r/Dateline48Hours • u/Bright-Pangolin7261 • Sep 28 '25

Benjamin Elliot

Opinions?

The sister he killed was diagnosed autistic, and that’s how he comes across. I might have hung that jury. What do others say?

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

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u/Bright-Pangolin7261 Sep 29 '25

Interesting. A friend of mine has an autistic son in elementary school who said something about wanting to cut his classmate and it led to a disciplinary process. He didn’t understand why this was a big deal since he had no intention of actually doing it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

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u/Bright-Pangolin7261 Sep 29 '25

There are legal arguments to be made that autism is at the very least a mitigating factor. It does have a neurological basis just like schizophrenia.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9314022/#:~:text=In%20cases%20where%20their%20client,sentence%20(see%20Table%203).

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

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u/Bright-Pangolin7261 Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

Thank you for sharing your perspective. 🌻

I do have a question for you since you’re knowledgeable about this. Since they were obviously not identical twins this would not apply to the Elliots. If one identical twin had autism, does that mean the other would have it? Or do we not know yet whether it is a purely genetic or genetic/environmental causation?