Boston Bombing aftermath, any similarity to the Lincoln assassination aftermath?

[Jenny]

MyNameisKate, I am truly sorry to hear that you had experienced horrible times with someone declared "criminally insane." I don't know the circumstances but I do know that many times the "criminally insane" are not actually insane but mentally ill. 99% of mentally ill people distinguish right from wrong even in depressions, mania, or what other symptoms they have. So if you've had to deal with someone officially labeled "criminally insane" by the law who is questionable regarding that defense, I really am sorry for you. That had to be a nightmare, and I respect your opinion in regards to it.

However I do think we are getting off base here.

Quote:Surely they have all had at least a moment or two of lucidity and rationality at some point in their lives, where they realized that they were a threat to other people, or had already hurt other people, yet they did nothing to stop their future criminal behavior, which they knew in those lucid moments (however few and far between they may have been) that they would commit again and again.

I am not quite sure how Ted Bundy, "criminally insane," or "future criminal behavior" fit in with John Wilkes Booth. John Wilkes Booth wasn't a serial killer who went on for years of his life to murder innocent women to satisfy his own sick desires. There is no comparison, period.

Definition of criminally insane: A mental defect or disease that makes it impossible for a person to understand the wrongfulness of his acts or, even if he understands them, to distinguish right from wrong.

Even if he was bipolar and having an episode, I highly doubt John Wilkes Booth was criminally insane by any means. Even though people have delusions of grandeur and quick to act during manic episodes (as in Booth deciding within three days that killing Lincoln would apparently stir something so big within the battered South that it would rise again, or else that killing Lincoln would avenge the South because in Booth's mind the South just had to be avenged as if it would change anything), people having manic episodes are able to distinguish right from wrong.

Booth would have known it was wrong to kill, having a horrible manic episode or not. He even mentioned that "we hated to kill" in his diary; he knew killing was wrong. Unfortunately he did it anyway, and that was his conscious choice even if he was in a mania which fueled - note I say fueled, not created - his thoughts that killing the president would actually *do* something helpful or avenge the South. His conscious choice, bipolar disorder or not.

**I am not trying to make excuses for John Wilkes Booth or defend his horrible choice to kill by suggesting he had a mental illness. I am simply analyzing his actions from a perspective most people do not consider but that is entirely possible.**

Ted Bundy isn't even comparable so I won't get into that. Completely different in all respects save that both of them had last names that started with "B."

Anyway I've explained my theory and don't have much more to say.