Comments on: Donald Miller

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:48:26 +0000

Melanie Phillips has some good points, but no solutions to the problem of dealing with child killers. I mean, children who are killers. I think she’s right on the vigilante mob thing, too. Of course, there have always been such mobs, but I think today we tend to pick certain things to react to hysterically partly because there are so many things we used to use to vent against that are now taboo to criticize and because we lack a firm structure to base our reactions on. We go overboard on what’s left – in other examples, this morning I heard a radio interview about parents attempting to control every moment of their childrens’ lives out of exaggerated fears and anxieties about the dangers to children, and a day or so ago I read what I though was a very silly article about the mania for massive public mourning over people the mourners never even knew – eg that fashion designer who committed suicide recently, Princess Diana of course and a good few local but highly publicized tragedies of one kind or the other. The article put all this down to the scattered modern family who doesn’t get a chance to mourn properly at the graveside of their own family (due to it being too far away, or not existing or existing in a massive modern graveyard, although why that should inhibit visits and tributes, I don’t know). I tend to put it down to the need to connect in a disconnected world. I can always – and quite safely – scream abuse at selected criminal targets, especially the ones who can’t get back at me and put a bunch of flowers outside the residence of a dead celebrity or at the spot a particularly innocent victim died. I can’t do a damn thing about most of the evils that afflict me and I might not even have somewhere to especially remember a close friend or relative who has died, but hey, I can demonstrate publicly that I stand up for what’s right by participating in a mob or going through mourning rituals for some stranger.

And I think Cathy’s right – the cases here that have involved insanity defenses have all involved seriously psychotic individuals. Whether some of them should have been forced into institutional care…oh, well, that’s another debate. But the stupid, impressionable, depressed, anxious, having assorted personality disorders … they tend to get convicted (or not) rather than ending up in the forensic ward of the local psychiatric hospital. Children do (and should) have special status, with mid to late teens, IIRC, running the possibility of being treated as an adult in court.

By: Mique

Mique — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:43:46 +0000

Mellanie Phillips has an interesting take on the Venables case here:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=722

By: CAFiorello

CAFiorello — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:57:56 +0000

You know, the insanity defense is very seldom used, and when used, is seldom successful. The ones who get psychiatric hospitalization instead of prison tend to be floridly psychotic. Now sure, there are people, and certainly parents, who *claim* insanity was the cause.

Cathy

By: robert_piepenbrink

robert_piepenbrink — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:51:33 +0000

Not just parents. When the Wall came down, the German Federal police picked up a woman belonging to Bader-Meinhoff for, I believe, three murders. She had a husband and two young children. I don’t know how much of her history her husband knew, but whether it was a surprise to him or not, he got to explain to the kids why Mommy wasn’t coming home.

Evidence, though. Sometimes we treat the rules of evidence as though they’re natural phenomena. Obviously you need strict rules against falsification of evidence. I can readily see why coerced testimony is troublesome even when it can be verified by physical evidence. But when considering whether a knotted shoelace is a weapon and what the appropriate punishment might be, NOT to be able to say “this person led police to the bodies of six people killed with a very similar device” seems to me to be demented. The traditional blindfuld ought to signify that Justice pays no heed to status–rich or poor, man or woman, white or black. It ought not to signify willful ignorance of pertinent facts.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:46:28 +0000

We had a case some years back when a teenaged girl disappeared from a tiny community with no history of violent crime and in which everyone knew each other well and many were related. It turned out that a boy of about the same age – actually the last person known to have seen her – had raped and murdered her. He confessed to his parents, who insisted he come forward and take responsibility. I think the feeling against the whole family was so strong that they eventually left the community. But there you have it – no history of violence in the boy, family or community, a family who combined loving support of their son with an insistance that he take responsibility for what he did and take his punishment – and a dead girl whose family and community haven’t been the same since.

There’s the ability to distinguish right from wrong, suggestibility (which is where some slow or very young people can be too influenced by their company) and then there’s impulse. Carried away during violent sex, or while taunting or bullying another child. It’s not an excuse, but I think it makes the unthinkable a little more comprehensible.

And then you have the tendency to accuse anyone trying to understand a murderer of trying to excuse his actions and blame the victim.

I think I’m beginning to ramble. I have to get supper and ransack the place looking for a book and DVD the library says I haven’t returned.

By: jem

jem — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:18:05 +0000

The reaction of a murderer’s family is depicted interestingly: BEFORE AND AFTER by Rosellen Brown. The son in family kills his girlfriend. The father’s response was “my son right or wrong,” and shielding him from consequences was his duty as a father. The mother, while loving her son, feels he should be held accountable.
In Gadsden, Alabama, where I grew up, Glenn Holladay murdered his ex-wife, her boyfriend and a neighbor in 1986 and has been imprisoned since shortly after that. Holladay grew up a mile or so from where I lived. His father painted our house once. He was on death row until 2003 when he was to be executed. But because he met the legal definition of mental retardation he was not executed. In 2009 a local judge sentenced him to life imprisonment without chance of parole. My quarrel with this is not that he won’t be executed. I am not in favor of the death penalty. This is certainly an objective viewpoint. If any of my family or friends were victims I’m sure my perspective would be more visceral. My question is whether moderate mental retardation (his IQ was 56 or so) precludes the ability to determine right and wrong and act accordingly?

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:21:57 +0000

Talking about child murderers like Mary Bell – Jon Venables, one of the killers of James Bulger, has been out on ‘life license’ for a while, but is now recalled to prison for reasons that are not being released. I wish I could remember more of the details – I seem to recall that one boy was presented as being more likely to be rehabilitated than the other, but I can’t remember which. I don’t understand why James’ mother wants to know why Venables was recalled; I think I would simply feel satisfied he was back in.

While I am interested in reading about criminals, in real life what horrifies me (besides the suffering of the victim) is what it must be like to be a family member, especially a parent, of such a person. Sometimes, of course, they’re either willfully blind or in denial or “my boy right or wrong” activists; the late matriarch of a rather infamous local family used to make periodic appearances in the media proclaiming that the police were just picking on her boys out of prejudice. And the recent crop of parents and aunts who can’t imagine why someone would break into their houses and assault them and their son/nephew.

But you also get the parents who’ve done their best, but their child goes horribly off the rails anyway. It makes me wonder about the limits of love and the lack of limits on the damage one human can do to another.