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The murders still happened and being found "not guilty" by reason of insanity doesn't mean that they suddenly become something else. Mass manslaughter? There might be a rationale for moving based on common name but that hasn't been offered. I doubt that the families of the victims would see them as anything else but murders. Let's be clear. He murdered them. Being found "not guilty by reason of insanity" only addresses how they would handle him. He spent 21 years locked up for something he did do. This most certainly was not the case of an innocent person locked up. — Berean Hunter(talk)05:24, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
He certainly killed them, but murder is a specific sort of killing. To commit it, one must intend to kill a human and do so. The court was adequately convinced that, thanks to the magic of schizophrenia, buddy intended to kill demons. Killing demons is not illegal. It's not even immoral, many would argue, if you're sure it's a real demon. He was sure, but he was mistaken.
Obviously, regardless of the lack of criminal intent, a man who's sure he sees demons where others see humans is dangerous to society. So he was locked up and treated till he was deemed safe to return. More preventative than punitive.
If he was innocent in the framed sense, a not guilty wouldn't mean anything to the deaths themselves. But since a court determined only one person killed them and didn't commit murder by doing so, it logically follows that they weren't murdered by anyone. They were just unfortunately killed by a psycho.
Thank you for responding, InedibleHulk. I've been looking through sources and trying to see if I could glean something based on common name, broadly-construed going beyond the current title as well as your suggested title. So far, inconclusive. I see different possibilities but I haven't looked as deeply as I would like. My first line of thought was to check the article's existing sources and see how they refer to the event(s). Most of the WS Journal articles are behind a paywall and I'm met with a wall of spam so I can't see those. It does make apparent that this article can certainly do with some improvements in sourcing. I should have started documenting my finds but didn't. I plan to do that more so for improving the article rather than what we are currently discussing. You're welcome to join me, btw. This article needs some help. I will be culling through sources for quality later this week with a goal of finding those that can be seen by our readers without them being met by a paywall.
You could be right about the title eventually but wouldn't you want that to take on the plural form shootings? Something that I've seen in sources is also a trend to refer to them as killing or killings as seen here. They interchangeably use shooting in the description, too. Since the crux of your rationale is based on the state findings, I would like to dig into how they refer to the events in official documentation after the not guilty decision. If you find it first, please post here.
I can see that you have the legal definition perspective which is an understandable and respectable position. I'm inclined to want to get things shored up from the common name perspective with an understanding that it may not remain at the current title. Any good analysis is appreciated as you or any other editor may make a convincing argument founded in policy. Cheers, — Berean Hunter(talk)21:45, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Given the rarity of a succesful insanity defense, it figures that post-verdict news sources might commonly call the deaths "murders". In the apparent circumstances, it wasn't a bad guess. But even if "murders" and "shooting(s)/killing(s)" are about equal, in a common name sense, "murder" is very problematic, in a WP:BLPCRIME sense. Not only wasn't he convicted, he was definitively acquited. That's not merely prejudicial, it's counterjudicial. The harm caused by accusing a free, living man of a very serious crime he was found to not have commited is more substantial than the harm of using a marginally less common title (if "shooting(s)" even is less common).
Plural or singular, either is fine by me. A mass shooting is a collection of individual shootings. Viewed in the frame of hours, it's singular, minute-by-minute, they're plural. I'll let you pick.
Paywalled and offline sources annoy me, too. I might help with replacing those later, if possible, but wasn't planning to spend much time here. Hadn't heard of the case till another case's discussion prompted me to search for any rural road murder example. This was top in the search results, despite not being an example of murder at all. The current title, categories and phrasings mislead humans and algorithms alike. InedibleHulk(talk)00:20, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It dawned on me that you probably meant court records, reviews, psychiatric notes and the like by "official documentation", not the locally official media's documentation. A quick Googling finds none of that, but I have a history of Googling poorly.
Regardless, I think I'll remove the bits calling this living person a murderer again, at least for the time being, based on the discussion so far. That's not to say we've reached consensus (though we may have), just that it's the less harmful action until we do, and the safer side to err on. InedibleHulk(talk)04:39, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
