The 1960s legal drama “The Defenders,” created and often scripted by Reginald Rose, who wrote “Twelve Angry Men,” featured a two-part episode, “Madman,” critical of the M’Naghten Rule, the legal standard for insanity that holds if a killer cannot distinguish right from wrong, he can’t be punished for it. The killer being defended by the father-and-son Preston defense team argued that the “irresistible impulse” standard should apply to their defendant, who knew killing was wrong but who couldn’t stop himself. Unfortunately, that standard wasn’t accepted in New York.

An alternate standard for insanity in crimes involves the “irresistible impulse” defense, which was highlighted, somewhat cynically, in the classic drama “Anatomy of a Murder.” Most states don’t acknowledge it. An even more lenient standard holds that if the killer’s murderous mindset was “the product of a mental illness or defect,” that may mitigate guilt.

I don’t know whether Brown qualifies for any of these, but the pundits seem not to care. He did a terrible thing to an innocent young woman, and therefore deserves to die as soon as possible and painfully if that can be arranged. I’ve heard and read that perspective before: if someone commits a brutal murder intentionally, it doesn’t matter what his thought processes were at the time. He did it, he meant to do it, kill him. At the other pole is the Clarence Darrow argument: nobody who is sane and not damaged by society deliberately kills anyone, and a legal system that punishes victims of modern life, poverty, poor parenting, unfortunate genetics and other social maladies is brutal and unfeeling.

Our system also requires that a defendant be able to confer meaningfully with his or her lawyer and comprehend the process he is experiencing. While the public thinks there are a lot of these cases because of high profile examples like Reagan shooter John Hinkley, not guilty by reason of insanity pleas are in less than 1% of all cases and fail about 75% of the time. When the insanity plea succeeds, these killers often spend more time in secure psychiatric confinement than they would have in prison.

I am not sure where the ethics of these cases belongs. Brown is certainly a worst case: he’s scary, he killed a defenseless young girl, he walked away chuckling, and he was a serial offender. But how different is he, really, from the 11-year-old boy who was charged with first-degree murder for killing his 5-year-old brother in Colorado?

“[T]here is likely to be months, if not years, more of legal and medical back-and-forth while Iryna’s killer continues to avoid full justice,” concludes PJ Media’s Catherine Selagado. The killer is allegedly schizophrenic. Full justice for these pundits means retribution. Full justice for the mentally ill—or “bad seed” kids, should mean something else.