Kip Kinkel lawyers to argue for new trial this week

[LeighAnn]

Source: KGW (Portland, Ore.)

Lawyers for Kip Kinkel will argue this week that he should have a new trial because he was incapable of understanding his plea of guilty to killing his parents and two high school classmates.

Kinkel, now 24, was sentenced to 112 years in prison for the 1998 killings. Last week, he was transferred from a youth facility to an Oregon prison.

On Tuesday, Judge Joseph Guimond is scheduled to hear psychiatric experts testify that when he entered the plea, Kinkel's mental health "had deteriorated so badly that he was seen curled up in a ball, hearing voices, and suffering from a panic attack," according to court documents.


Lawrence Matasar of Portland, Kinkel's attorney, said in court papers that the lawyers who represented Kinkel before the plea bargain ordered him to stop taking his medication as part of a "strategy to ensure that the state's experts observed petitioner at the height of his mental illness." He resumed taking the medication days before he was to go on trial, but at a low dosage and not in time for it to begin working, Matasar argues.


Read more: http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_061807_news_kinkel_trial.16891ff1.html

[Demeter]

1. So? His Medication Wasn't a Cure--Wasn't Even Sufficient for Stability

Psychotropic drugs can only do so much. The drugs are powerful, but they are trying to override the natural tendencies of the human organism, which can be annoyingly variable and even adaptable, thus defeating the drugs either short term or long term.

I cannot understand the legal fiction that if a person is medicated, he is "all right". It simply isn't true. Ask a diabetic whether one size fits all works in insulin maintenance! Ask someone suffering from allergies. Ask a woman on birth control.

Arggg! Please stop the institutionalisation of stupid ideas into legal precedents!

[LeighAnn]

2. I thought he was on "meds" in the first place

He was taking (or not taking his) Prozac, if memory serves.

[Demeter]

3. Thank You for Proving My Point

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. You prefer outright psychotics entering into plea agreements?

We do have minimum conditions for conscionable contracts, no?

[devilgrrl]

4. If the Jonesboro kids can go free - why not Kip Kinkel?

He wasn't an adult when he mowed down 16 of his classmates and parents. Wouldn't putting him behind bars for the rest of his life be cruel and unusual.... BTW, I'm using the same arguements that people used to defend the Jonesboro kids.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. I think it would be cruel (although all too usual in the vengeance society)

Absolutely.

[bluestateguy]

5. He needs to shut up and serve his sentence

He can get out when he is 127.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Good.

[mitchum]

9. Boo hoo