Drugging the Mentally Ill

One year ago this month there was a horrible event in Tuson, AZ. A man, with a history of drug use and disturbed behavior, opened fire on a crowd in a supermarket parking lot. It was a meet and greet for the local congress woman. Jaded Loughner was captured and assrested at the scene, but not before he killed 6 people (including a 9 year old who had come to meet the congress woman) and injured 13 others (including congress woman Gabby Giffords herself.) The case has been well publicized due to Gabby Giffords amazing recovery from the head wound, and AZ lax gun laws. Then fuel thrown on the fire by press coverage and the current political climit here in the US, which is highlighting more and more of people's differences, than their commonalities. For Gabby Giffords is a "liberal" and Jared Loughner is...well...not.

As I said, the shootings happened just over a year ago, and Jaded Loughner has yet to go on trial. He has been declared incompetent to stand trial. Instead he is in a facility, being forcefully give psychiatric medication, in order to make him fit for trial.

Now, the whole concept of this seems, just wrong to me. I do believe everyone deserves their day in court, but if you are not mentally competent to stand trial, are you mental competent enough to understand the crime you are accused of? And how moral is it to forcefully give psychiatric drug to someone, anyone? Is it different on a case to case basis? In this case, in particular, the accused was witnessed and apprehended at the scene. There is little doubt he pulled the trigger. So then the question becomes, did he knowingly and maliciously commit this crime? Based on his current mental state, I'm going to have to say, that there is no way he could have been mentally sound enough to understand the out come. Did he do something unspeakably horrible? Yes. Did innocent people get hurt, die because of it? Yes. Do I think he is a dangerous person? Absolutely! But how is forcing him to be medicated enough to sit through a trial helping him as a person or us as a society? What is the moral answer here? We do not want to go back to a time when healthy people were committed to state hospitals just on someone else, but if the accused can not pass a psych evaluation in order to stand trial, is it worth sending them to trial at all?  I'm just not sure, and is the bigger issue here how we as a society treat the mentally ill in general.