Arizona Shooter Pleads Guilty to Avoid Death Penalty: Is Plea Deal Fair?

He's a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, a real and serious mental illness. People afflicted with this disease can 'reason' after a fashion, but their 'calculations' are based on delusions. They hear 'voices,' see people who aren't there, etc. It can't be faked. There are testable brain function-related phenomena; you can't fool a magnetic resonance imager, for example. There Is a genetic component that influences who becomes victims of the disorder. In short, this guy is crazy as a loon. There are psychotropic drugs that can help, but they are not effective for everyone. If you are like this guy, your choices are basically two. Take the drugs, silence the voices and join the real world, but come to grips with nasty side effects that will make you sick - and miserably so, for the rest of your life. Or... DON'T take the drugs and lose impassioned political debates... WITH YOUR MICROWAVE! Or worse... become driven to do things you likely wouldn't ordinarily do. You can still do things like plan a murder. In that sense someone might see that as 'rational' behavior. But the judgment is wonky. Almost anyone can kill - and feel justified - under certain circumstances or conditions. But what if those conditions are delusional- the products of a malfunctioning brain - not grounded in objective reality? Then any reasonable person would likely concede that this person's actions are based on seriously flawed mental processes, ergo, his moral judgment and therefore moral RESPONSIBILITY are limited. Bernie Madoff is a so-called 'white collar' criminal. He stole the life savings of hundreds of people to the tune of 50 BILLION dollars. He has no diagnosed mental illness, and he set up an elaborately planned 'long con' - a Ponzi scheme - to do it. People were financially RUINED! But people also died as a result of his greed and callous disregard. Some from things like heart attacks, a few were driven to suicide. THIS man is a true sociopath... EVIL! But he not only wasn't sentenced to death, he gets to live out his days in Club Fed. A far cry from his mansions and penthouses for sure, but in a medium security facility with more comforts and amenities than many of the rest of us can count on. Yet, no one seems to be able to muster much moral outrage that this evil guy - from the oldest motives known - pure greed and avarice - KILLED people, as surely as any gun-wielding assassin. There is a difference between evil and insanity, despite the sad and undeniable fact that the outcomes are often similar. A good argument can be made for executing sociopaths - the Bernie Madoffs of the world. But executing schizophrenics is barbaric.