The latest mass murder in America, in Lewiston, Maine, sounds like a broken record, a siren song. In the tenth month of this year, America has experienced and witnessed more than 500 mass murders. Still, the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, and assault weapons are easily accessible. Politicians and talking heads are talking about the “mental health” of “the person of interest” in this latest mass murder, who may have spent two weeks in a mental health facility. The suspect, who doesn’t deserve to be called by name, may have previously heard voices and wanted to do harm to other reservists! (The suspect is believed to be in the Army Reserve.)
When I was in my early 20s, working as a paralegal, I first came across someone with mental health issues. He was in prison, serving 15 years to life, for a homicide. The voices in his head had told him to kill a random stranger on a New York City Street. How many times have we heard that people charged with murder heard voices, that the voices told them to kill someone? My encounter with J.C. (a fictional name, to protect the guilty), revolved around a parole board appeal. He had recently went to his first parole board appearance after 15 years in prison. He was denied, held for the maximum 24 months before he would make a reappearance. I filed his appeal papers, requesting the transcripts of the parole hearing. A month later he brought the transcripts to my office in the prison. He sat across from me, rocking back and forth like he was on a rocking horse, as I read the transcripts. At one point, one of the parole commissioners asked J.C. if he still heard the voices. In the slow speech of someone on Thorazine, he answered in the affirmative. “What do the voices say to you?” the parole commissioner asked. J.C.’s response was prosaic. He said the voices would tell him when to get out of bed, to wash up, to take out the trash. The parole commissioner continued with this line of questioning, as I watched J.C. rock back and forth faster and faster. He must have divined that I was at the part in the transcripts about the voices. I looked at him with one eye, continued to read with the other. “If you were put in the same circumstances, and the voices told you to kill, would you?” I knew the answer to this trick question. In the same state of mind, of course he would do the same thing. “Yes,” he answered. “I had no choice.”
I agreed with the parole board not to release J.C., but he should not have been in prison 15 years later, regressed to that same state of mind where he would do the same thing. This was my first parole case, and then, I knew that something was fundamentally wrong with this process. It seemed like the parole commissioner was making sport of someone who had a serious mental health issue. I did everything in my power, but J.C.’s administrative parole board appeal was denied, as well as his Article 78 proceeding in the county Supreme Court. I don’t know what became of J.C., but I imagine that parole never released him, and that he died in prison with that siren song in his head.
Easy Waters 
DOCCS should have treated that man but they have decided in order for treatment like he needed that it is too costly. Concerning assault weapons. In the 40’s 50 there were gun clubs in schools kids in rural and not so rural places drove to school with rifles in racks inside pick up trucks or carried gun bags into school for rifle club. Yet there were no mass shootings. The laws became mor stringent and mass murders more prevalent. How? Why? Assault weapons, the right to keep and bear arms as it was initiated when first written was to be armed in case the govt had to be changed from repressing its citizens. Today FEMA is buying three tier trains with shackles in each seat. Why tremendous orders for those things. As it is going assault weapons from armed citizenry may be the only defense against repression that seems to be massing.
Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef ________________________________
LikeLike
Right! Gun enthusiasts miss that point about “the right to bear arms ” America was formed through Revolution! And then the British came back in 1812!
LikeLike
Brother Eric, your blog always makes us think! I had many thoughts, but let me just share one: the significance of the term “siren song” in your title and in the last sentence of the blog. Here you make the reader go back to Greek mythology in order to really appreciate your point. I recall that the sirens lured sailors to the shore with their seductive voices, only to cause the shipwreck of those drawn to it. With this background, one is better able to appreciate your point, and how you shift the readers attention away from the siren song of mass murder to the siren song of the parole process. It seems that JC was drawn to the seductive allure of parole, only to have those hopes shipwrecked by the probing questions of the parole commissioner. And when one considers that the New York State Department of Corrections rarely granted parole in the 1980s and 90s (even to “model prisoners”and those without a history and present signs of mental illness), one sees the siren song that promises false hope. Thanks for making us think!
Mark Sent from Gmail Mobile
LikeLike
Right, Brother Mark! And not only the seductive song of the sirens, but also another allusion to the voices in one’s head that gets louder and louder and often can’t be sedated but silenced by suicide.
LikeLike
I might as well add that JC claimed to be Jesus Christ and that the voices in his head told him that he had to kill the person because he was Satan himself! (This story made it into my first Jailhouse Lawyer story!)
LikeLike