A few days ago, a peer of mine commented on how it is “stupid” that someone can “murder without going to jail if they’re crazy”. They were referring, of course, to Vincent Weiguang Li, a man held not criminally responsible for committing murder by reason of mental disorder.1 I greatly respect my peer but cannot help but judge that style of thinking on the issue as provincial and narrow-minded.
This habit of thought is not limited to my peer, however. A casual stroll across Facebook will reveal similar, but more extreme, attitudes.2 Because people are not always serious on social networking sites, I will ignore some of these more fervent requests. Rather, I will try to deconstruct and constructively criticize the much more mainstream mentality when it comes to Vincent Li’s responsibility for the killing of Tim McLean.
The murder was tragic and the details detestably gruesome.3 It was unbearably tragic for McLean’s family. To not feel overwhelmed with passion and anger at such a horrific cruelty one would have to be a sociopath. I know that I would feel quite similar to McLean’s mother and father after such a heinous act. I would not desire the cause of death, a being who would become an abstraction of evil in my mind, to live the rest of his days in an asylum or medicated on the streets. Such a reification of evil, no longer an idiosyncratic or nuanced individual, but the pure symbol of McLean’s death would sicken me. 4
But in such a state of pure, and perfectly human, longing for vengeance, I would not be fit make impartial moral or judicial pronouncements. As heartless as it may appear, much more detached third parties are necessary to make a more dispassionate assessment regarding responsibility and appropriate recourse.
Should Vincent Li be held criminally responsible for the death of Tim McLean? “Criminal responsibility” is a concept constructed around the idea that we are dealing people in a more or less coherent frame of mind. That is people with at least partial rationality.5 This legal construct is sometimes modified when dealing with environmentally caused (as opposed to hereditarily caused) impairment which are self-induced (intoxication brought on by excessive alcohol consumption). 6 7
But is criminal responsibility nullified by mental disorder? As importantly, is Vincent Li morally responsible for McLean’s death if his mind lacks coherence, as is characteristic with schizophrenia?
One method of analysis is to equate moral responsibility with causal responsibility. Vincent Li killed McLean, it is true. It was ultimately the inter-neuronal impulses in his brain which were transmitted to the motor neurons which physically caused Li’s extremities to appallingly kill McLean. No other physical entity so directly or immediately caused Tim McLean’s death.
Carol deDelley (McLean’s mother) has established the “deDelley Foundation for Life” 8 under the premise causal responsibility entails moral responsibility.
“‘Whether you have mental challenges or not, your actions, you need to be accountable for,’ deDelley said during a phone interview. ‘To have no criminal record afterwards really negates the fact that my son ever had a life.’” – Carol deDelley 9
“He still did it. Whether he was in his right frame of mind or not, he still did the act. There was nobody else on that bus, holding a knife, slicing up my child.”- Carol deDelley 10
Carol deDelley is undeniably correct in one point: there was no physiological entity aside from Vincent Li’s body causing McLean’s death. But, in his present state, should McLean be regarded as a rational agent who, in a more coherent state afterwards with a much more chemically balanced brain11, could be held responsible for barbaric acts committed when he was in a more coherent state. Is he even the same person or the same agent when in such a different state?
For all practical, legal, and moral purposes, we should differentiate Li as a physiological entity versus a person.12 Personhood is abstracted from the numerous mental processes occurring simultaneously within a brain. Personhood implies a given coherence to these processes which I would say is not found when a person is suffering from psychotic delusions. Their personhood, at that point, collapses as does their moral responsibility. The same physical medium13, a brain, can generate a series of mental processes that would entail personhood later. Li can, if his mental state is revised through medical and psychiatric help, regain personhood.
My (admittedly technical) response to the claim that Li should be guilty as he caused McLean’s death ultimately rests on this: when under severe hallucinations Li is fundamentally different. He is no longer a (partially) rational agent. This is the purpose of the mental disorder defence.14 It absolves of responsibility those who are not in a state of mind which constitutes personhood as they commit the crime.
The peer of mine found it stupid that Li was absolved of criminal responsibility simply because he heard (his own) voices15, which he identified as God’s, telling him to kill McLean. The self-awareness of Li as he committed the act is something I am unsure of. Which parts of his mind were operating and how much self-monitoring or self-awareness occurred? I am not sure of these questions and do not know the neuropsychologists who could give me an answer.16
What I am aware of is that Vincent Li was experiencing states of psychosis and hallucination, which disordered his mind. It is easy when we are in a sound mental state to assume that someone can easily disregard ubiquitous voices, coming from an authority as revered (at least by any believer) as God.17 The problem is that someone who lacks the self-awareness and mental self-monitoring to realize the voices they hear are in a state where they have substantially less self-control. They cannot veto more heinous ideas as easily as someone in a coherent state of mind has the luxury of doing.19
Vincent Li’s schizophrenia and psychosis are not some minor nuisances, which can easily be suppressed with diligent self-control. His mental disorders have severely affected his behaviour and his commitment to what he misidentifies as “God” is quite evident. He brought himself to follow the sun for hours on “God’s” command, an obsessive habit that caused him to be hospitalized.20
The point I am labouring here is that schizophrenia is much more nuanced than my peer or many others would point out. The disorder is difficult to suppress and ignore, it dissolves the rational coherence and agency of an individual, and absolves one of moral responsibility.
Now we come to the issue of who’s at fault. Did McLean “not ever have a life” by the law’s perspective if Vincent Li is absolved of moral responsibility for his death?
In one sense, fault can be assigned to an abstraction. Vincent Li’s manifestation of psychotic schizophrenia is to blame. Under this model, the only proper retribution is to eliminate the schizophrenia. That is another way of saying to medicate and counsel Li into rationality and beyond his psychotic schizophrenia.
But this recourse may very well be too intangible for most. A specific person is not punished, only a temporary manifestation of a dysfunctional mental state. Blaming relatively persistent and rational agents is much more traditional. At best I could see certain situations and institutions as (partially) responsible for this calamity. The system which allowed Li to fall through the cracks or insufficient Greyhound security is to blame here.
Ultimately, though, this incident was a random and largely meaningless tragedy. There is no tangible narrative we may derive from it. There is no one to really blame. It is as disorderly as Li’s mind was during the barbaric killing. Ultimately, cruel chance is all we can blame in this case.
ENDNOTES
1.The mental disorder in Li’s case is schizophrenia.
2.The 9,101 strong “Death Penalty For Vince Weiguang Li” being a particularly vociferous and somewhat frightening instance (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28038647493). “Death Penalty For Vince Weiguang Li” had to disclaim members from directing personal death threats against Li because of liability issues (impersonal death threats, that is advocacy of drastic reform to the criminal justice system, is happily permitted, though). More disturbing and indicative of the “two wrongs make a right” vengeance mentality is the thirteen strong (as of Mar. 15, 2009) “Let's Decapitate Vince Weiguang Li!!!” (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=b653c8b024d32775301009a42f8aef63&gid=26548761363).
3. While I will not restate them here, the uninformed on this matter may find such details in “Please kill me, accused pleads” written by Joe Friesen on August 5, 2008 for the Globe and Mail (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080805.wbus06/BNStory/National/home).
4.Vincent Li’s status as a symbol of evil, rather than an individual, is nicely attested to by a witness of the murder’s account. "I don't know what I'd do if I ever saw him [Vincent Li] again, because he's just such a scarring image on my mind, that even seeing an image in the paper hurts." (http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Beheader+criminally+responsible/1356476/story.html)
5.I refer to “partial rationality” as all humans make many non-rational and sometimes grossly irrational decisions. Any study of cognitive neuroscience or Public Relations and advertising would surely confirm this. Instances of this can be found at http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2007/01/psychology-of-bias-why-republicans-win.html and Adam Curtis’s “The Century of the Self” (2002).
6.The rationale for this omission is that actions initiated when a person was in a partially rational frame of mind which afterwards lead to situations which cause criminal violence by an irrational individual are ultimately that more or less rational individual’s responsibility. This omission works as most individuals of fiery temperament should be informed enough to realize how their actions will be impaired in fiery situations if they intoxicate themselves. As for whether other, less obvious, self-induced environmentally factors (lets say prolonged dim lighting turns out to be correlated with severe aggression but few know), that is open for question.
7.This is a bit more nuanced, I admit. Whether a defendant’s mental state was altered by intoxication sometimes comes into play, with the “Intoxication Defence”. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives sufficient background on this (http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010725).
8.Hitchen, Ian. “Bus victim's mom to speak at vigil” (http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/bus_victims_mom_to_speak_at_vigil-40343952.html). Winnipeg Free Press. February 26, 2009.
9.Hitchen, Ian. “Bus victim's mom to speak at vigil” (http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/bus_victims_mom_to_speak_at_vigil-40343952.html). Winnipeg Free Press. February 26, 2009.
10.http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Beheader+criminally+responsible/1356476/story.html
11.As precipitated by the counseling and medications he will receive under psychiatric care.
12.This differentiation is somewhat akin to Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance”. When analyzing complex systems (like human beings) he finds it useful to distinguish between the physical stance (level of physics and chemistry), design stance(level described aptly by biology), and intentional stance(in which we attribute abstract notions like “beliefs” or “desires” to abstract entities like “rational agents” (persons). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance
13.Here I am treating the brain as a physical medium or machine and the mind as the operations it performs. Personhood is regarded as the sum total of these operations.
14. I should grant that not all “mental disorders” or variations in mental functioning should excuse one from moral and criminal responsibility. Only when the rational coherence of a mind is inhibited should a disorder exempt one from responsibility. William Cottrell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cottrell), for instance, conspired to commit eco-terrorism. Once arrested, his defence lawyers attempted to absolve him of responsibility because he had “Asperger syndrome”. The lawyers entailed Asperger syndrome made “knowing right from wrong and understanding consequences difficult”. This is not an acceptable defence, as many with Asperger’s have superior moral development compared to the statistically average individual (especially pertaining to social justice). See Tony Attwood’s “The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome” page 40 for details. In general, a condition like Asperger’s or High Functioning Autism should not absolve one from responsibility given that the mind frame of someone with the condition tends to be just as, if not more, rationally coherent as the statistically average individual’s.
15.Schizophrenia is a condition in which the sufferer mistakes their own internal monologue for external voices. Page 250, note 7 in Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained (1991).
16. The psychiatrist Yaren is open to the possibility that Li was not self-aware of the act. Expressed in vernacular, Yaren said "It may be he's blocked it [aspects of the killing] from his consciousness . . . that it's just too awful for him to contemplate,".
17.Vincent Li was going through a psychotic episode where he heard “God” (some component of his mind) telling him to kill the evil doer. How self-aware or coherent he was as he (unwittingly) followed his own advice is unknown. My educated guess is that he was rather impaired. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Beheader+criminally+responsible/1356476/story.html
18.This may be technically incorrect. Schizophrenics are actually so self-awarethat they mistake their own internal mental processes (themselves) for objects and actions in the external world. This is what an article, “Schizophrenia, Consciousness, and the Self”, by Louis A. Sass, PH.D. and Josef Parnas, M.D. and published in the Schizophrenia bulletin indicates (abstract present at http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/3/427 ). One should note, however, that the result is the same. Their self-awareness is functionally impaired if they mistake awareness of the self for awareness of the external world. I will continue to use “reduced self-awareness” when describing schizophrenics, simply because their self-awareness is impaired by mistaking it for the external world.
19.Not to say that it is utterly impossible. Schizophrenia varies between individual cases. Most with the disorder are more likely to harm themselves rather than others(which still evidences the impaired self-control and self-awareness that accompanies the disorder). http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0010555 John Forbes Nash, a brilliant mathematician, for instance, managed to train himself to ignore the internal voices and think rationally. http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/reality/brilliant_madness/index.shtml Sadly, not all schizophrenics are highly talented mathematicians with hyper-developed occupational rationality that is transferable elsewhere. Let’s not also forget that it took Nash years to overcome his schizophrenic auditory hallucinations.
20.http://www.thestar.com/article/595800
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