The Matrix Defense

This
week, accused D.C. sniper Lee Malvo may become the latest in a string
of criminal defendants to plead not guilty by reason of "The Matrix"

Basically, if even part of your believes that what we perceive of as
reality is merely an elaborate ruse designed to keep mankind in sonabulistic
bondage then any murderous, destructive behavior can be seen as a heroic
quest for liberation and freedom. If the magic of the movies is "willful
suspension of disbelief", what can we do about those who carry that suspension
of disbelief out of the theater and apply it to the real world.

This is actually a variation on the old "I killed my parents because
they were really robots who replaced my real parents and were trying
to kill me" defense (I’ve been tempted by that one a few times myself.)
On the other hand, viewing conventional reality as an elaborate illusion
which must be broken before true enlightenment can be achieved is a staple
of many mystical disciplines as mainstream as Buddhism.

Malvo told FBI agents that they should "watch `The Matrix"’
if they wanted to understand him, and jailers found lines of dialogue from
the film scribbled on paper in his cell. Even the Columbine killers were "Matrix" fans.
He would not be the first to use this line of reasoning.

In May 2000, Vadim Mieseges, a 27-year-old Swiss exchange student and
former mental patient, confessed to skinning and dismembering his landlady
and stashing her torso in a dumpster in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
The reason, he said, was that she was emitting "evil vibes" and
he was afraid of being "sucked into the Matrix." A judge accepted
his plea of insanity, and the case never went to trial. His preexisting
paranoia, it seems, had turned lethal under assault from crystal meth
and "The Matrix."

More than two years later, on July 27, 2002, 36-year-old bartender Tonda
Lynn Ansley walked up to her landlady, Sherry Lee Corbett, on a street
in Hamilton, Ohio and shot her three times with a handgun. Ansley claimed
that Corbett and three other would-be victims, including Ansley’s husband,
had been controlling her mind and making her have "dreams that I’ve
found out aren’t really dreams." Ansley insisted the murder was justified
because, as she explained in a statement filed with the court, "they
commit a lot of crimes in `the Matrix’ . . . That’s where you go to sleep
at night and they drug you and
take you somewhere else.

from the Boston
Globe