I think I'm with Connie on the being bothered by it. On the one hand, if she's not competent to stand trial at the moment, is she really competent to make medical decisions for herself? On the other, uh... I don't know. It seems iffy. Is there a relative who can make decisions on her behalf? I guess I'm bothered by the idea of a stranger making the decision about whether she, if the "she" under treatment can be considered the same "she", would want, or should have.
I'm not sure that was at all sense-making, especially with my "'she's'". That was a flurry of punctuation, wasn't it? To some extent, it's this question that keeps bugging me about treatment against the patient's will -- if I'm made delusional by fever, then even if I think the doctors are trying to kill me, I'd be grateful afterward if you went ahead and treated me anyway. But if you brainwashed me, I might be grateful afterward, but that doesn't make it ethical.
I may be wandering from the point.
"Competent" people can refuse medical treatment. What happens when you're not (or might not be) competent, in the legal sense? Do you let someone not competent make life-changing decisions?
I don't have a general answer to this question, but either the court or a guardian, for the most part, makes the decisions.
Also of course your rights are curtailed once you are indicted. They get to imprison you, for instance. They may also be freer to ignore your medical preferences.
I don't have a general answer to this question, but either the court or a guardian, for the most part, makes the decisions.
Yeah, I was actually going at that rhetorically, which probably wasn't clear. Connie's original point was more about the ethics of taking this course, rather than the legality, I think. That's the part that's a lot harder to answer.
Always nice to feel loved.
I hear you're going back to the gym. I started excersizing, too.
Yay exercise! How's Tuckson?
I'm of two minds on this one (no pun intended.) From a civil liberatarian point of view, a person should never be forced to be sane as long as they're willing to suffer the consequences, i.e. remaining locked up forever. But if they are never sane, they can't evaluate whether they'd rather be insane.
Maybe they should give folks drugs to make them sane long enough to decide whether they'd rather stand trial or stay insane indefinitely.
Hi Perkins.
Tucson is warm and sunny. I am enjoying the swimming pool and my little studio apartment. But I do miss my friends something awful. The weekly poker tournaments at the bar down the road help a little bit. And the people I work with are nice.
Maybe they should give folks drugs to make them sane long enough to decide whether they'd rather stand trial or stay insane indefinitely.
That's kind of my thinking. On the one hand, I'm squicked by the idea of forcibly altering someone's mental state. On the other, she did commit a crime and thereby forfeited a good chunk of rights. I guess I'd come down for medicating her for at least the hearing, in order to ensure that she had a fair shot at understanding what was happening.
eta: Also, if she wasn't medicated and she stood trial and was convicted and then at a later date returned to her sanity, couldn't she sue the state for not making sure she comprehended the charges?
