by John Klar, American Thinker:
A “cannibal” who killed a homeless man and ate his eyes and brain was committed in 2013 to Connecticut’s custody for a term of 60 years, then released from the secure facility where he had been housed on “temporary leave” to a group home in September 2023. A hearing scheduled for February 21 will determine whether he is essentially set free under “conditional release.” The victim’s family may object strenuously, but Connecticut law does not grant them anything more than a symbolic voice of protest.
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As Americans witness a seemingly endless stream of news reports of horrendous crimes by gangs, illegal aliens, and subway thugs, the likely release of Tyree Lincoln Smith “on conditions” is just one more progressive imbalance among many. Connecticut residents and a group of GOP lawmakers concerned about public safety are understandably outraged.
At his trial, a video-recorded Smith admitted to killing 35-year-old Angel Gonzalez with a hatchet before removing his eyes and part of his brain, which he allegedly took to a nearby cemetery and ate, washing them down with a bottle of sake. Unsurprisingly, the “cannibal” who claimed that voices directed his actions was found guilty of murder by reason of insanity. The court ruled, “It is overwhelmingly clear that his discharge from custody would constitute a danger to himself and others.”
Connecticut is one of only three U.S. states that entrust the oversight of the confinement of severely mentally ill offenders to a psychiatric review board rather than corrections officials. The state’s Whiting Forensic Institute in Middletown, Connecticut became Smith’s residence for merely 10 years of the 60-year sentence, and now he may be released with conditions.
In criminal legal theory, incarceration is based on four public policy goals: reform, deterrence, restitution, and public safety. For the mentally ill, these often competing goals are muddied by the obvious infirmities involved. Many believe that Connecticut’s progressive laws have gone too far toward the reform side at the expense of deterrence, restitution, and especially public safety.
Tyree Smith’s mental imbalance was involuntary: Connecticut’s legal imbalance is deliberate. The laws entrusting violently insane offenders to the oversight of Connecticut’s Psychiatric Security Review Board pre-date the social justice “theories” that have unleashed a national scourge of crime and violence through lax prosecutions, ending cash bail, “reformative justice,” defunding police, decriminalization, racialization, and other dubious (Marxist?) ideological whims. Such policies, like Connecticut’s PSRB, display greater concern for the “security” of the offender’s psyche than the physical security of the general public.
Connecticut’s concerned citizenry has reason to beware. Infamously, 9-year-old Jessica Smart was stabbed nearly 40 times by Whiting Forensic escapee David Peterson in front of her mother. Released from Whiting on a day pass, Peterson bought a hunting knife at a local store before killing Jessica at a large Middletown street fair and sidewalk sale in 1989: “‘I knew she was going to die,’ Cathy Short said, as she recalled holding her daughter in her arms during that moment.”
Families of victims like Jessica are forever traumatized. When Connecticut releases the killers of their loved ones, who they thought were locked safely away, an entirely new trauma — by the law — is committed. Judges who believed they had protected society by long commitment sentences find later that their rulings were meaningless.
Whiting Forensic Hospital does not consider victims’ sentiments. Its Mission Statement declares:
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