(Dobbs) Competent to Commit a Crime But Incompetent to Stand Trial?
True, it cuts both ways, but the system of justice isn't always just.
This is not an indictment of everyone who makes our system of justice work, but too often, it seems, the system errs on the side of caution, even compassion, instead of the side of justice.
The latest example: two court-appointed psychologists have declared that the 22-year-old man who killed ten strangers at a supermarket last March in Boulder, Colorado, is incompetent to stand trial.
I’m no psychologist myself, but there’s something wrong with this picture.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was competent enough to pass a background check and buy a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle less than a week before his indiscriminate slaughter. He was competent enough to get behind the wheel of his brother’s black Mercedes and drive 15 miles from his home to get to the scene of the crime. He was competent enough to pack ten high-capacity magazines of ammunition for his killing spree.
But now, according to the two psychologists, he’s not competent to stand trial.
Their diagnosis is that his mental health “limit(s) his ability to meaningfully converse with others.” To put it in lay terms, the doctors say he can’t work with his lawyers, which might mean he couldn’t assist in his own defense. They’re not claiming he was insane when he shot up the supermarket. They’re not claiming he’s insane now. They’re just claiming, he’s incompetent to stand trial.
Maybe it’s true, but maybe it’s a ruse— it wouldn’t be the first time an accused murderer has worked the system. If it is a ruse, and this killer can keep it up, he’ll be committed to a mental health facility for long term treatment. That’s a far cry better than a prison cell.
— Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa being wheeled into court —
It certainly was for John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in Washington in 1981, shooting the president and three men around him— a DC policeman, a Secret Service agent, and the president’s press secretary James Brady. You might remember the gunman’s defense: he was trying to impress the actress Jodie Foster. At trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
But now, in June next year, after spending decades in a mental health facility, then being allowed to live with his now-deceased mother, the man who tried to murder a president will be unconditionally released from all restrictions, a free man, never having spent a night in a prison cell.
To me there’s something wrong with this picture too because even if he is deemed safe again, should society set him free?
For my part, the answer is no. Hinckley’s lawyer says his client now has an “excellent” prognosis and that “there is no evidence of danger whatsoever” but for my part, his motives or his mental state aren’t pivotal. He tried to kill a president. He tried to change the course of history. And he did grievously change the life of one of his victims. Press secretary James Brady spent the rest of his years partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. When Brady eventually died seven years ago, it was ruled a homicide, caused by the bullet Hinkley fired into him 33 years earlier. For my part, sane or not, safe or not, Hinckley’s a killer and never deserves to walk free.
The same thing goes for Sirhan Sirhan. In 1968, just minutes after senator and presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy won the California presidential primary, Sirhan shot six people, killing Kennedy and injuring five others (including a friend of mine, a director for ABC News). Sirhan did change the course of history. Yet two months ago, a California review board recommended him for parole. It’s now up to California’s governor to accept the recommendation or reject it. For my part, it doesn’t matter that prison officials say Sirhan is a “low-risk” inmate, and it doesn’t even matter that Kennedy’s own namesake son supports parole. It was a crime against the nation. Sirhan should never walk free.
Which brings us back to the shooter at the supermarket in Boulder. It was the worst supermarket slaughter in American history. If he was competent enough to plan and execute his massacre, then whether competent to stand trial or not, does he deserve anything less than life behind bars?
Recent history is rife with parallels.
In the worst school shooting in American history, an undergraduate student chained the doors shut in a classroom building at Virginia Tech 14 years ago and killed 30 people inside. If he hadn’t then fired a bullet in his own head, would he have deserved anything less than life behind bars?
In the worst nightclub shooting in American history, a man swore allegiance to ISIS as he killed 49 people five years ago at a gay nightclub in Orlando. If he hadn’t been killed by police responding to the mass shooting, would he have deserved anything less than life behind bars?
And in the worst mass shooting of any kind in the history of America, a man four years ago hauled an arsenal of fourteen AR-15 automatic rifles and a stockpile of other weapons and 100-round magazines to a 32nd floor room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, then fired into a music festival below, killing 60 and injuring hundreds more, all in the space of ten minutes. If he hadn’t then shot himself to death, would he have deserved anything less than life behind bars?
The evaluation of the killer in Boulder— that he’s incompetent to stand trial— won’t necessarily stand. The District Attorney, evidently skeptical himself, has asked for a second evaluation. And even if the ruling does stand, the criminal case might only be put on hold, pending efforts to return the killer to some state of competence.
But color me skeptical too. If I were facing what the killer faces if he’s convicted of gunning down those ten people, including a police officer, I too might be incapable of conversing with others. Maybe I’m wrong, but to me it sounds like a convenient escape from life behind bars, the worst sentence Colorado could impose.
Eventually, if not immediately, the system should err on the side of justice.
I know that a hard line like this on crime and punishment means that if ever I end up on the receiving end of the judicial system, I risk the same tough treatment I advocate for each of these killers. Risk noted.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
(Dobbs) Competent to Commit a Crime But Incompetent to Stand Trial?
Thought provoking.
There is a critical difference between a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and a finding that the defendant is incompetent to stand trial. The latter is a matter of due process; it is not a determination of acquittal of the underlying crime by reason of insanity. The latter focuses on present facts; the former on circumstances at the time of the crime. I think the column conflates the two. Our system of justice has always had to balance the need for a “just” outcome with the need for a “fair” or due process. In my first week of law school I learned that the quality of the outcome you reach is inseparable from the process used to reach it. So while there may be no doubt that the defendant committed the crime, there remains the question of how to resolve the outcome, for not only the victims, but society as well as the defendant.