Tagged: insanity defense
religion on trial?
Earlier, I wondered about the cultural bases — and potential biases — underpinning conflicting psychiatric evaluations of Brian David Mitchell. The clashing diagnoses seemed to trap Mormons between a rock and a hard place. After all, a large part of whether Mitchell was “insane” rested on whether his religious beliefs were “bizarre”—beliefst based in the LDS faith.
I am not the only one who asked these questions. Salt Lake City Weekly published an interesting piece about the Catch-22 Mormons faced with this Mitchell:
Let’s say the jury of his peers finds him sane. Because we have had an eminent theologian from BYU testify that Immanuel/Mitchell’s religious writings are coherent and well-reasoned, it follows that his crime was a consequence of his beliefs, and therefore not a crime. His beliefs, after all, called for him to take a virgin as a plural wife, the first of seven times seven to enjoy what he called a “quargasm.” He is therefore not guilty by reason of sanity.
If, on the other hand, the jurors, persuaded by the psychiatrist’s testimony that Immanuel/Mitchell’s religious beliefs are bogus and bizarre, find him insane, it follows that Mormon beliefs are insane, since they are one and the same with Immanuel/Mitchell’s beliefs. Believe me, either way this turns out is not good for us down at headquarters.
What place do religious questions have in a criminal trials? In Mitchell’s case, there was probably no way to evaluate his mental health without confronting serious questions about his religious beliefs. However, if “reasonableness” is part of the test, whose religion could possibly earn a passing score? Religion is not about reason. It is about faith.
After the jury found Mitchell guilty yesterday, several jurors spoke in front of the courthouse. One juror noted how Mitchell never spouted off about religion while kidnapping Elizabeth Smart. Instead, he used a knife to her back.
The trial transcript reveals how Mitchell manipulated others without bizarre outbursts or religious justifications:
Viti: And during the times that you observed him engage in such behavior, did you believe that he was being sincere at those times?
Smart: No.
Viti: At any of these times that he engaged with others besides you or Ms. Barzee, did he ever proclaim that he was the Davidic king?
Smart: No.
Viti: Did he ever proclaim he was the one mighty and strong?
Smart: No.
Viti: A prophet?
Smart: No.
Viti: Did he discuss polygamy with anyone?
Smart: No. Viti: Would he tell them to repent?
Smart: No.
Viti: Would you ever observe him with other people shutting his eyes, folding his hands and singing religious hymns?
Smart: Not that I can recall.
In other words, there was method to Mitchell’s madness. He used religion when it suited him.
That, more than his particular beliefs, holds the most evidentiary value—at least to me. It requires no value judgment, no faith, and no cultural bias to see it.
implausible plausibility
The Brian David Mitchell case gets curiouser and curiouser.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Noel Gardner testified on Tuesday that Mitchell is not mentally ill, since his ideas “are similar to those held by many fundamentalist Mormons, and in some cases mirror mainstream LDS beliefs, thereby making them non-bizarre.”
Earlier testimony from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Paul Whitehead characterized Mitchell’s beliefs as non-bizarre or “plausible but highly unlikely.”
However, a psychologist in Missouri diagnosed Mitchell with paranoid schizophrenia, labeling his ideas “bizarre” and “not plausible at all.”
Under cross-examination, Gardner blamed some of the difference on culture. To non-Mormons outside Utah, certain beliefs might seem bizarre. However, locals might find them more “familiar,” he said, according to the Desert News article. Hence, the different diagnoses.
I wonder what local Mormons think of this characterization. Really? Locals do not see anything bizarre in Mitchell’s beliefs? I doubt that.
From my point of view (non-Mormon, living in Utah), the “cultural relativism” explanation makes little sense. While I confess that many Mormon beliefs confuse and confound me, I have not encountered anyone like Mitchell. Then again, Gardner was talking about belief—not behavior.
If different diagnoses sometimes come down to cultural relativism, I wonder what that says about forensic psychiatry or psychiatric diagnosis in general. How much does a forensic psychiatrist’s cultural or religious background play into determining the “plausibility” of a defendant’s beliefs? How many defendants receive tougher or weaker sentences than they deserve because of cultural relativism in diagnoses?
Of course, none of this means I believe Mitchell or feel qualified to make determinations about his mental health. The trial has just raised important questions.
crying wolf
Yesterday in the federal courthouse here in Salt Lake City, Brian David Mitchell — the man on trial for kidnapping Elizabeth Smart — had a seizure.
Online commenters immediately jumped on the headline and accused him of faking. Just read any article and scan the comments. If you are in Salt Lake City, just listen in at coffee shops; it will not take long before the subject comes up.
As an epileptic myself, I cannot let this go unaddressed.
Yes, I find Brian David Mitchell revolting. Yes, I am sick of his phony outbursts into song that disrupt his trial. I use the word “phony” because observers have noted Mitchell’s penchant for waiting until the trial gets underway to sing for his Tony. According to the Deseret News, he sings until the judge boots him out of court into an annex, and he “never sings once he has been seated in the annex.”
In any case, his little outbursts hardly seem relevant: an insanity defense has a very specific legal meaning, and just being mentally ill never cuts it.
That is not to say MItchell’s mental illness is phony; he has, after all, been diagnosed with schizophrenia by one psychiatrist, and I am not qualified to determine his mental health. Rather, there just seems — at times — to be method behind his madness.
Seizures, however, are hard to fake and get away with it. Worse, this suspicion that seizures are “not real” or “easy to fake” only serves to undermine epileptics who live with this disease every day.
You see, even average, everyday, non-criminal epileptics suffer accusations like those littering the Internet about Brian David Mitchell. Once, when I suffered a grand mal seizure following a track race, I woke up to discover my track coach hovering over me, chewing me out for making the team look bad — not to mention, wrecking her plans for the next race in which I was slotted to run.
Bosses have accused me of just trying to get out of work.
One employer became hostile and embittered because I needed some very minor accommodations in scheduling.
Of course, MItchell may have done this to himself by “crying wolf” with his apparently phony outbursts. More importantly, his antics – if they are indeed phony – only serve to harm people truly suffering from mental illness, making them appear crafty. Then again, I suspect the media would portray him as crafty no matter if an MRI showed a chunk missing from his hippocampus or temporal lobe.
I suppose I just hate that epilepsy has yet another negative association. It was the last thing epileptics need.
The response to MItchell’s seizure comes from deep anger and disgust—and rightly so. But the response to his seizure is not all that different than the responses to mine or those of friends I know with epilepsy. That is a truth that must be faced.
the ice bath
Lately, one of the few memories I have with my brother keeps returning to me in dreams: the night he lifted me from my bed and carried to me to a bathtub filled with ice cubes and cold water. I was delirious with fever, in and out like a distant radio signal, and in danger of dying if my fever could not be brought down. My brother had come to live with us while between jobs, and so my mother put him to work when the doctor gave the order to cool me down.
I remember him unbuttoning my pajamas and pulling them over my head, and despite the fever, I was embarrassed. I hardly knew him, and the truth is, I had a little-girl crush. Ever since he arrived at our front door, I found myself going out of my way to harass and tease him – anything to get his attention. To me, he seemed like a miracle, arriving at just the right time, when I was longing for a big brother. And since he was eighteen years older than I was, he was also a mystery. Why hadn’t I known him all these years?
It couldn’t have been too long – maybe three years – after this night that he was banished from our lives for good.
My feelings change depending on whether these images flash into my mind during the daytime, or creep up on me in sleep: In the daytime, this bathtub scene takes on a sweet quality, a moment when I felt like I had a real brother, someone who took care of me in a vulnerable moment. At night, I wake myself up trying to wriggle out of my brother’s arms, pushing his hands away from my pajama buttons. Mostly – and I realize this is fallacy – I try to figure out what I am supposed to feel, which is to say what other people would feel, about a moment like this.
Given that I had so few moments with him, maybe I could never really perceive this moment in a way that makes sense. Maybe my mind could never really assimilate to the man who showed up on our front doorstep with a suitcase and lunch pail, ready to reconcile with his father – my father. Maybe if he had been with me all my life, it would not be so hard to understand what he means to me now. Maybe it would be easier to weigh his defenses against all the other evidence. Maybe I could stop putting my memories on trial and just miss him. Like other sisters would.
