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who oppose the death penalty are naturally relieved that Andrea
Yates, the former mother of five, will do 40 years to life. They
argue that only a crazy woman would kill her children, and that
the crazed should be off limits to the headman. They are no doubt
further relieved that she will be given lots of therapy during her
stay, which one report said would run about $50,000 per year, in
hopes that one day she will be "cured" of the problems
supposedly responsible for her terrible crime.
Others of us,
meantime, are left to our various reflections, beginning with the
idea that a parent who kills five of her children might reasonably
earn a trip to the death chamber simply on the merits of the offense.
There seems little justice in sending a multiple murderer off to
prison, where she'll likely spend years in a deep drug-grog, perhaps
later meeting a significant other and earning a law degree or developing
expertise in comparative literature or the making of pottery. She
might indeed get better, and this will make her therapists happy
as well, but the children are still dead.
Nonetheless,
what's done is done and if nothing else this trial reminded us that
well-meaning people come to totally opposite conclusions on matters
such as what it means to be crazy, and what the proper response
to that very imprecise designation should be. Shrinks for the prosecution
and defense bombard each other with conjecture, theory, and no small
amount of voodoo. They attempted to climb into her mind to see what
was going on in there when the grisly deed was done. Did she know
what she was doing, and that it was wrong? In Yates's case it seems
clear she knew exactly what she wanted to do, she did it very methodically,
she knew she had done wrong, which is why she called the authorities
to confess. In my book that should be enough to get one hanged with
a wet rope.
But that is
the view from a study far distant from the Texas courtroom where
the legal drama took place. Any of us might decide differently were
our hands truly in charge of positioning the rope. And it is impossible
not to agree that this woman was sick.
Then again,
there are a lot of sick people in this world. Weren't those Texans
who dragged that poor fellow to death a few years back sick as well?
You do have to be profoundly warped to chain a human being to your
bumper and drive off into the sunset. One doesn't recall nearly
as much sympathy for them as for Mrs. Yates. Perhaps if they had
dragged five people to death, the response would have been: Poor
devils. They were clearly crazy. Let's check them in for 40 years
and see if we can clear up their issues.
By some estimations,
anyone who would slit a person's throat and then cut off his head
is way off the farm. Interestingly enough, when one considers the
likely motive for that crime, it appears somewhat associated with
the motive that inspired Andrea Yates. Our adversaries, like Mrs.
Yates, are clearly haunted by the idea of eternal damnation.
In her case,
it is reported that she killed her children in order to keep them
from Satan's clutches. One assumes that she believed that the longer
they lived in this fallen world, the better their chances of being
corrupted and as such making themselves candidates for eternal damnation.
For many people, avoiding that state of affairs is Job One.
We are currently
at war with people-and probably a very large group of people —
who believe that our way of life is an abomination and that our
presence on earth is a corrupting one, to the point of leading countless
people to perdition. Ergo, we must be destroyed. One assumes the
killers of Daniel Pearl fit into this category. Indeed, these people
assume that if they kill us, they not only rid the world of a problem,
but earn themselves a ticket to Nirvana. A more formidable foe can
hardly be imagined.
The president
calls our adversaries evil, which is a word with vast theological
overtones. Another way of looking at the problem is that these people
were raised from infancy to hate us, and to delight in our murder
even if they must die in its commission. You could argue that these
people are crazed — by design, but crazed nonetheless. Thankfully,
they are being treated with what the movie What About Bob
called Death Therapy.
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