Asperger's as a defense in court -- my unpopular opinion

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If you have a good enough lawyer, Asperger's can be responsible for anything.

blaming asperger's for bad behavior is a two-way street in the legal system. if it's a valid defense for doing wrong, it's a valid argument for declaring someone unfit to parent. we're on a slippery slope if we generalize. there may be features of a certain case that make asperger's a reason to find someone innocent of a criminal charge such as harassment, or to find a person unfit to parent because of extreme selfishness leading to neglect, but I'd hate to have the courts start generalizing and putting us all in one asperger basket of incompetency.

According to my criminal law instructor, the guy was alleged to have been stalking someone who he thought was his friend because the person pretended to be his friend for a while, and the person avoided him thinking he'd "clue in to the non verbal cues" without verbally telling him to leave them alone.

That makes some sense. In my case, I don't have that problem, but as a child, kids pretended to like me to get what they wanted then dumped me, so rather than "stalk" would-be friends, I learned that if someone liked me, it probably was just to use me and then dump me.

Why not? How can you be sure that no Aspies can be so severely impacted by their disability that it leads them to commit a crime?

a lot of diseases or disabilities can lead someone to commit a crime, but I for one would hate to see the cause listed as "autism" instead of the specific dysfunction that led to the crime.

if someone with AS or ASD is accused of stalking, there's still a burden of proof to be met. the "victim" pretended to be friends, so set ground rules for the defendant then changed them without notifying the defendant. the victim isn't a victim just because they assumed the defendant could read their mind. in fact I'd probably press harassment charges against the so-called victim for emotionally abusing a disabled person.

Okay, here is a true story ... and you all decide. And for those who do not know, I self-diagnosed as an Aspie about a month ago at 59 years of age.

I began looking for someone like me at age 5, and I have been an oddball misfit for my entire life. At age 26, I finally got the "purchasing agent" job I had always wanted. The company had no purchasing or inventory system in place when I began there, and within a few months I was outperforming everyone else in that company doing the same kind of work in other locations ... and at about a year the stress had become so great that I wanted to get out but I could not tolerate the idea of being seen as "weak" or as some kind of failure. My boss was a man I had known since my never-fit-in gradeschool days, and I could not stand the thought of being laughed at again.

At a year-and-a-half into that job, I found out my boss and my wife (now ex) had been having an affair for the previous six months ... and I decided to let the entire world know I was all done with being laughed at, pushed around, stepped on ... you call it whatever you might. I thought about doing that man some extreme physical harm, but that is just not my nature. Even to this day, I have never been in a fist fight for my entire life. So ...

After carefully confirming what I had been told about the affair, I very calmly got a can of gasoline from the garage and drove out to my workplace and set my desk and office on fire ... then drove to the police station and sat down and told them I would be sitting right there when they began looking for me in a few minutes. Why did I do what I did? Quite simply, I was not going to let that man keep and continue to benefit from all of my hard work after using me and deceiving me and completely betraying my loyalty to him. I had really thought maybe *he* would end up being my friend. In court, the judge considered my felony as a "crime of passion" and was extremely lenient at the time of my sentencing and even after that when he went even further and released me early ... and all of that to say this:

All of that happened in 1978, and I believe that judge treated me as an Aspie should have been treated even though Asperger's had yet to be recognized and the prosecutor's office was greatly upset by what he did and the local mental-health folks diagnosed me as manic-depressive with psychotic tendencies and put me on thorazine.

Point: An Aspie was defended by rightness and reasonable justice, not legal or neurological argument.

It would have to be something that is committed without criminal intent. For example, an Aspie teen might innocently ask whether a female acquaintance wanted to have sex with him, and it could be taken as harassment. Or he mightn't know the boundaries in relationships, and end up stalking somebody without realizing it. In those cases, if I were the judge, I would mandate social-skills classes for the offender, rather than a jail sentence, since they were committed out of ignorance. This is really a very limited group of offenses, though, along the lines of a shoplifter who doesn't understand what money is, or an old guy with Alzheimer's who forgets to put on pants before going for his morning walk (almost never happens, incidentally; putting on pants is such a big part of peoples' routines that by the time they forget, they've generally also forgotten how to walk...). The one category I think you would be justified in using AS as a defense was when the crime was committed out of ignorance; and even then, you shouldn't just walk free--you should be made to get training that will keep you from doing it again. The only limit I'd put on that training would be that it should NOT be a residential program, because residential programs do nothing to help you live in the real world, separate you from your family, and often cause psychological institutionalization in addition to all the other problems that survivors face.

That would depend on a few things:

1) How severe was this "stalking/harassment"?
2) He didn't verbally communicate with this guy AT ALL?

I believe that the laws on harassment are essentially set up so that the 'victim' should verbally (or through writing) inform the accused that the communication is unwanted. Until then, it's not illegal.

The only exception is if the nature of the stalking is particularily intrusive or threatening in nature (breaking and entering, death threats, rape threats). Even then, they take stalking cases against women much more seriously than stalking cases against men.

This case seems odd. Instances like this happen all the time, even among two NTs. Most of the time, people just verbally reject someone and be done with it. It takes a rather hyper-sensitive person to bring a stalking case to court, without even verbally responding to the accused.

From a Canadian context there are a few issues (I can't speak to the state of the law in other jurisdictions)

1) Does the condition prevent the person from forming the intention to commit the offence? If a person provokes my triggers, I suppose it might be possible to deprive me of the ability to form the specific intent required for some offences, but I don't think that I could be deprived of general intent (we draw a legal distinction between the two in Canada--murder is a specific intent offence; manslaughter is the general intent included offence). In this respect AS would be no different than any other factual circumstance affecting intent, like drunkenness or provocation.

2) Does the condition prevent the person from acting independently. The defence is known in Canada as automatism and it is extremely rare. Again, my personal experience with AS is that it has never controlled my actions. It is more likely to inhibit my actions than to prompt them.

3) Does the condition prevent the person from appreciating the nature of their actions. This is the essence of the defence of insanity. And here again, my experience wouldn't support the plea.

That's just my personal situation--I can't, of course, speak to other people's experience or the potential for a successful plea on that basis.

The problem with the insanity issue,is that if a person with AS pleads insantiy, they will detained unti they are "cured",in which case, the person will be incarcerated in a mental hospital until there is a cure for autism, which basically means a life sentence with no parole for a crime which would have ended in just probation or a short defined time behind bars if the accused just plead guilty.

I don't get the point, nothing you have mentioned finish with jail in Italy. Stalking is something usually police completly ignore. Destroying the work (well not with a gazoline can) is something everybody do before firing, I don't know. AS is a "justification" for some "bad-behavior" but there is a great difference between bad and criminal, at least here.
For istance 1 year ago I've run into a girl with my car. She wasn't on the pedestrian walk, she runned into the street. I didn't stopped my self after that and stopped at about 20 meter of distance. She started accusing me of that. I saw her (she was completly safe) and I started laughting. I laught because she was crazy, I was hurted by car 5 times in my life (i've difficult pay attention while walking) and I never harassed the driver. I simply putted myself up and started walking again, so she was crazy for me that she prefer to waste her time instead of going for her way. I had an hard time explaining my Point of view to the police but actually I ended up with only a small "bill " and 3 hours of time wasted. Bad and criminal behaviour are different.