This thread has officially been SS'd. Classic. We've gone from discussing jury tampering to the ills of prisoner mistreatment, the tie being that of course we caused this woman to be a jihadi freak who's trying to tamper with the jury out of insanity, of course.
I'm siding with HTG (did hell just freeze?). Intentional behavior to get her out of spending the rest of her life in a prison.
In fairness here, I'm trying
not to get into a discussion about the rightness or wrongness of prisoner mistreatment - that is truly for another thread.
You think this behavior is intentional, and I raised the mistreatment as an alternative explanation for it. I don't see any good reason to deny that it's at least possible that she's in fact mentally ill as a result of years of detention. Maybe you don't think it's likely, but it's certainly possible.
I also don't see it as a particularly radical or surprising theory to come up with. If we're searching for an answer, that's the obvious counter-point to "she's planned this as part of her jihad."
Another troubling aspect of the theory that she's doing this intentionally is that it presumes she is in fact a jihadist. Has anyone seen any evidence that this is actually the case?
A lack of evidence that she was an al qaeda operative would tend to support the conclusion that she's genuinely mentally ill, imo.
Edit: Just another point that might be taken into consideration here on the insanity defense. Playing insane to get out of a crime is quite possibly the worst defense available, as the standard for insanity is so high that it is literally almost never met by any defendant, even people with proven mental illnesses. So if she's planned this, whoever advised her was doing so based on the movies, where people do get acquitted by reason of insanity, and not based on real life, where it virtually never happens.
