Being a retard or at least "slow in the mind" is actually a valid mitigating circumstance on why you might not have been able to fully grasp your crime and thus why you should get a reduced sentence or alternative sentencing.
Yup, Chris' defense will probably rely on this.
(because not knowing it wasn't a crime is never a valid legal defense).
Sort of, see below.
Just a quick aside, ignorance of a law is a valid legal defense. I get that it's everyone's mom's favorite saying when they did something wrong as a kid, but appropriately it's a wives' tale.
Before anyone thinks I'm saying Chris could claim ignorance, no he can't. It applies specifically to goofy laws that states/towns enact and part of being able to claim ignorance is the town does nothing to post the law appropriately.
Say a town says you can't slurp soup, but doesn't post it anywhere, it isn't up in the restaurant district, stores aren't required to have it posted, etc... in that instance, because the law isn't common sense and you not only had no way of knowing, but no way of find out/being informed, ignorance is a valid argument.
It goes without saying that say you were doing something illegal and you killed someone, and the state you are in has felony murder statutes, you can't claim ignorance because you didn't know about that law.
The test is if the defendant had the capacity or capability to understand that it was a crime. If they literally had no way of knowing. The soup slurping is an example where it was not common knowledge, and the law was not posted anywhere, so they had no way of knowing. The same would apply to a stretch of road with a 35 mph speed limit with no sign posted, surrounded by road with a posted 55 mph speed limit. That's why podunk town speed traps all have signs, though sometimes maliciously placed in a way where people might not see them if they aren't paying attention, as not paying attention while driving is no defense. (speed trap towns like to place their speed limit signs across from some distracting thing like a big garish billboard)
You can also lack the capacity due to mental dysfunction so bad that you had no ability to understand that you committed a crime. This is the core of the NGRI defense. I don't think that will happen here as Chris has expressed that he knew incest is illegal and wrong in the past. They'd have to prove that Chris had somehow become so mentally damaged that he had no way to remember that.
That's an incredibly high bar, because incest is one of those common-knowledge prohibitions, along with rape, murder, robbery, etc. that people are just assumed to know is illegal. So much so that people are surprised when they find out they live in a place that it *isn't* illegal.
Chris is lucky that mental-illness-based diminished capacity defenses have only very recently been allowed in Virginia court again.
He had shown the inability to learn on a level that is more extreme than that of the average cow. Continued reinforcement on "dont touch girls" and girls saying "don't do that" over and over even with consistent unending reinforcement for decades has never managed to register and it's not just because hes a creep. It's because he is physically incapable of impulse control.
He can control his impulses, just not based on a rational assessment from past data. People keep trying to train Chris like a human, when he really needs to be trained like a dog. You don't try to get dogs to understand complex ideas of social interaction, you get them to understand "Do this and bad thing immediately happens."
"Don't do that." is not a bad thing, it's just a failure that means his girl-touching didn't have the desired effect. Chris loses nothing when a girl says "Don't do that". To a person with a somewhat-functioning brain, "Don't do that" means that there are potential future social consequences that can cause misfortune in the future.
To Chris, "Don't do that" means he just doesn't get to touch anymore for some unspecified period (usually a few minutes to a few hours). It's not a consequence, just a temporary restriction.
On the other hand, Chris knows not to do certain things that cause him direct and immediate consequences of a simple enough nature that a dog would understand. He knows to let his food cool down before he eats it so he doesn't burn his mouth. He knows to run away when threatened (even though the situation is his fault to begin with).
If he got punched in the face every time he touched a girl. He would stop touching girls. Chris can learn basic things, and his impulses can be controlled with a reflexive understanding of the consequences, just not an intellectual understanding of them.
A lot of people here have grossly overestimated his executive functioning levels for years but thats only because it's inconceivable for people who arent experienced in it to realize that he isn't mentally capable of understanding or doing certain things and wouldn't ever be even under the best care.
Just because he can put together sentences, some narc stories, word salads, or learn a few more complex pieces vocabulary doesn't mean he's not a clinical retard who will always need a wrangler.
Chris learned the coping mechanism of self-aggrandizement, instead of the mechanism of self-doubt. His impulsivity, stupidity, and lack of understanding of others can probably never be fixed, but he might be able to be trained out of his coping mechanisms, even at his age. Self-doubt can be crippling too, but it helps autists make fewer mistakes.
It doesn't help that most self-help promoted in the mainstream is built around giving people more self-confidence.
Chris is a modern day Henry Darger and I hope to God whoever stumbles upon his OC’s when the room is cleaned out sees their value or knows who Chris is. They unironically belong in a museum.
Even if they're thrown out, at least much of them have been documented. If Aunt Harriet did throw them out, she's rather akin to ISIS or the Taliban destroying ancient monuments and works of art, but at least photos of those destroyed works still exist.
www.mayoclinic.org
