Update: The prosecution on Thursday asked the court to consider Anders Breivik insane and commit him to psychiatric care. Anders Behring Breivik is not standing trial alone in Oslo. Psychiatry is being judged as well. With Mr Breivik’s guilt not in doubt, his sanity has become the critical issue. If he is considered sane, the court’s five judges will sentence him to 21 years in prison (though he can be detained indefinitely if he is still considered dangerous). If insane, he will be committed to an institution. The court is dealing with two psychiatric reports: one says he is sane; the other that he is not. Now, just days before the end of the 10-week trial, the authors of each report are standing firm, using identical evidence, or cherry picking alternative accounts of Breivik’s behavior, to stand by their contradictory conclusions. It is public scandal in Norway—and began inauspiciously with how some details made their way into the press. On the stand in the Oslo court, Dr. Tarjei Rygnestad, the head of the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine blinked hard, glanced around and, unasked, started explaining how the details from a December meeting of the board’s psychiatric group was leaked to the public broadcaster, NRK. Rygnestad explained he had called cops after the revelations hit the media. He told them he thought the office had been bugged. After examining the phone records of each person in the room, cops discovered the source of the leak was Rygnestad himself. At the start of the meeting he had accidentally answered a call from an NRK journalist, then placed his phone on the desk and failed to hang up for 53 minutes while the lucky reporter listened in and took notes. Rygnestad’s group had been deciding whether a court-ordered psychiatric report, diagnosing the “insane” gunman with paranoid schizophrenia, was acceptably robust. Their unanimous assent had led to recriminations and to a second court ordered report which concluded in April that Breivik was, in fact, sane. (PHOTOS: Explosion and Shooting Rock Norway) The authors … Continue reading The Breivik Trial: Is Norway’s Mass Murderer Really Insane?