@astrotheological,
astrotheological;25346 wrote:Hallucination: An alien is talking to you all the time trying to convince you to kill someone. Eventually you kill someone and the alien puts the dead body in his ship. (The whole thing is just a hallucination but the person hallucinating might not realize it)
vs.
Reality: You kill someone.
What should happen: Obviously if you killed someone in reality you would deserve to go to jail, but if you killed someone and it was a hallucination, would you deserve to go to jail? What should happen to this person?
Depends on the bottomline cause of the hallucination. If the person having had the hallucination make the choice to take a substance which created him/her to hallucination legally they should be held accountable for their decision and the results/conclusions to said results.
If a person had a mental effect which caused a hallucination without any mental choice having been made on the part of said person they may be able to legally have the defense of insanity. Even this can be over looked if said person has had a history of mental illness and chooses not to take the medications which have been proven to protect said person from having hallucinations.
Short answer -- I do not think it is likely to work as a legal defense.
Lost1
