If James Holmes won’t confide in Allah will narcoanalysis succeed?
WHAT to do with James Holmes, the lone gunman who shot to kill in an Aurora, Colorado, cinema? The Washington Times reports that Holmes has turned to God:
The man who shot up an Aurora, Colo., movie theater during a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” last summer has reportedly converted to Islam and prays up to five times a day.
That was first reported in the National Enquirer, which attributes news of Holmes’ spiritual bent to an unnamed source. “He has brainwashed himself into believing he was on his own personal jihad and that his victims were infidels,” a prison source told the National Enquirer.
How the news organ knows how often Holmes prays is not explained? The godly can pray hundreds of times a day. They do it silently. But this seems to be about Islam more than Holmes. The paper adds:
But most Muslim inmates are not happy with the convict’s new religion. “None of them condone forms of terrorism or extremism,” the source added. “And they don’t want their religion to be connected to that awful shooting.”
But he wasn’t a Muslim when he shot up the cinema? All we know is that when young Holmes attended a Lutheran church. He was a Christian when he killed so many. There is no connection to Islam other than the NE’s story. And doesn’t terrorism imply a cause? Your commit acts of terror to instill fear and push an agenda. What was Holmes’ agenda? It wasn’t jihad. The Muslim prisoners need not worry. Maybe a truth serum can find out why Holmes went on a murderous rampage?
Judge William Sylvester has ruled that if Aurora mass-shooter James Holmes could plead insanity. If so, he has to undergo narcoanalysis, “in which defendants are injected with drugs to lower their inhibitions and presumably be more willing to tell the truth about their alleged crimes under questioning by prosecutors.”
If God can’t get it out of them, can therapy? Vaughan Bell wonders:
This was born in the 1920s where the gynaecologist Robert House noticed that women who were given scopolamine to ease the birth process seemed to go into a ‘twilight state’ and were more pliant and talkative. House decided to test this on criminals and went about putting prisoners under the influence of the drug while interviewing them as a way of ‘determining innocence or guilt’. Encouraged by some initial, albeit later recanted, confessions House began to claim that it should be used routinely in police investigations. This probably would have died a death as a dubious medical curiosity hadTime magazine not run an article in their 1923 edition entitled “The Truth-Compeller” about House’s theory – making him and the ‘truth drug’ idea national stars. These approaches became militarised: firstly as ‘narcoanalysis’ was used to treat traumatised soldiers in the World War Two, and secondly as it was taken up by the CIA in the Cold War as a method for interrogation and became a centrepiece of the secret Project MKUltra.
Does it work?
There is no evidence that ‘narcoanalysis’ actually helps in any way, shape or form, and at moderate to high doses, some of the drugs may actually impede memory or make it more likely that the person misremembers. I suspect that the actual result of the bizarre ruling in the ‘Colorado shooter’ case will just be that psychiatrists will be able to give a potentially psychotic suspect a simple anti-anxiety drug without the resulting evidence being challenged.
So. It’s highly questionable. Maybe Holmes can covert to Catholicism and confide in a priest? Or maybe we don’t need to know why he did it because there is no valid reason for murdering innocent people sat in a cinema.
Photo: This courtroom sketch shows James Holmes being escorted by a deputy as he arrives at preliminary hearing in district court in Centennial, Colo., on Monday, Jan. 7, 2013. Investigators say Holmes opened fire during the midnight showing of the latest Batman movie on July 20, killing 12 people and wounding dozens.
Posted: 22nd, March 2013 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
