Something in the Unabomber trial reminds me of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.”
The “catch” in that satirical World War II novel was that pilots could get out of flying dangerous missions if they were crazy, but, since avoidance of danger was a sign of good sense, they had to fly anyway.
Theodore J. “the Unabomber” Kaczynski, the accused terrorist whose mail bombs, authorities believe, killed three people and injured another 29, appears to be stuck in a similar situation. He’s too crazy to admit he’s insane.
At least two mental health experts, hired by Kaczynski’s defense team, have examined him and concluded the Chicago native and former University of California at Berkeley mathematics professor suffers from the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Yet, though he apparently passed the time in his mountain shack by typing long, rambling anti-technology essays and sending bombs in the mail, he doesn’t want to be tagged as a crazy. In his journals, for example, he insists he is no “sickie.”
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Sure. What else can we expect a crazy man to say? If he said he was crazy, we’d be complimenting his good sense, like his prosecutors are.
After all, if he’s ruled insane, he has a chance to go to a mental health facility instead of prison or the death chamber.
But, no, Kaczynski insists that he is sane. Who says? He says. He has refused to be examined by government psychiatrists and he cut off interviews with his own doctors when they brought up the subject of his mental health. This has prevented his own attorneys from offering mental health testimony during the pre-trial phase.
Kaczynski seems to cherish the delusion that he has some credibility to protect, as if an obviously mad bomber had any audience left for his irrational ravings.
Silly man. If he wants people to believe he is sane, he should acknowledge that he is crazy. Then he might live to rant another day.
But the contradictions with good sense do not end there. Look for a moment at his prosecutors. They’re the ones insisting that Kaczynski is merely weird, so they can get a death sentence–maybe.
Which is where the other Catch-22 comes in. Instead of deterring other murderers or terrorists from committing murder or terror, the prosecutors in this case are deterring other friends and relatives from turning other murderers and terrorists in.
Remember, It was Theodore Kaczynski’s brother, David, who tipped off the FBI about his brother. Although the government made no promises, David apparently thought his brother would get mental help, not a lethal injection.
With the FBI still heavily depends on informants to solve most cases like this, and with other high-profile cases like the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta still unsolved, the pursuit of a death sentence in the Kaczynski case actually may hurt future law enforcement and public safety more than it helps.
Kaczynski’s disputes with his lawyers also puts Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr., in a precarious situation. Any conviction of Kaczynski could be reversed on appeal unless the judge gives a fair hearing to the complaints of a man whose ability to make decisions for himself is questionable, at best.
Yet a fair hearing for Kaczynski could lead to his deciding to defend himself, which could make the self-defending Colin Ferguson, the infamous ranting and raving Long Island Railroad gunman, look tame and rational by comparison.
Ferguson is a good example of how ill somebody can be in this country and still be prosecuted as if mentally competent.
Since medieval times, common law has frowned on the execution of anyone mentally incapable of comprehending the consequences of their own actions. The United States Supreme Court has upheld that principal in its rulings. Yet, that line was been repeatedly and vigorously crossed in recent years as lawmakers strive to impress voters with how tough they can be.
Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, offered one of the most dramatic examples. He left the Democratic presidential campaign trail in 1992 to be in Arkansas for the scheduled execution of Rickey Ray Rector, the brain-damaged killer of a police officer. Rector had shot a big chunk of his brain away in an attempt to kill himself. But that didn’t stop the governor from overseeing the execution at a time when it helped Clinton distance himself from his party’s soft-on-crime liberal image.
Examples like that raise questions as to whether the insanity defense really exists anymore in any meaningful sense. Last year America had 74 executions, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the largest number since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
And there’s more to come. Americans lead the free world in executions, which makes all of us look a little more insane.