How Crazy Is Too Crazy?

Heinous crimes. Horrible deeds. I claim to be empathetic, really understand how people think, but there are some things completely beyond me, completely beyond my understanding. I don't understand spree killing and murder suicides. I mean, I can recreate the thinking, but I can't duplicate the feeling, can't imagine being someone could be so utterly selfish as to kill others in that manner. Ditto with the serial killer that murders for pleasure, except I can't even duplicate the thinking on that.

The recent crime where a mother dismembered her 3 1/2 week baby with various sharp objects (and apparently ate part of the body) - I'm at a complete loss to understand what kind of damage would have to be done to someone's mind to do such a thing. I mean, I could understand how Andrea Yates, emotionally battered with children that were beyond her ability to care for with mental problems she'd tried to address ignored, could snap and kill her children. I'm not excusing it - it's a horrifying event - but I could see how it could happen, could reconstruct the steps that got there. Not that regaining her sanity will do her much good. How do you live with that?

But there are others that I just can't grasp. Suzanne Smith who coldly drowned her own two children with the belief that would help her love life and tried to pin it on an anonymous assailant. I completely don't get that.

But, when I read the headline about this recent woman who'd killed her newborn that told me she had mental problems, I have to shake my head. Thanks for the scoop, but I could have figured that out for myself.

I know many people struggle with mental health issues and many of them still manage to be effective parents. But when I read about a parent who slams her son repeatedly into the sidewalk until he dies or slices her baby up as this Otty Sanchez did her son, I wonder how mentally ill you have to be before someone protects your children from you. How ill do you have to be before we remove the easy targets?

I'm unusual in that, for all my liberal tendencies, I favor capital punishment for heinous crimes. I will add that I go an additional step and do not feel differently for the severely deranged, not because I don't recognize how crazy they are, but because I don't see any hope for them. Truly, I think you could make a case that anyone who commits a heinous crime probably isn't sane.

So, if I understand they're crazy, would I be comfortable with capital punishment if they've committed a horrible crime? If they are incurably insane, what purpose do we serve by prolonging their agony? And, if they are curable, exactly how can they live with what was done (and, if they can, are they really sane?).

I'd put a rabid dog down with a clean conscience (even if it made me sad). Truthfully, this makes me unbelievably sad, for a mother to so lose her mind, for a baby to be used so horribly. There's no happy outcome for this, no matter what one does. But I personally think it's inhumane to let someone suffer indefinitely. And that, as much as anything else, drives my thinking.

Before you ask, I don't expect to get much agreement. I think in a particular way and this is a very emotional topic. I will do my best to response politely even if some of you respond hotly. After all, this is the kind of subject is emotional. You're entitled to feel completely different and I won't be offended.

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