This is a story so lurid, I hesitated to mention it on the blog. But because “insanity” has been invoked to deny any connection between the assassination of Officers Lin and Ramos by Ismaaiyl Brinsley and the political agitation and hate-mongering directed at police, it is worth noting that a jury in liberal Canada, where they don’t even have the death penalty, has rejected the insanity defense in the case of an obviously very disturbed individual and convicted Luka Rocco Magnotta, birth name Eric Clinton Kirk Newman of murder.

Magnotta was a gay porn actor and escort in Canada with a criminal history who turned to sadistically killing kittens and posting videos before he finally killed, dismembered, and ate parts of engineering student Jun Lin, all captured on video. The UK Daily Mail covered the crime in all its lurid details, including sickening pictures, if you have the stomach for them.

Canadian 'cannibal' Luka Magnotta left behind an angle grinder and an ice pick inside his blood-soaked apartment where he killed and dismembered Chinese engineering student Jun Lin.

Police discovered blood inside the fridge and on a mattress while searching the Montreal apartment where Magnotta, 32, admitted killing his victim.

Jurors at his trial in Quebec were shown a series of grisly crime scene photographs from where Magnotta dismembered his victim, before sending parts of his victim's body across Canada by post. 

One of those packages was sent to Canada’s conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The QMI news agency, reports on the verdict:

In a soft voice that belied his husky frame, the former porn actor replied "No, Your Honour" when Judge Guy Cournoyer asked if he would make a statement.

The shackled murderer's final act in court was to yawn, stand up and shuffle off to an automatic life sentence at an undisclosed federal prison. (snip)

Magnotta's lawyer, Luc Leclair, struck a defiant tone at his news conference, blasting those who questioned Magnotta's claim that he was insane when he killed Lin and broadcast the crime in May 2012.

"Some writers have criticized me for putting (forward) this mental-health defence," Leclair said, adding: "I find that somewhat distasteful living in Canada."

Leclair maintained his client is "a real person" who is schizophrenic.

"I have seen up close his insanity," said the Toronto lawyer, who called on governments to increase funding to combat mental illness.

"Such illness, if untreated, can lead to tragic results, as we have seen today," Leclair said.

The Crown suggested Magnotta made a mistake in not taking the stand to back up his claim that voices told him to kill Lin.

"If he did not take stand, well, he took the chance that the jury would be left with very little to ponder on this matter," said Bouthillier.

If Magnotta is not nuts, I don’t know who is. But it sounds to me as though he was in thrall to pure evil. If we cannot sanction and punish that, then we have lost our bearings. I am glad the jury Quebec came through with a guilty verdict. And as for Brinsley, he carried out a political assassination, acting on the false narrative of police racism being the cause of the deaths of Brown and Garner. I would wager he never learned of the evidence the grand jury examined proving that Brown attacked Officer Wilson and attempted to grab his gun, and that he did not know that the chokehold was not responsible for Garner’s death, nor did he realize that a black sergeant was present and supervising the takedown of a man resisting arrest.  He was not insane, he was lied to by the left and accepted the narrative promulgated from Obama and de Blasio on down.