I’ve been working my way through Crimelibrary*. That is the first case history that I had to skim. It’s also the only one I simply ha to give up on.
*I’m interested in true crime because I like to see how the criminals are eventually brought to justice. Sometimes they slip through the cracks in law enforcement. Sometimes a quick-thinking cop or detective picks up on some little nothing thing. Sometimes a blatant indicator is overlooked, or gets jammed up in bureaucracy. Sometimes a bystander intervenes, and sometimes people look the other way. To me, if it’s in Crimelibrary, it technically has a positive ending because the perp won’t be killing any more.
He was let out, over the nurses’ vehement objections, because his psychosis was nominally under control, and the psychologists were under considerable pressure to empty the mental hospitals. (Well, and they were idiots, but that’s another complaint.) To their limited observation, Chase had progressed to the point he could be released. After all, they didn’t actually see him beheading birds and drinking the blood.
It also (to me, anyways) shows how massively unprepared traditional psychiatry is for dealing with these types of people. You cannot rely on self-reporting, you cannot rely on an hour of talking once or twice a week, you cannot rely on the offender to continue taking his/her medications, and you must independently investigate the ‘facts’ they are telling you. And should you, god forbid, be so stupid as to let somebody like Chase out, at least ensure some sort of supervision! Well, actually given the indicators Chase showed, should you be that stupid, I think you should lose your license forever, and bear some sort of criminal liability.
Hey! It happened in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch! If you don’t know what to say and you must say something, that is surely something to say.
Rilchiam and tisiphone: Wasn’t the movie “Rampage” based on the case of Richard Trenton Chase? I seem to remember reading up on the real-life case shortly after seeing the movie (about 3 months ago). Creepy stuff.
In a mind-bogglingly pedantic move (although kind of in response to Bosda), I will add that as a 17-year-old he’s been sentenced to be detained “at Her Majesty’s pleasure” which is a sentence applied to juvenile (i.e. under 18) offenders. The killers of James Bulger were similarly sentenced. A judge then sets the recommended tariff. It was ruled at Strasbourg in the case of Thompson and Venables that a politician may not overrule the judge’s recommendation.
There’s some debate over the application of these sentences but I think they’re usually applied in recognition of a defendant’s youth (rather than as an excuse to sentence children as though they were adults). Obviously it seems more problematic in a case like this where the offender is on the borderline between youth and adulthood.
How many DP states in the US sentence people to death for crimes committed when they were under 18? What are the guidelines like for sentencing juveniles?