No one believes more than I do that we, as a nation, have way too many laws on the books. Now I’m not one of those libertarian nut-jobs who believes that the government should not be allowed to require driver’s licenses, but that notwithstanding, there are still entirely too many laws, many of them inane and unnecessary.
For example, did you know that in New Jersey it is illegal to wear a bullet-proof vest while committing, or attempting to commit, murder? Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that committing or attempting to commit murder was a crime in and of itself. However, those mental giants in the state legislature deemed this law necessary, and it is but one of a countless number of ridiculous laws.
I bring this up because I recently read about a murderer who was awarded life insurance proceeds from a policy on the life of the person he murdered. How can that happen? After all, there is a law on the books that prevents a criminal from subsequently profiting from his crime, such as writing a book about it and receiving any profits generated from its sale.
In this particular case the man was acquitted, by reason of insanity, of murdering his fiancé even though there was no question that he did kill her. He was the sole beneficiary of the life insurance policies on the victim. While the judge did order that almost 90% of the payout be put in a trust for the benefit of the couple’s two children, he also ordered about 10% be put in a trust for the killer to be used for mental health services.
Now I’m neither an attorney nor a mental health professional, but it is my opinion that the killer should have received nothing. There must be some loophole in the law that the judge took advantage of, because obviously, this killer now has the very real potential of profiting from his crime, of which there is a law against.
One of the problems with laws is that they are open to interpretation. You think it means one thing and I another. Perhaps that’s what happened in the aforementioned case. The judge may have interpreted it as his responsibility to provide for the murderer.
So while I believe there are entirely too many laws, one more to close this loophole would barely be noticed. And would prevent people who commit crimes, regardless of their sanity at the time, from profiting from their wrong doing. Seems to me to be worth the trade-off.