Manic!

On an episode from Law and Order: SVU called “Manic”, there was a shooting in a junior highschool. Two classmates were killed by gunshots, and detectives Olivia Benson (Mariska Hartigay) and Elliot Stabler (Christoper Meloni) found a third student in the boiler room calling for help. The boy was also injured on the side of his head; he is then brought into custody to be questioned on what he witnessed. He says a man had brought him down into the boiler room and shot upward accidentally shooting him on the side of the head. As detectives Stabler and Benson investigate the case, it all leads back to this boy, and they go to his house looking for him and come across very graphic drawing he had created. One of the drawings was the reflection of the case they are investigating, a dark alley with a dark figure holding a gun and shooting to young boys execution style. This immediately puts the boy as a suspect and is brought once again into questioning. (image from here).

However, this time, the detectives see something very peculiar about the boy and see how he rocks back and forth in his seat as he mumbles things to himself. He shouts out “they are going to get you too!!!” The boy suffers from a case of depression and his mother had forced him to take certain pills that came from a company that pulled a scheme and sent out pills to families with a history if depression. This was an illegal act that was not approved by any doctors and This particular family became a victim of. The pills made the boy hallucinate, hearing and seeing things that were not there. The hallucinations finally led to the killing of these two school mates, he told detectives the voices told him to kill them. He wasn’t trialed as a juvenile nor pressed any charges, because they believed he was mentally ill and had no fault in this case.
So, do you agree with this? This does happen today, when crimes are committed by those who are not mentally unstable. Many years ago in Texas, a mother drowned her five children because she said the “voices told her to do so”. Should people like this be convicted? Or are they really not at fault? It’s so hard to actually put yourself in these shoes and make this decision. I guess it depends on the all the evidence that can lead to a conclusion. Now, going back to the episode, how do these boys get justice? Also, in reality, when a crime like this happens, how does anyone get justice? (image found here)