Criminally Insane?

An incident of horribly bizarre gruesomeness where a  man on a bus suddenly attacked a perfect stranger sitting beside him on the bus, beheading him and cannibalizing the remains before the horrified eyes of others on the bus, the bus driver, and police who had responded to the emergency call will represent one of the most dreadful attacks ever committed in Canada, of pure lunacy run amok.

The family of the young man who was murdered and decapitated, shudder in disbelief at the treatment meted out in the commission of justice to the man who committed the atrocity. He was held to be not criminally responsible for the murder of Tim McLean. In an attack that the Crown attorney characterized as "perhaps the most macabre crime ever committed in Manitoba".

Vince Li, the man whose grotesque actions that dreadful day on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba that took the life of a young man, had been an undiagnosed schizophrenic at the time of the attack. He was hallucinating, it was claimed, and had no control over his unbelievably violent impulses. He has, since his conviction in 2008, been a patient under treatment at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre. His illness held to be under control.

"I believe that, primarily, Mr. Li is invested in co-operating with and working with the treatment team", said Dr. Steven Kremer before the Criminal Code Review Board in an examination of Li's condition. That doesn't sound like an unequivocal statement, rather one with a qualifier. Mr. Li, according to Dr. Kremer has made "excellent improvement", since the attack that took the life of a young man by a man who committed a further indignity to his corpse.

Confined to a locked wing of the hospital for two years, Mr. Li was granted the right to enjoy escorted walks on hospital grounds in 2010. And doctors at the hospital are now prepared to see that this man whom they claim takes his medication, has experienced no untoward incidents with other patients or hospital staff, has earned the right to further privileges.

Above the right to escorted daytime trips into Selkirk which was granted last year. The review board is now set to determine whether it will permit Mr. Li additional privileges, greater and more frequent escorted passes into the community.  Is the community prepared to welcome Mr. Li to enjoy greater access to public spaces they all share?

Is this truly justice, that a man who committed such unspeakably inhumane offences against an another person can get on with his life?  As though nothing untoward of which he can be accused, judged and held guilty, can be found, excusing all that went before? So he can be allowed to move forward, pardoned of guilt.

Nothing further is to be required for he has been adequately disciplined, and may now anticipate a re- introduction to normal life.

Was he criminally insane or just insanely criminal?