Outrage Stirs Over Li Ruling

The horror and outrage that was felt across the country last summer when Tim McLean, 22 was savagely attacked and killed on a Greyhound bus in Winnipeg has once again gripped the hearts and minds of Canadians. Today a Winnipeg judge ruled that Vincent Li is NCR, "not crimminally responsible" for the killing of this young man.

I've been following Bruce Owen of the Winnipeg Free Press on Twitter as he reported details of the hearing live over the internet. One can't help the feelings of outrage and anger when hearing the details of this terrible crime and then to find that the person who perpetrated it is not going to be held responsible as he was "psychotic" at the time of the incident. I find myself not only negatively emotional over the crime itself but toward the justice system. Just as the mother of McLean, Carol deDelley explained after the ruling, that NCR "has it's place but not in this case".

How would it be possible for any mother not to feel this way after what was done to her child? I know I would certainly want to kill the guy if this had happened to my child. Emotions run very high in a situation like this and people tend to react at the emotional extreme. But let's just take a look at what in my opinion is the obvious hypocrisy in our justice system.

Case in point number one, Ronald Smith is a canadian who has been on Death Row in Montana for the last 26 years for shooting two men in the back of the head. In Canada we don't have the death penalty but Canada has done nothing to get this Canadian's sentence commuted. Of course the US courts may have found him crimminally responsible, hence the sentence they handed down. But was he? Maybe he was on drugs or alcohol at the time, does that make you less responsible? Your mental state must surely be questionable in that case because you are "not in your right mind." Alcoholism and drug addiction are diseases too right?

Case number two in point, what about the Saskatchewan father, Christopher Pauchay, 25 who got drunk and took his two little girls out in a blizzard resulting in both children freezing to death? Surely he was "not crimminally responsible"? He was drunk, not in his right mind?? Right? In which case this is also a mental AND physical illness case which should be treated. So why not we sentence him to x number of years or months in rehab instead of jail time.

Let's just go South with this line of thinking for just a minute. Was Ted Bundy insane? Did he know what he was doing? What about Jeffrey Dahmer? Maybe they should have been declared "not crimminally responsible"? Did they know what they did was wrong? Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz claimed he was "commanded to kill by a demon who possessed his neighbour's dog". Sounds like a clear cut case of psychosis and NCR to me but on June 12, 1978 he was sentenced to 6 life sentences in prison, a total of 365 years. Bundy got the death sentence and was described as a man "born to kill" and "consumed with murder all the time". As for Dahmer, although he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity he was imprisoned for 15 life terms and finally beaten to death by a fellow inmate with a bar from a weight machine in the prison gym.

I think you get the drift of where this argument is going. Who's to say that Li is not like these infamous serial killers? It's just that he was caught on his first one.

I think our justice system needs a tweeking. I can't help thinking of the adage, fair but not always equal. Don't we need to have a justice system that is fair and equal? Is that even possible? What frightens me is how many more like Li are there out there? But even more terrifying, how many people will do heinous things like this and then more or less get away with it by being found NCR??

To conclude I'd just like to express my sympathy to the McLean family once again at what has to be the second part of the most difficult time in their lives. My heart goes out to you, and my prayers are with you.