General Board

ATT: Teece- Mental Illness and murder

Posted By: Pete (162.33.175.11)
Date: Saturday, 7 July 2001, at 6:57 p.m.

I'm bringing this up here 'cuz the discussion is too far down the board.

Many people like yourself believe there is something psychiatrically wrong with a person who murders, ie,: "somebody has to be sick to do something like that."

Teece, I worked in the juvenile justice field for close to 20 years before I was forced to retire on disability and I ran across that sort of sentiment many times. The true fact is, there's a difference in murder cases that make sense only to the professionals dealing with the crime.

Not everyone who murders has a psychiatric disability grave enough to make them incapable of knowing what is right or wrong. Betty Broderick, for example, is psychiatrically ill but not insane. She knows that what she did was wrong. That cuts her no slack in the system.

Susan Smith is emotionally disturbed and has poor ability to place appropriate limits on her behavior, but she's not insane either. That gal who is the former teacher who's madly in love with her former student is mentally ill...she's a female pedophile with no controls on her behavior, regressive personality disorder, with a borderline perrsonality. Yet she's not crazy and is responsible for her actions. Last I heard, she was pregnant with her second child from her student.
She's definitely disturbed but is grounded in reality and knows she's done wrong. She's living out a "Romeo and Juliet" fantasy.

Others kill for other reasons, some of which are pretty cold-blooded and pragmatic. We had a case here where a 17 year old boy shot a classmate walking home from school simply because he wanted the Nike shoes the other kid was wearing. He's going to be executed at some time in the future. Sick? Nope. Cold-blooded psychopath? Yep, and diagnosed as one, too. It brings no compassion because psychopaths have none themselves and they're considered to know the difference between right and wrong....they just don't care. They are firmly grounded in reality and their goal is whatever is "best" for their own purposes.

I had a 17 year old kid once, who was charged with a very minor theft. He was diverted from formal court on the condition that he was to do 10 hours of community service. He was intelligent and seemed to be just a "routine" case. The very afternoon of the day of his hearing, he strangled to death the girl who he stole from. Sick? Yes. Insane? Nope. Kid was another psychopath. When I got the call from the county police on the kid I told them to treat him as an adult. I called the DA and reccomended he be handled as an adult. Why? At 17 you/re supposed to know better, and he knew it. In fact, after my interview with him I tried vainly to get him out of diversion and into court. He SCARED me! He showed no emotion at all.

I had another kid who killed both his parents. I have to be circumspect about this case as everything is sealed and mo one is supposed to talk about it, but the situation was that there was serious dysfunctionality in the home situation of an unbelievable level. He was a good kid in a bad situation and one night he just couldn't take it any longer and snapped. I tried to keep him in the juvenile system, but because of his age and the nature of the crime he was handled as an adult. His lawyer entered a plea and negotiations were made to place him in Maryland's only facility for the criminally insane. But he hung himself in his cell after being there for two years. He really did not know what he was doing when he killed his parents. I firmly believe that and I was crushed when I heard he had killed himslf. I thought he was worth saving, I really did. He was a murderer with a gentle spirit thaat simply couldn't take the mental abuse any longer.

I'm rambling. bit my point is that not all murderers are sick although some of them are and it depends greatly on the circumstances surrounding the murder.

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