Executing the Mentally Ill
Why did David Kaczynski become a leader of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty? Kaczynski suspected his brother Ted was the Unabomber, and he cooperated with the FBI to secure Ted's capture, fearing that if he didn't, his brother would kill again. Still, David thought the death penalty would never be imposed upon a man so mentally ill as his brother.
Ted eventually made a deal to avoid death (he's now serving a life sentence without parole), but even the possibility that the government might execute a severely mentally ill defendant was enough to turn David against the death penalty. He talked to MSNBC about the experience. The lessons he teaches deserve to be well learned.
I kind of thought once some of the investigators had said, 'We know that you're brother's mentally ill,' I thought that took the death penalty off the table. I honestly didn't realize that, you know, our system does execute the mentally ill. There's tremendous disconnect between what the law calls insanity and what medicine calls mental illness. And the end result is that sometimes we're executing people who have to be medicated to get them to the point where they're competent to be executed.
But the end result is that we're doing a serious, serious injustice. Locking up people in jails who really need to be in mental institutions. And in some cases, actually executing people who are clearly delusional at the time of their crimes...If there's something to be learned out of it, I think it's that understanding can go so far in terms of healing people who have been through trauma. And also in terms of what society needs to do to recognize the humanity of people who are mentally ill and make a commitment to providing them with effective treatments and treating them with compassion. I've met with so many other families. When I give talks around the country, I can't tell you how many times-- hardly ever does a talk go by when I'm not approached by someone who comes up to me and says, 'You know David, my sister or my brother or my mother or my son has a mental illness. So, I felt such compassion when I heard your story because, believe me, I can identify with it. I know what you're struggle has been like.'...
"I think the answer for me, I think the answer for many people who've been through tragedies involving violence is to try to create some form of constructive response. You know, not to wallow in bitterness. But to say, you know, 'Look, we can learn something by this. We all have to be our brother's keepers, our sister's keepers. We have to care about each other.' The lines of compassion are not just drawn narrowly around the family. They have to be drawn around the community. We have to learn as human beings when bad things happen to find the better parts of ourselves and to take away something from those experiences that is ennobling not diminishing."
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