Insanity

Last week we learned that adult children of divorce will almost always revert to childish behaviors. Case in point, Briana, the daughter previously known as The Most Reasonable Person in Orange County, dissolved into a impertinent, recalcitrant, petulant brat upon meeting her mother's boyfriend. This week Briana grows up and fights like a big girl … but we'll get there soon enough. Elsewhere in the O.C., there are tiaras to be worn and bling to be bought as Alexis goes all out for her little princesses, and Slade decides to declare Gretchen his queen.

Every time we invade a foreign country, it makes the people mad as hell. In no time at all, they start tossing bombs and killing our soldiers. So please, let's stop this audacious insanity and bring the troops home now. Daniel K. Hays Towson

What confessed Wisconsin serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer did to the 17 men and boys he murdered and dismembered in his home over a 10-year period was either the work of a very sick person or of a supremely evil one. A jury in Milwaukee now has to decide.If the jury finds that Dahmer was "sane" at the time he committed his grisly acts, he surely will receive a life sentence in prison. If it finds he was insane, he would be handed over to a mental institution where, after only one year, he could petition for release every six months.

I pay my taxes. I will not offend your intelligence by pretending to enjoy it. Writing that check is about as enjoyable as a chain-saw root canal. But I don't resent it, either. I pay my taxes because this is how we the people pay for things we deem to be in our communal interest. This is how our military is sustained. This is how our children are educated. This is how our potholes are filled. This is how our libraries are stocked. This is how our police officers are supplied.

The squalid case of Ron Price, the Northeast High School teacher charged with having sex with minors at his school, has taken a turn for the worse. A court-appointed psychiatrist reportedly has found that Mr. Price ''suffers from compulsive sexual deviance.'' The operative word here is ''compulsive,'' which means that the psychiatrist alleges that Mr. Price cannot control what he does.Mr. Price's lawyer commented that he was ''very pleased'' with the finding. No doubt. The success of Mr. Price's insanity plea almost certainly will rest on his ability to ''prove'' that he could not control his behavior, and psychiatric testimony to that effect is key. There surely will be further testimony supporting that claim by Mr. Price's own hired-gun psychiatrists.

Lawyers for Kevin G. Johns Jr., the twice-convicted killer charged with strangling a fellow inmate last year on a prison bus en route from Hagerstown to Baltimore, have filed an insanity plea in his defense. In papers filed this week in Worcester County Circuit Court and later received by Baltimore County prosecutors, defense attorneys wrote that Johns is not criminally responsible by reason of insanity for the death of inmate Philip E. Parker Jr. "At the time of the criminal conduct, because of a mental disorder or mental retardation, [Johns]

Arthur Donald Copeland, the Pasadena man charged with shooting his wife in a crowded parking lot at Marley Station mall, yesterday pleaded not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.Also yesterday, a Circuit Court judge denied a prosecutor's request that Copeland's$100,000 bond be revoked. A friend posted bond for Copeland shortly after the 57-year-old man's January arrest on charges of assault withintent to murder, but Copeland's attorney said the man will remain institutionalized until his trial.

This was no ordinary trial. The courtroom was a 150-year-old Protestant church. The attorneys could not object to any testimony. The defendant was 600 years old - and French. Joan of Arc, the warrior burned at the stake for heresy at age 19, appeared in sweat shirt and ponytail before 200 doctors and one Maryland Court of Appeals judge yesterday afternoon as professionals tried to determine whether the girl heroine of France - who claimed to have acted on instructions from God - was, in fact, insane.

HOUSTON -- Andrea Yates, who said she drowned her five children in the bathtub because she believed she was saving them from Satan, was found not guilty by reason of insanity yesterday at her second murder trial. The fact that Yates was mentally ill - she said she believed she was possessed by the devil and that the media had planted bugs in her house to record her poor parenting - was never in doubt during the four-week trial. Neither was the fact that she had committed the crimes: She called 911 minutes after killing the children and confessed.

Prosecutors tried unsuccessfully yesterday to bar testimony about Jason Aaron DeLong's claims of insanity until after a jury decides whether he killed his mother and her boyfriend in her Westminster apartment last summer.Saying that the issues raised by Mr. DeLong's claims of insanity are an inseparable part of his defense, Carroll Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold denied a pretrial prosecution motion to split the expected four-week trial into two parts.Baltimore Assistant State's Attorneys Timothy J. Doory and Ara Crowe, who are prosecuting the case, argued that a jury should not have to weigh Mr. DeLong's insanity arguments at the same time it considers his guilt or innocence.

I could not believe it when I read that Baltimore City is rehabbing four homes on Preston Street with $1.9 million in taxpayer dollars ("Is this house worth $475K?" June 19). The government, as The Sun put it, hopes to spur development there. But if it doesn't work — which it won't — how about paying us back? How many more times will this type of insane rehabbing be allowed to go on at taxpayer expense? Darlene McKinney

Comedian Jon Stewart appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday and participated in a somewhat heated (but relatively polite) exchange with host Chris Wallace.  It was a pretty good debate ( The Sun's venerated TV critic David Zurawik even got a shout-out) but both Stewart and Wallace were, in my opinion, somewhat wrong.  Stewart is partially wrong when he says that Fox News is "A biased organization, relentlessly promoting an ideological agenda under the rubric of being a news organization" -- and not only because he uses the word "rubric" instead of "guise.

I usually try to be the type of person you don't go out of your way to avoid. (Here in Janet's World, we aim high with our interpersonal communication goals.) Most days I am successful in my attempts not to be offensive. As a result, I may even take it for granted that I am at ease in most social situations. But that was before last week, when I took a volunteer job that caused me to stand in the shoes of the undesirables. For two hours, I joined the ranks of the debt collectors, the tax auditors, the process servers — perhaps even the colonoscopy administrators.

Two mental health experts, one for the defense, the other for the prosecution, provided dueling assessments Thursday of the sanity of a 60-year-old woman accused of killing her husband a year ago. The defense witness, Bethany Brand, a psychologist on the faculty of Towson University, said that while Mary C. Koontz "did not seem overly psychotic," she showed some psychotic symptoms, including three types of so-called disassociation disorders, as...

The Montgomery County man accused of drowning his three children, one by one, in the bathtub of an Inner Harbor Hotel filed an insanity plea yesterday - for the second time in an increasingly erratic defense. Several months ago, Mark Castillo's case began with an insanity plea. His lawyers then withdrew the filing as Castillo launched a series of hysterics, efforts to fire his lawyers, and a public request to plead guilty and receive the death penalty. Yesterday, the strategy came full circle as a calm, well-dressed Castillo stood by as his lawyer said she would renew the insanity plea.

Todd Vest was driving twice-convicted killer Kevin G. Johns Jr. from a Hagerstown courthouse back to prison in February 2005 when the inmate began chattering away in the back of the caged van. "They think it's bad now. The killing has just begun," the correctional officer quoted Johns as saying. "They will have to kill me to stop the killing." Vest testified yesterday that he thought nothing of the remarks at the time, since defendants say all kinds of things after they are sentenced in court.

The Anne Arundel County state's attorney yesterday challenged the insanity defense filed by former Northeast High teacher Ronald Walter Price, who is charged with sexually abusing three of his students.Mr. Price, who resigned in May, was charged in April with three counts of child sexual abuse, unnatural and perverted sex practices and a fourth-degree sex offense. He is accused of having sex with students, sometimes in the school building.Mr. Price, 49, has admitted on national television that he had sex with as many as seven students -- including his current wife -- over a 20-year period.

The attorney for a man charged with setting a string of fires in Ellicott City and Columbia asked a judge yesterday to dismiss the arson charges because of a court ruling that the defendant is insane.The defendant, James McManus of Catonsville, faces four counts of arson and two counts of attempted arson in connection with four fires last March.A Baltimore County Circuit Court judge ruled in December that Mr. McManus, 34, by reason of insanity, was not criminally responsible for two Catonsville arson fires last February and March.

Amtrak trains had empty seats. Cab drivers at Baltimore's Penn Station were standing around wondering where everyone was. Traffic on local highways chugged along for much of the day. And through midafternoon, the lines never seemed more than 20-deep at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The lost-baggage offices were nearly empty, and the Starbucks had two more workers than customers. Yesterday was an oddly drama-free day for many travelers, who had braced for a wild, woolly Thanksgiving rush but found themselves ahead of schedule and far less harried than they expected.

Accused of killing his mother with two shotgun blasts as she sat on her sofa, Zachary Thomas Neiman says he wants his day in court. But he has refused to take medicine that prosecutors say would allow doctors to deem him mentally competent to stand trial. "Mr. Neiman has drawn a line in the sand and said, `This is how much medicine I'm taking,'" Assistant State's Attorney Pamela Alban said yesterday at a court hearing. "A lot of it lies with Mr. Neiman." Refusing treatment won't free the 26-year-old Pasadena man anytime soon, experts say. While a person charged with a crime can theoretically avoid trial - or prison - by being found mentally incompetent, that defendant will end up remaining in a state institution where psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, nurses and other experts will continually watch, test and re-evaluate him. "People aren't getting away with anything.