An interesting topic was taught today at my Psychology class, where we learned in-depth REM and non-REM sleep disorders and how they affect how we act, consciously or unconsciously. Two terms surfaced, which were "Sleep Walking" and "Night Terrors". Actually three. It's called "REM behavior disorder", where the mechanism to paralyze your body during REM mode fails, allowing you to thrash about during your sleep and 'act out your dreams and nightmares'.
Let's refresh our terms just so we are clear on what these mean, shall we?
Sleep Walking: The process in which during sleep, sleeper has chronic episodes of moving or walking.
Night Terrors: Not to be associated with 'nightmares', sleeper experiences extreme fear, in which he/she screams and runs around without waking from the dream.
During REM sleep (rapid eye movement), your brain is nearly as active as it is when you're awake, which may explain the vividness and realities of dreams. With any of these terms, the sleeper can be active as usual, except they aren't 'experiencing' real-life scenarios--they are still sleeping! They are able to do many things that they may not normally do, such as eat raw bacon or other unsanitary meals, walk to the neighbors' porches to be mischievous, or do more serious offenses, such as larceny and murder.
Can these experiences and disorders justify said crimes? It goes without saying that dreams and states of consciousness are one of the fastest-growing topics of today and are otherwise very unknown to us. With proper claims, sources, and evidence, can a person convicted for a crime be set free, because they really didn't 'do it', regardless of what crime it is?
Let me be very clear that it really shouldn't matter what the crime was.
How about if someone with sleep disorders wants to commit a crime, and uses his illness as an alibi? One can be proven to be sick, but there is no way to prove the person was sleeping at the time. I know it's not a very likely scenario, but should be considered nonetheless.
One point against this would be the Modus Operandi. Why would this person do the crime? When we think of sleepers that go on these episodes and commit the crimes, they are usually people that:
--Do not attempt to clean up the scene
--Commit crimes against people for which they have no feelings against
--commit crimes in an unusual manner
--are in complete shock for what they have come to realization.
If you have a man who killed his fiancee from his sleep disorder, you would expect him to be very broken. Unless there was some bad blood between him and the fiancee, there should be no reason to suspect that the sleeper wanted to kill the victim. Thus, his case would just be homicidal, as in an unintentional killing.
The sleeper has the freedom to move about and enjoy the life of his/her home, as well as not face punishments for what he or she couldn't control.
cant do that, its an uncontrolable, naturally occuring thing, like being gay, and you can't force a gay person to stay in his house, so he doesn't get beat up, i say make it a choice. first time it happens and it can be identified as this disorder, then let them off the hook, if from there they do nothing to prevent it themselves, its jail, or death, or my personal favorite, BANISHMENT
