Suicide

[bennyboy]

Quite frankly, I think premeditation is irrelevant.  It's whether or not the person can understand the consequences of thier actions that counts.  One can premeditate their death but still not be able to understand the consequences of taking their life.

I agree with this.  I also believe premeditation is irrelevant, since a brain addled by torment is premeditating on a bad world view.  An obvious example would be that of a severe schizophrenic, who plans for months to shoot up a school, because his dog, who he thinks is God, tells him to.  His premeditation is not the issue-- it is that his brain isn't thinking right.

I think the same thing goes for knowledge of consequences, and for the same reason: someone with a twisted world view may not be able to make sensible value judgments.  A suicidal person definitely is aware that he will cease to exist, and knows that others will know about this death-- so there is knowledge of consequences.  However, because of the confusion caused by his torment, his own current suffering seems infinite, and that of others is rated so low that it is less and less relevant to his behavior as he gets closer to his final decision and the act that goes with it.  So it's more an inability to care about the consequences than a cognitive inability to understand what they are.

Now, let's take a sociopath, who has no capacity for understanding or caring about the feelings of others. Is his serial killing also morally neutral? He knows people will say they are hurt by him-- however, he has no capacity to make value judgments based on those words. Again, the IDEA of consequence is there, but the ability to care about the consequences is completely lacking.