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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/12/12/montreal-guy-turcotte-mental-review.html?cmp=rss
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Turcotte released from Philippe Pinel Institute/7687830/story.html
In 2009, this man stabbed his two children. aged 3 and 5, to death. In 2011 a judge and jury found him not guilty under the case of his mental state at the time of the murder.
Now, after only 18 months in an institution, he has been deemed mentally fit and is to be released.
My mind cannot begin to comprehend how it is possible this man does not serve major prison time, spends 18 months in the comfort of an institution, and is now released after only a year and half - for brutally murdering his toddlers. It almost makes me physically sick.
I am not one to be that politically active. But today, I took the 5 minutes to write a letter to my MP about this case. On a moral level, this injustice is unacceptable. On the thought how this represents our country, our justice system, it is absolutely unacceptable. He has set the precedent that you can argue away the taking of someone's life based on your feelings at the time. Yes, he was sad about the separation with the mother. He murdered the children to 'save them the pain of the separation'. And the courts accepted this argument and offered him psychological support, rather than making him pay for the crime.
If you are canadian, I will urge you to write to your MP. The Crown will be appealing the decision, but I do not know how far that will go. In any case, I felt like I couldn't just sit here and not make my voice heard about this. I hope you will do the same, for the victims, and for justice.
 
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Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life?
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well he might be ok again. If he really was in some kind of blackout while he did it he'll suffer enough now that he can realize what he did.
ofcourse he might have simulated the craziness. But really how do you want to judge that?
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On December 13 2012 15:42 Sufficiency wrote:
Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life?
what mental defect would that be that allowed me to be practicing doctor up until the fact, and let alone for me to be supposedly cured after a years worth of help?
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On December 13 2012 15:42 Sufficiency wrote:
Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life?
So if you get drunk then run over a person (and kill them), you can go to AA and your Murder charges are dropped? I don't think so T.T
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On December 13 2012 15:50 iTzSnypah wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2012 15:42 Sufficiency wrote:
Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life? So if you get drunk then run over a person (and kill them), you can go to AA and your Murder charges are dropped? I don't think so T.T
uhm I hope you see the difference between a mental illness and alcohol abuse?
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On December 13 2012 15:53 Skilledblob wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2012 15:50 iTzSnypah wrote:On December 13 2012 15:42 Sufficiency wrote:
Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life? So if you get drunk then run over a person (and kill them), you can go to AA and your Murder charges are dropped? I don't think so T.T uhm I hope you see the difference between a mental illness and alcohol abuse?
I knew I should have elaborated. I'll rephrase. You're driving home drunk and you run a kid over. You didn't mean to. Therefore by Sufficiency's logic the Drunk can just go to AA and get his charges dropped.
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On December 13 2012 15:50 iTzSnypah wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2012 15:42 Sufficiency wrote:
Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life? So if you get drunk then run over a person (and kill them), you can go to AA and your Murder charges are dropped? I don't think so T.T
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/12/guy-turcotte-who-stabbed-his-two-children-to-death-is-out-after-less-than-four-years/
He had admitted to stabbing his young children 46 times.
But he said he didn’t remember doing it, hadn’t wanted to do it, and had been experiencing blackouts on the night of the killings.
He said he was distraught over the breakup of his marriage. His wife had left him for a family friend who was her personal trainer.
insert alcohol into the above and you wouldn't be too far off. even better, no, he was not drunk at the time.
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On a moral level, this injustice is unacceptable. On the thought how this represents our country, our justice system, it is absolutely unacceptable. He has set the precedent that you can argue away the taking of someone's life based on your feelings at the time.
You know what he has done, you don't want it to happen again. This is true for pretty much every single one of us. However, it is not up to you nor me to judge if he's likely to do it again. It's also not up to us to judge whether he was in a state that will not happen again in the future. I am pretty sure that no judge, no committee, no doctor will make those calls in such a case when they aren't sure about the issue. I also doubt that something like this happens on a frequent basis.
I think it speaks FOR a great justice system if such a case is possible. In theory there have to be some very few cases where something like this is the correct approach to the situation.
And the courts accepted this argument and offered him psychological support, rather than making him pay for the crime.
You want vengeance, not justice or fair treatment of a human being? If psychological support will help him get better, he deserves it - just like anyone else.
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On December 13 2012 16:10 r.Evo wrote:
You want vengeance, not justice or fair treatment of a human being? If psychological support will help him get better, he deserves it - just like anyone else.
You could make that statement for virtually every criminal ever. Is that how justice works?
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Although the articles don't reveal much information, provided that the psychiatrists provided the correct diagnosis, this seems pretty reasonable to me. This isn't restricted to the Canadian Justice system either. The majority of justice systems in Western Liberal Democracies are forgiving to those who commit crime due to a mental illness, and no longer carries that mental illness.
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As a lawyer, I don't have any problem with this. A jury found him not criminally responsible because of a mental defect, and now he has recovered well enough to rejoin society. The system seems to be working just fine. It's not like it's easy to convince a jury that you aren't criminally responsible, and I really doubt his psychiatrists would let him out of the mental institution unless they were damn sure he had recovered. The real injustice would be throwing a man in prison for something he had no control over or keeping him in an institution after he gets better.
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On December 13 2012 16:12 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2012 16:10 r.Evo wrote:
You want vengeance, not justice or fair treatment of a human being? If psychological support will help him get better, he deserves it - just like anyone else. You could make that statement for virtually every criminal ever. Is that how justice works?
"Justice" isn't meant to "make people pay for their crimes", deny them medical treatment and deny them a possibility for rehabilitation if said treatment was deemed successful.
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On December 13 2012 16:12 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2012 16:10 r.Evo wrote:
You want vengeance, not justice or fair treatment of a human being? If psychological support will help him get better, he deserves it - just like anyone else. You could make that statement for virtually every criminal ever. Is that how justice works?
Actually this is the only situations where such a statement would work. Our justice system aims at punishing those who made a conscious decision to commit a crime, or led to committing a crime. For your previous example of drunk driving, it would in fact be a punishable crime because the culprit wilfully decided to go drinking without an alternative means of transportations, and the got behind the wheel drunk. One cannot make a conscious decision to have a mental illness. Therefore by putting that man in prison, he will not learn the lesson of "I'm sorry that I have a mental illness, I'll choose better genetics next time".
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I'm more concerned about the omnibus bill. Although this is a messed up case it is the exception not the rule. I'm sure this will be resolved as the media has already jumped all over it.
The omnibus and the lack of any sort of debate in the federal government is much more concerning than this.
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I like how we believe, as a society, that bad people do bad things, and in order to comfort ourselves, we believe in punishing those bad people.
With what we know of psychology and sociology, we should put a lot more investment into rehabilitation, therapy, and prevention programs than into putting people in a zoo for decades at a time.
Even if he didn't have a temporary insanity defense, no-one should go to prison for 30 years for a crime. Time doesn't teach anyone, it just keeps them "off the streets" - this is sweeping dust under the rug and just the stupidest institution in modern society.
If someone murdered my wife, I would hope that they would get rehabilitated and not put in a cage until they became either a) More insane, or b) Better at committing crimes. No-one has a family, and a job, and a good upbringing, and is chemically balanced and still commits a crime. There is something wrong with their brain, either chemically or developmentally. No-one is ever like, "I'm tired of watching the 10 o'clock news, I think I'll murder someone for a change."
Accuse me of being a dreamer, but I understand that crime happens, and that it negatively affects people. I understand that it ruins lives. But putting someone behind bars for 30 years doesn't solve the problem - the amount of money we put into keeping them locked up could be used in social programs to prevent 10 people from becoming criminals.
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Mentally insane or not, 18 months is too short in my opinion for murdering 2 kids.
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On December 13 2012 15:42 Sufficiency wrote:
Imagine you did something you did not mean to do due to a mental defect. Do you deserve to be punished for life?
I think it if impacts other peoples lives then you should be punished as if you had no mental defect. It's not like he had a mad 5 minutes and smashed up a car. Cars can be reapaired, those kids have had their lives taken!
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I am still surprised how being insane and killing people in cold blood is not considered mentally ill in the same way this man is because it was only for a moment. If you have the potential to make insane decisions such as taking someone's life, the cause if irrelevent. It doesn't matter if you are sick or healthy, young or old - what matters is that you have the potential to take life, and that potential should never be released into society again.
I live in a country with one of the most mild justice systems where you can actually consider taking someone's life because you hate him. If they catch you and say your nuts, you can serve 3 years in a comfortable prison with tv. If they don't catch you, free revenge. I don't ever want the option to consider to be present at all. In my opinion, when someone is proven guilty of murder, with the exception of self-defense, they should just get the death penalty.
I am however glad that there is not a bunch of idiots you can influence as a laywer that 'vote' whether or not someone is guilty. The jury system is something I'm glad about that it's not here.
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EPT
