the boy has both ADD and aspergers, and also states that he has been in and out of juvenile prison. Yet the very last paragraph is about aspergers and how people with is are 'unable to read social cues or sense the feelings of people around them'. Not only is that fictitious, but where is the 'data' on ADD or conduct disorder? Why was only an 'explanation' of AS given?

I stand corrected. It is the media and people like this that give AS a bad rep.

There is a time and a place for AS to be used as a way to understanding the actions of an AS sufferer and remedy a solution; but murder is not one of those occassions.

I find it problematic and just as sloppy thinking as the kind of thinking that allows the prejudices people fear, when if AS is mentioned in respect of criminal charges, then everyone jumps up and down about it being used as a defence. It's asinine and uncritical thinking. The fact that the media happens to have a hard on for Autisms at the moment is no excuse for uncritically swallowing and worse still elaborating on the crap that passes for journalism these days.

The defence in this instance was insanity, not Aspergers Syndrome.

The defence claimed that the Ogden was paranoid and in a psychotic state on the day the crime was committed. Being paranoid and in a psychotic state is neither necessary nor sufficient for having Aspergers Syndrome and so clearly the defence was not Aspergers Syndrome per say. Rather this and other mental conditions were raised in the context of attempting to establish that a paranoid and psychotic state characterized the indvidual at the time of the crime, and this state is what constituted the insanity defence attempted in this case.

There is a vast difference between claiming X was not responsible for their acts due to being in a paranoid and psychotic state and claiming "teh aspies made me do it", and this is true whether or not Aspergers Syndrome is one of a number of conditions that someone is claiming contributed to the paranoid and psychotic state.

Odgren had a psychosis, and seems sociopathic, not just aspie. He was one of those teen killers who kill impulsively, but without really thinking through what they do. Definitely, society needs to be protected from him, so he should not have been found innocent. Still, the whole case seems so sad to me, how a 15-year-old boy was senselessly killed, and how no-one noticed how dangerous Odgren was.

Saying he doesn't remember killing the kid, I doubt it. He is probably saying that to weasel his way out of a sentence.

As it deserved to; "don't kill people" isn't quite what you would call a subtle social rule.

Except it (Aspergers) did not (fail as a defence), as anyone who bothered to find out the facts rather than uncritically swallowing the pulp barely non-fiction that passes for journalism these days would know. You see AS was not used as a defence in this instance, there is no such defence. The defence was an insanity plea and was not based on having AS, but on a claim that the individual was in a psychotic and paranoid state at the time of the incident.

Good- AS is no excuse for murder.