If a murderer has amnesia, should he be punished?

So if someone kills someone else, but then has a head injury and ends up having amnesia and doctors attest to it. Should that person be facing the death penalty for a crime he cannot even remember?

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The crime is embedded into his soul. If his body or mind doesn't remember it, his soul will. Cut off his head.

Yes, obviously you fucking idiot.

Just because he can't remember doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Fucking sage and die.

unless his personality does a fucking 180 he's still guilty. Unless he is almost a different person entirely, still guilty

360* idiot

I think it should depend on how extensive the amnesia is. If it's basically a complete rewright of the person and his personality, maybe he can go. But what's to say he won't remember, or that he won't revert to the same person he was before the injury? Would you really be willing to let someone get off scott free for what is essentially the greatest crime someone can commit in our society? What does that say about how much we care about enforcing the law? Not to mention it's a terrible precedent to set and allows people in the future to possibly get away with murder if they can pull off pretending to have amnesia successfully, good fucking luck getting a doctor to be able to tell with absolute certainty if someone really has amnesia or not.

And if someone gets amnesia and just doesn't remember committing the crime, obviously we still do and they should go to prison. It's not like forgetting that something happened turns back time to stop something from happening, or absolve someone of guilt.

>thoughts are more important than actions

Son... I

>I never remember to pay my bills, that means I don't have to pay them

said the dindu

Kill yourself

think about your comment real hard now

that's some nigger education right there. 360 would mean no change.

Top kek I hope you're joking my man

Stay in school kid... Nuthin personal

Anyone can say i dont remem er then fuck you

Then just do a 720 and leave, lad.

>abbo reading comprehension
>amnesia /confirmed by doctors/

No, but seriously, what's up with all the newfags lately?

720 you dingus!

b-but what about the maymay?

doctors literally would not be able to tell if someone who had half a brain was pretending

>I forgot to feed my children and they died

>I forgot to look both ways, and t-boned a family in their minivan

>I got blackout drunk and raped my grandma, but I don't remember any of it

Yeah punishment serves as deterrence to others

It's not punishment, it's prevention of future crimes. He killed once so even if he doesn't remember it, he's considered a risk of doing it again.

This is not about vengeance and making them pay.

That is about
1 removing a dangerous elemrnt from society
2 giving a warning to other people why killing is bad idea for them

The point of punishment is not to make bad people feel bad. That would be cruelty.

Amnesia means that you aren't able to form new memories, but your old ones still stay.

Alzheimer's and head injuries are what fuck with your previous memories, but it's not called amnesia.

Question is when we can do head transplants will his body be destroyed or just his head and the body given to a new person.

Will the body's new owner feel the crimes?

the problem is proving you dont know what they are talking about. thats what every criminal tries to do. deny it

Amnesia doesn't make you a different person, he would still have the same base impulses, etc.

Sometimes, even if an event were to happen that rewrote a person's personality and beliefs, it still wouldn't be enough because some people suffer from physical brain damage that causes them to become defective and attack society.

As always, it's not about revenge and punishment, Sup Forums is stupid, and you tackle it case by case.

Fucking retards, he'd have to go 1,978,560 degrees in a circle to cause a time shift to where he didn't actually commit the crime.

Then do you still punish him even though it technically never happened in the time line?

The last excuse seems to work just fine if you're a female in this country.

Yes. There was something in their head in the first place that made them do it, and the whole idea behind imprisonment/death penalty is to protect the community. Someone like that will inevitably go off the rails again.

>ppl taking this seriously and getting upset
kek

There clearly has to be a difference between blackout drunk or blacks out in a fit of rage.

If they legit commit a crime while sober or conscious then sustain a head injury, which can alter people's behavior if bad enough, and they are a great person I'd say let them go.

The entire point of prison is to repent and become a better person, not to be the same person in a jail cell for 25 years. If a total shit person had an injury that caused their behavior to do a 180 and they forgot the crime but became like the best person in the world. Then yeah. What's the point of wasting tax money and shit to keep them in jail.

Its actually a real case and the guy got acquited, but on some shoddy science that probably wouldn't fly today

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Daviault

>believing people aren't stupid enough to do this

This. Otherwise, what would stop me from committing a crime, hitting my head and pretending I can't remember. Even if doctors can verifiably say "he doesn't remember commiting the crime" how does that matter?

>The entire point of prison is to repent and become a better person
Explain life sentences.

They shouldn't exist. Life sentences should be death sentences.

The fours goals of incarceration are deterrence, denunciation, retribution and rehabilitation

If rehabilitation were all that mattered, then the courts would never lay down life sentences

Does the crime lie in the body or the mind?

How do we know they won't have a coconut fall on their head and turn them back into an asshole?

these are legitimate defenses and only in a corrupt, heartless, vindictive, patriarchal country would any of these people be sentenced to jail for punitive punishment. better would be to remind them to be more careful next time.

it's an interesting question you raise, op. and I tend to lean towards "no",

Personally I disagree with that. Crimes like theft, drug abuse or other economic damages should be treated with mercy and re-introducing that individual to society, without any prison time.

On crimes like heavy bodily harm, murder and rape punishment should be the focus.

Did he commit the crime? There's your answer.

Totally depends on the situation. If it would ever be real, it would be because the person is in a situation so stressful his mind is no longer able to cope. Say a victim of ongoing fysical and/or sexual abuse. If that person claims amnesia after killing the abuser I think it should be considered whether or not this person would do this again after the source of their distress is taken away. But I am talking Dutroux-tier scenarios.

>murder
Yes. They had their chance NOT to murder in the first place.


Unless they were possessed and they caught the demon afterwards.

I would say that life sentences are for certain levels of crime, obviously not everyone will be rehabilitated. I think people who premeditate a murder or do some brutal shit or serial killer that should be used for then. I don't disagree with life sentences.

Criminal negligence should be punished

You take on a duty of care when you raise a child or get into a car. It's in the interest of society to punish those who selfishly neglect that duty, ESPECIALLY if it results in harm to the the innocent.

all it takes is a bit of abstract thought

This would be a rare case, usually involves massive amounts of brain trauma too. Simple concision wouldn't do that, usually has to be something impaling the brain or something like that.

Pretty sure this is the Plot to Planescape: Torment.

I agree with what you say to a sense. Petty theft, fraud, or really anything that is non violent should go to jail but it really shouldn't be for a short period of time and not with violent offenders. Obviously that doesn't mean violent people wouldn't get put into a non violent jail, if they got picked up with no previous record but have a violent behavior...but if they get picked up on a non violent charge but a long history of violent crimes then go to a violent offender prison. This would require too much reform for our prison system

We don't punish criminals for revenge, we punish them so they don't cause further damage to society, and as a deterrence to others. If he had it in his heart to kill, he is still dangerous even if he no longer remembers the crime.

If you've got a guy whose personality can change on the fly, and has already shown a propensity for criminal acts, its in the interest of society to separate him from the public.

"I promise never to do it again" is not a defense, even if you genuinely mean it. If you were mentally competent at the time of the crime then you face the punishment.

Someone who can't even remember who he killed should not be walking around in society.

What if a guy strangled somebody to death, but during the police chase he fell into a woodchipper and lost both his hands

It would be virtually impossible for him to ever strangle another person. Do we send him to prison?

they should be punished ESPECIALLY when they can't remember because they would be incapable of even learning from their mistakes and that's more dangerous.

he could easily shove his stumps down peoples throats, use your head leaf

These are rare cases. Read the blank slate. People's behaviors are more driven by genetics rather that environment. There's one case that I remember reading about, a guy was completely nice and was the best fucking person in the world, then at work he had a metal pipe go through his head during an accident and he didn't have any brain damage in the sense that he forgot shit or became a vegetable but the pipe came through the part of his brain that affects behavior. So after the accident he went from being a great guy to being a short tempered asshole.

I'm talking about cases like that, not a simple I got blackout drunk or was in a fit of blind rage, or I have some mental illness that makes me go crazy like that. I'm talking legit rare brain damage. The question OP ask is about simply forgetting. If they forget then no go to jail because they still have the same behavior. But if there was a legit brain damage like right after the crime or before they were arrested and they don't remember and their behavior has completely changed, what's the point

>Take drug that will have you forget your actions while under the influence
>Commit a capital offence while under the influence
>Wake up, having forgotten everything, but I guess you can't be killed

This is a pointless ethical question, kraut. Nobody has ever committed a capital and lost the memory of it due to amnesia and it will never happen. And even if it did, there would be no reason while they should be spared from capital punishment, but not life imprisonment, or any punishment.

Bill Clinton already decided that yes, he should be executed.

>Be Ricky Ray Rector
>Kill someone and then kill a cop
>attempt an hero and fail
>be lobotomized
>get executed by Bill Clinton

What a way to go

That's losing his hands, his behavior hasn't changed.

Let me put it this way, you're a leaf so you love guzzling maple flavor jizz everyday. One day you lost both your hands so you could guzzle your maple jizz anymore but you could find other ways of having it delivered to you.

Now lets say one day you fall on a pipe and it goes through a part of our brain that is for flavor, now you wake up from the injury and you don't recall like maple jizz anymore and have no desire to guzzle maple jizz anymore. We could put you around gallons of maple jizz and you'd wouldn't care for it.

couldn't* guzzle your maple jizz

Yes. Not remembering doesn't undo shit he or she has done.

Suddenly, every nigger in the world suffer from chronic amnesia.

Why not just use penal legions?

>2016
>Literally nobody knows about the "do a 360 and walk away" meme

I knew it, Sup Forums is full of r/Sup Forums users who just came here for "Praise KEK xd"

Yes.

If he forgot literally everything and his entire personality was magically removed and he became a tabula rasa again, then no.

memory is not required for guilt.

IF he is a *different person* he is still guilty.

Forensic psychiatry exists and compos mentus can be established.

Read up on it, there's legislation in place at least here for that kind of thing. They'll spend time in a psychiatric facility and they'll be watched like a hawk. If you're thinking of killing someone and pretending not to remember? You won't get away with it, there are a lot of signs and symptoms that are specific for this which can be spotted and liars can be spotted a mile off.

Have a nice day.

and that's the point with How do you prove that somebody's behaviour has changed SO MUCH that they could never possibly commit another crime?
Do we just listen and believe? accept character evidence?

A change of heart can be a mitigating circumstance when determining what the appropriate sentence is, but it is not a defense.

As a society, there is value in deterring crime. There is value in denouncing crime. There is value in securing retribution for the victims of crime. When you focus exclusively on the rehabilitative function of incarceration, you take a narrow view of a complex matter.

the justice system is a tool to punish guilt but punishing guilt is only a tool to prevent further crimes

>why do they call it an xbox360

Yeah yeah yeah

>tabula rasa
>"again"

Kill yourself, idiot.

Brain scans and test.

...

Oh neat, we have brain scans that tell us whether or not somebody will commit a crime?

Lets just force everybody to get scanned and incarcerate them accordingly.

im laughing at all your (yous).. this was good bait.

Yes.

Also, isn't complete amnesia extremely rare, even almost entirely fictitious?

Newfag

Great reply.

I am sorry I do not have your expert knowledge of neurobiology.

There was a case in London where a German killed a policeman. I think his name was Gunther Padola, he claimed amnesia.
He was hiding in a hotel room when they tracked him down and during his arrest he suffered head injuries and couldnt remember anything.
They hung him in the end but it was close.

This.
Prison time is also useful to protect the convict from vengeance by someone else until enough time has passed.

Fpbp

>murder someone while being drunk as fuck
>"what the fuck judge, it's not like I can remember it or anything, just let me go"

welcome to Canada

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