The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 11: Excuse Me!
Excuse pg 20: Conclusion
If, that is, the defense is even recognized in his state any more. Some jurisdictions have abolished the Diminished Capacity defense. And others define it differently. So in real life, Doug might not have a valid defense even then.
So far, we’ve covered a lot of excuse defenses that you hear about a lot, but which rarely come up in real life, and which almost never succeed.
But before we move on to Justification defenses, there is one excuse that you hear about which does come up in real life.
And it’s one that people get wrong all the time.
So how about we learn how to get it right?
Okay! We’ll learn all about it next time in Part 12: “I Was Entrapped!”
You can read this entire chapter in its original single-page scroll on the comic’s old Tumblr site here.
…So wait, somebody could be poisoned with something that causes them to do something criminal, and still get blamed for it in the places that abolished it?
I know it’s rare, but it’s possible, and shouldn’t the law attempt to cover every single case unless it’s downright impossible (e.g. According to current science, you can’t think someone to death, so there doesn’t need to be provisions for that. Likewise, I’m sure claiming a ghost got you drunk against your will would just get you looks of, “The hell?”)
I recall that there’s a mathematic proof that it’s impossible to legislate everything. That’s why you get loopholes and jury jullification.
Well . . . I can’t imagine how you’d have a specific mathematical proof for that. But perhaps you’re thinking of a looser formulation, along the lines of “in any axiomatic system, there will be unprovable, yet true statements.” ? Something along the lines of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem might be what you’re thinking of, but I personally wouldn’t think it holds much sway here.
Just want to come in here and say that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem does *not* say that “in any axiomatic system, there will be unprovable, yet true statements.” This is a common misconception, and totally false. Propositional logic, for instance, is a formal system that is complete, consistent, and furthermore decidable. What Godel’s Theorem states is that in any consistent axiomatization of the natural numbers, there will be true statements about the natural numbers that cannot be derived from those axioms.
Maybe you knew that already and were just being terse, but I see this a lot, and I felt compelled to correct it.
So you’re asking “I get dosed with PCP, I berzerkly kill Tina with a crowbar, am I liable?”