Just Another Decent Person

"It would be in some sense easier if Mr. Li was an anti-social psychopath with a history of malicious behaviour, but he isn't that. He is, as I've come to know him, a decent person. He is as much a victim of this horrendous illness ... as Mr. McLean was a victim. Don't hate the person. Hate the illness."

How profoundly forgiving and understanding. This, a statement from psychiatrist Stanley Yaren, during the second-degree murder trial of Vincent Li.

That very man whose gruesome act of murder, compounded by decapitating his 22-year-old victim, then mutilating his body and consuming parts of it while horrified passengers of the Greyhound bus, alongside police officers standing outside, were helpless witness to the gory ritual being unfolded before their eyes.

This gruesome violation of human decency was quite simply an unfortunate incident, unavoidable as the individual charged with that horrible crime was not responsible for his actions. Dr. Yaren was testifying as a Crown witness in his capacity as director of forensic psychiatry for Manitoba and the Winnipeg Regional Health authority.

His treatment of, and exposure to the inner character of the man charged with unspeakably heinous crimes led him to the conclusion that Mr. Li should not be held criminally responsible, based on his mental state at the time of the occurrence. And who honestly believes that psychiatrists are immune to the cunning manipulation of psychopaths?

"He was being tormented by auditory hallucinations. He believed Mr. McLean was a force of evil and was about to execute him. He had to act fast, urgently, to save himself. This wasn't an innocent bystander or stranger he chose to kill, but rather an evil force he was commanded to kill." So explained Dr. Yaren who examined and treated Mr. Li at the Health Sciences Centre psychiatric ward in Winnipeg.

"He was terrified, frightened, tormented. Mr. Li's fear, because of what he was being told through these hallucinated voices, is that what he perceived to be the evil being would come back to life, through some supernatural powers and finish him off. He was in a frenzy to prevent this from happening" explicated Dr. Yaren.

Entirely reasonable, for it was not his victim Tim McLean who was terrified and tormented, but his attacker. Dr. Yaren sees the picture so clearly, one might venture the thought that he could be writing genre murder thrillers. In his professional capacity he has inserted himself into Mr. Li's sensibilities.

This has become a leitmotif, the saving grace of the psychopaths among us, that they were not in possession of their senses, that their previous life-experience as violated, vulnerable social outcasts prepared them for their future role in life. And, simply put, it was not their fault. A mental condition, estrangement from society, cultural differences, misunderstandings, all led to their unfortunate encounters with social malfeasance.

Sociopaths and psychopaths have one defining characteristic that permits them on occasion to break out with all normal restraints placed in abeyance, into the frenzy of a psychotic event; they have no conscience, are incapable of empathy, of sympathy or care for others. They act on impulse, and their impulses can bring death to others, with no hint of remorse on their part.

Mr. Li pleads not guilty to the crimes for which he has been charged. There is no doubt whatever that he is guilty of performing those odious acts of murder and carnage. However, he claims that voices in his head from none other than God Himself was the cause of his singling out a stranger to stab to death and then cannibalize.

The victim is dead. Society is horrified. The family of the victim is inconsolable in their grief. But those public institutions that have been tasked with protecting the general public, ensuring public security, somehow discover that their sympathies lie with the accused. Understanding and compassion extended to the attacker, and this is justice.

Vincent Li, who succumbed for whatever reason, to the urge to ravage another human being and bestially sunder his body parts, devouring portions of that poor man, is described by Dr. Yaren as polite, humble, and hard-working. "The man I described, without psychosis, would have had no reason to [kill McLean]", said the good doctor.

Absolve him from guilt, sentence him to psychiatric care, then release him back into the public forum where he may then resume his life.