An Object Lesson in Coddling Insane Murderers

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.

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:

Whiting Forensic Hospital provides high quality, comprehensive, and individualized treatment and evaluation services for patients with mental health conditions who are involved in the criminal justice system or are not yet ready to be safely treated in less restrictive settings. This is accomplished with full respect for the civil and human rights of each patient. Our goal is to assist individuals to manage their illnesses and achieve personal recovery goals through developing the skills necessary to live safely in the community.

The goal from day one at Whiting is not to protect the public or help offenders serve out their time with HBO and a ping-pong table: it is to transition them back into the public. One wonders who flew over Connecticut’s cuckoo’s nest at the state’s legislative offices.

I have stood before Connecticut’s Psychiatric Security Review Board a number of times as legal counsel for the Williamson family, whose beloved Heather Messenger was bludgeoned to death by her husband, David Messenger, in front of the couple’s five-year-old son. It was clear to all of us that we were regarded by the PSRB as a necessary ritual to be endured, not a voice to be weighed in determining whether Messenger (now free) was a threat to society or an affront to the historic goal of restitution.

Messenger’s case was particularly unjust: under Connecticut law at the time, he was permitted to inherit his wife’s estate rather than the young boy, which included more than $400,000 recovered by Heather’s attorneys in a settlement with their homeowners’ carrier for the killing of Heather. It took the family years to effect a change in Connecticut law, including my filing of a federal lawsuit and soliciting a Discovery ID dramatization of the horrible events, after which this slayer’s loophole was closed.

The Williamsons were able to prevent such travesties from being inflicted on other victims’ families by Connecticut inheritance statutes. Unfortunately, their battle did nothing to rebalance the commitments of the mentally ill so that public safety is paramount instead of “developing the skills” of the mentally ill to “manage their illnesses and achieve personal recovery goals.”

Compassion for the mentally ill is laudable, but not at the risky expense of public safety and victims’ psychological welfare. Victims of bludgeoning, cannibalism, and stabbing in Connecticut are not afforded costly “high quality, comprehensive, and individualized treatment and evaluation services” — not after the killing, and not after the release of the offender they thought was safely secured away.

The PSRB system inflicts PTSD on crime victims’ families. In 2013, Angel Gonzalez’s family spokesperson, Talitha Frazier, testified, “I don’t care where he serves the rest of his life, as long as it’s behind locked doors.” Ten years later, no one at the PSRB cares what she cared about: they are statutorily obliged to care for the mentally ill, not the mental infirmities seeded by the ongoing injustice this inflicts on victims’ families.

A 2022 Connecticut bill sought (unsuccessfully) to afford even more services for violent insane offenders through the PSRB to

incorporate[] spaces where the patients can engage in self-enrichment, creative activities, educational pursuits, vocational training and training in independent living skills to facilitate a safe transition to life in the community.

Four Republican Connecticut legislators have vocally objected to the release of Tyree Smith, calling his premature liberation “mind-boggling” in a joint statement that proclaimed, “What about the victims of this grotesque, violent crime?”

This sensible inquiry was matched this week with legislative action. A bill has been introduced restricting the frequency of release hearings, imposing more stringent conditions on the acquitted, and shifting the burden statutorily imposed on the PSRB back to common sense sanity to

require the Psychiatric Security Review Board to consider the protection of society its “primary concern” and the well-being of the acquittee its “secondary concern” when evaluating for discharge, conditional release or confinement

and

require said board to apply a burden of proof of “clear and convincing evidence” when evaluating a request for a placement order less restrictive than the existing order.

It is to be hoped this effort will be afforded grave consideration by the Connecticut Legislature. Sadly, past experience suggests that Connecticut’s “criminal as victim” and “victim as criminal” progressivism will remain the PSRB status quo until another young child is stabbed in public by a deranged cannibal acquittee.

(Originally published at American Thinker.)