Mental illness if difficult to define because it has different effects on the brain whether it affects your intelligence, your thought process, and judgement. However, the courts have a difficult time deciphering between someone who was born with a mental illness and a person who got injured and suffers from an mental illness. In the case of John Ferguson at the age of thirteen he started experiencing the first stages of a mental illness after his father died. He became very depressed and that resulted to him seeing “shadow people.” Ferguson also started delusioning about his father being alive and had conversations with him.As a result Ferguson’s mental health increasing got worse and worse by the time he was twenty-one. He got a gunshot wound to the head which made him hostile and paranoid. When he was admitted to the hospital to receive treatment he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He also believed that he was the “Prince of God” and thought he would resurrect and sit on the right hand of God. Ferguson committed a crime which resulted to him receiving a thirty-four year death row sentencing. In Ferguson’s case although he suffered from a mental illness that increasingly progressed he was still given the death penalty. Many individuals have a story that is very similar to the outcome that Ferguson received after committing a crime. These individuals were not exempt from the death penalty although they should have. The courts still insisted and felt that these individuals were liable for their actions. However, in the case of Ferguson he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, this illness interfered with his thoughts causing him to see things that actually was not
Mental illness if difficult to define because it has different effects on the brain whether it affects your intelligence, your thought process, and judgement. However, the courts have a difficult time deciphering between someone who was born with a mental illness and a person who got injured and suffers from an mental illness. In the case of John Ferguson at the age of thirteen he started experiencing the first stages of a mental illness after his father died. He became very depressed and that resulted to him seeing “shadow people.” Ferguson also started delusioning about his father being alive and had conversations with him.As a result Ferguson’s mental health increasing got worse and worse by the time he was twenty-one. He got a gunshot wound to the head which made him hostile and paranoid. When he was admitted to the hospital to receive treatment he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He also believed that he was the “Prince of God” and thought he would resurrect and sit on the right hand of God. Ferguson committed a crime which resulted to him receiving a thirty-four year death row sentencing. In Ferguson’s case although he suffered from a mental illness that increasingly progressed he was still given the death penalty. Many individuals have a story that is very similar to the outcome that Ferguson received after committing a crime. These individuals were not exempt from the death penalty although they should have. The courts still insisted and felt that these individuals were liable for their actions. However, in the case of Ferguson he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, this illness interfered with his thoughts causing him to see things that actually was not