To Do Some Good

"My biggest challenge will be dealing with others, with the public.  There's been a lot of badmouthing, a lot of things that will be said.  There will be a lot of prejudice against me."
Guy Turcotte

Prejudice against him?  Not really.  The recoil recognition that this father murdered his two very young children would most certain cause a reaction of dismay and disgust, a normal enough reaction from normal people in the company of someone who was capable of such a heinous unnatural act, and then blithely gets on with his life.

Oh, he has paid the penalty for his dreadful act.  He drank windshield wiper fluid.  That was a pre-penance before he proceeded to stab his three-year-old daughter and five-year-old son to death.  A stab, if you will, at committing suicide.  Well, they died and he did not  Perhaps he tried too hard to end their lives and not hard enough to end his own.  He stabbed his children 46 times. 

And his penalty turned out to be 46 months in confinement.

"The message (this decision sends) is you can kill your wife because you're sad or your kids because you're upset and get away with it by saying you weren't all there", commented his former wife, Isabelle Gaston, who has "lost faith in the justice system", at the news that her former husband has been granted release from the psychiatric institution that had housed him.

Cardiologist Dr. Turcotte may now leave the Pinel institute because a panel found him mentally fit for release.  He informed the hearing that it is his desire to lead a regular, productive life.  The fly in his ointment is the notoriety that attends his name; a matter of great concern to him.  "I'd like to work, to do some good around me", he said to the panel.

The panel comprised of a lawyer, a psychiatrist and psychologist will meet again in a year or earlier if necessary to revisit their decision.  "He still poses a risk but that risk can be controlled if he's supervised" said the panel commissioner, lawyer Danielle Allard.  "It's essential that there be his team on hand if his state deteriorates."

His wife was, to put it mildly, rather upset that lawyers are able to hire psychiatrists to testify at trial and have them pronounce whatever they feel is necessary to influence the outcome.  Defence experts at Dr. Turcotte's trial claimed he suffered from an adaptation disorder brought on by his marriage breakup; mentally destabilized by his wife moving on with another man.

Isabelle Gaston, mother of those two murdered children insists her ex husband played the panel, telling them what they most wanted to hear.  "If he's just making up a story and comes after me, who's going to be responsible?  If he doesn't integrate into society well, I'm afraid he'll get mad and come after me."  

A logical enough conclusion given the past that often foretells the future.