The Asperger’s Plea
Slate has an interesting piece on the slight trend of criminal defendants with Asperger’s being able to avoid guilty pleas or prison sentences because of their condition. The arguments range from the insulting and lame — like the case Robert Durst, the wealthy heir who chopped up his neighbor and got off the first degree murder charge because a “psychiatrist testified that his actions were the result of emotional deficits and impulsive behavior associated with Asperger’s” — to the more plausible, namely that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to put people on the Autistic spectrum into an American prison.
What’s slightly troubling about this trend is that it allows clever defense attorneys to take advantage of broad, crude stereotypes about people on the Autism spectrum (they’re unemotional! they love patterns! they don’t understand people!) and then use those to explain why clearly premeditated crimes shouldn’t be punished. What’s striking about those arguments is that many people who commit premeditated crimes that don’t have a clear self-interest explanation probably have all sorts of social issues and lack empathy and basic social skills (which is not to say that aspies necessarily have those problems). On the other hand, I find the cruel and unusual argument pretty compelling, though I think one could argue that the American prison system is cruel and unusual punishment for most people.
