feel that I have to have a disclaimer in this post due to the chilling events in Colorado last week. I am by no means making a judgement on anybody. This is simply my opinion with some facts thrown in.
Medical professionals have suspected for a century and known for decades, that the instance of schizophrenia and in some cases bipolar disorder, is a physical disease with emotional and mental ramifications. It is widely believed to be of a genetic and biological nature. The MRI results in people who have schizophrenia and in some cases bipolar disorder, show that there is a marked difference in the size of their Ventricles and a significant loss of gray matter (up to 25%) The symptoms can consist of Audio Hallucinations which can also extend to visual hallucinations. The adults I have worked with who suffered from Schizophrenia have reported to me that they often heard voices in their heads telling them what to do, sometimes what to say and plant imaginary ideologies in their head telling them that they are a member of the CIA and must be very careful and suspicious of us ‘regular folk’ It is my understanding, partly from the news (such a reliable source) and partly from Psychology Today which I believe is a pretty reliable source. This being said, how is it the courts totally ignore what has been learned and reported for years and years as if they are too simple to understand these basic facts. As I’ve said I’m not going to discuss the incident in Aurora CO because physical and emotional wounds are still fresh. It’s not that it’s too soon, it will always be too soon, I’m speaking out of respect.
Let me, then go back in time to Son Of Sam, David Berkowitz, a serial killer in the mid-seventies who arbitrarily shot and killed or maimed a number of people mostly young and mostly women, and Mark David Chapman, the guy who shot and killed John Lennon. Both these men had a history of fighting demons in their heads. Mark Chapman confessed to having a conversation with a demon, one of the many that followed him through his young adulthood, as he waited in front of the Dakota building waiting for John to come home from a recording session. The demon was telling him ‘do it, do it’ while something else in his head told him ‘not a good idea’ I think we know who won that argument. He was declared by several Psychiatrists that he was fit to stand trial. In spite of clear evidence that he had a pretty heavy duty psychotic breakdown he did stand trial. He withstood the trial and was even able to remember and recite speeches that obviously his attorney’s believed would help his case. His penalty was life in prison with parole. He has received a very limited amount of mental health care in the years he has been incarcerated. David Berkowitz was not only possessed by a demon but it was the demon who had previously been occupying his neighbors dog. Sent him to prison and throw away the key, he knew what he was doing, right? Wrong. He was sentenced to life with parole. I am, of course, not saying that these men should have been released into the world, I am saying that a facility for the criminally insane with mandatory psychiatric, psychological and chemical treatment may have been a better way to go especially since they both may be released into society without the benefit of treatment. And I personally don’t think this is the worst of it. It’s blowing off much of what we actually know about Mental Illness. These consequences were, or are, dire But let’s get down to the nitty gritty that is the horror of our judicial system. Aileen Wuornos.
I am totally against the death penalty. All thinking people know that the scales of justice are not balanced. We know that rich people with expensive lawyers, even when convicted, rarely are sentenced to death while the poor man with a Public Defender is much more likely to get the ultimate sentence. The black man, statistically, receives a longer or ultimate sentence then the white man. That’s the way this country is, has always been and with a lot of work and dedication doesn’t have to be in the future. But that’s a whole other story that my friend Tom Robinson can address with more knowledge and skill than I possess. Back to Aileen Wuornos.
Aileen was a woman who was severely abused, physically and sexually, enough for a lifetime. In fact it was a lifetime. The fact that she didn’t have more personalities than Sybil is a miracle but may also be undetermined. I was once told by a very reliable source that to get some idea of the physical and emotional pain of sexual abuse is best described to someone who is ticklish. Imagine you are being tickled. Imagine it’s gone on a long time and you are tired of laughing, your stomach is beginning to hurt. But you are still being tickled. You squirm to get away but you can’t. By this time your tickler, or torturer if you will, is holding you down and continues to tickle you. You are in pain, your are past anger you’re even past panic, yet the tickling doesn’t cease. Now multiply this horrific situation by 10,000. How does it feel? It can drive you out of your mind right? Now, picture going through your childhood and young adulthood ALL the time. You don’t know when it’s going to happen but you know it will happen again and again and again. I can go on with these descriptions. It is all fascinating in a horrible kind of way and can easily be looked up on Wikipedia. Not having the opportunity to obtain skills to support herself Aileen turned to prostitution which was just a part of the natural process of her life. She was homeless, desperate, abused by her ‘johns’ She graduated to another level of criminal and began, frequently with the aid of a friend, to rob and murder the men she was serving. She was apprehended, tried and found to be Borderline Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder and clearly delusional as she admitted to objects in her head crushing her brain. I still strongly believe in the possibly of a Multiple Personality Disorder but can find nothing in my research to back that up. After admitting to six murders she was sentence to six death penalties. Six!!!! I’m guessing that after the third one she was dead and they cremated her. I don’t even want to think about who got the other five. Jeb Bush ordered Aileen to be granted three fifteen minute sessions with three different Psychiatrists. They all found her mentally fit to be executed. They must have been really bad doctors or perhaps no one told them about a century of research concluding that there is a physical and biological difference between those who have Mental Illness and those who do not.
Written July 25 & 26 2012
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