No Danger to Self or Others?

Posted on May 29, 2006 in Death Penalty Hospitals and Prisons

Some call for the execution of the mentally ill*, but when the system fails to do something despite obvious signs of mental illness manifesting themselves, it is hard to justify the calls. Take the case of Stephen R. Miles who is accused of decapitating his stepmother. Tell me that there was no sign of “danger to self or others” in his behavior the day before:

Miles tried for the second time since October to remove fillings from his teeth with a bent fork and a hammer. He believed the fillings emitted radiation and that they contained devices that could monitor his thoughts.

His parents were afraid to call the police because their son had warned that he would die through “suicide-by-cop.”

“He told her he would keep his hands in his pocket and threaten a weapon so the police would shoot him,” wrote state forensic psychologist Daniel Neller in his report to the court.

The parents tried to contact Miles’ psychiatrist, but he was on vacation, as were the other therapists at the clinic. The telephone crisis line for Dakota County social services, which had extensive interactions with Miles as an adolescent, urged the parents to hospitalize their son.

“The crisis line told me that if we were told all the beds were full, I should tell the hospital to restrain him so they would have to take him,” Roland Miles told state regulators, who investigated whether Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina had cared for Miles properly.

At the hospital, both Roland and Carol Miles said they feared for the safety of their son and themselves. But by then, Miles had walked out of the hospital because the emergency room physician who examined him refused to answer questions about skull deformities.

When we look at other celebrated cases where the executioner was “cheated” by the insanity defense, we find similar failures of health workers and caregivers to head off the incident. So do we also drag the physicians, therapists, and family members to the block?** If we cannot hold them to murder by negligence, then we have no business using the death penalty against the disturbed.

*Maggs quotes a Mr. Scrabble who appears to favor the death penalty. I am unclear about her position. I put in my two cents over at her blog since she does not link to his.

**It is my view that when you call for the death penalty against a killer, you become a killer yourself.