Dallas Morning News – page 13A

Dallas Morning News – page 13A
Insane killers need to be locked up for life – Mark DavisMr. Davis can be heard on WBAP talk radio 820 from 8:30 to 11:00 AM, weekdays.
If you have not read this editorial, open up your web browser and find it and read it now. Now before you think you know what this article says, realize that you don’t. At least not all of it.
The focus of his article revolves around the release of Dena Schlosser. In 2004, she cut her baby’s arms off. She was found insane and sent to Rusk State Hospital. Schlosser is being released by the end of the year.
As part of Schlosser’s release, she cannot have any more children. She cannot be around children unless supervised. There are mandatory mental health appointments. And this does not seem to satisfy Davis’s need for retribution. Davis is concerned for our safety based upon what he has written.
Davis actually has some very fine points.
1. It is natural for Schlosser to not want to spend the rest of her life in a mental hospital.
2. It is the job of her attorney to get the best arrangements for his client, within the guidelines of the law.
3. The law is what is allowing Schlosser to be released, four years after her crime.
4. No one really knows what Schlosser heard or thought when she cut baby’s arms off.

And then Davis starts to run amuck. He states that we as a society have allowed our logic to be clouded in regards to people who have committed crimes while suffering from a mental illness and that “we choose to endanger society rather than confront the necessity of confining – for life – those murderers who may not have known what they were doing.”

And this is where Davis starts to derail. First he begins to question Schlosser’s ability to make a decision and a moral one at that; and her ability to control herself. Davis states, “Often mothers hear those voices, feel those urges and restrain themselves from killing their children.” How it is that Davis has the ability to see into the minds of all these other mothers, but cannot see into the mind of Schlosser?

Davis states that we do not know if Schlosser is a threat to herself and to society. Again, I wonder if his source of information about this comes from the same source that assures him about the activities of other mothers and their thought control. Davis goes on to talk about the doctors treating Schlosser and how their assessments give him no comfort or assurance. He further states that he hopes “they feel great when Dena Schlosser is free to live a life largely indistinguishable from non-murderers.”

Finally, Davis says something that actually makes sense. Mr. Davis, your sarcasm is the only thing that actually has a ring of fact to it, even though that was not your intent. While Schlosser did kill her baby, she is not a murderer. She suffers from a disease that prevents her from making sound and sensible decisions and operating under the guidelines that we require and need as a cooperative, compassionate and functioning society. Saying she is a murderer is much like saying someone who has a heart attack has committed suicide. An extreme idea, completely wrong, however tragic the result. When you have a heart attack, your heart is sick. When you have a mental illness, you have a brain that is sick. Both can and do respond to treatment. Both need to be supervised by medical professionals.

Your comments show an underlying fear that is based upon ignorance and a lack of empathy that always leads down the same path – stigma and discrimination.

We don’t call our armed forces and wonderful military veterans murderers, though killing is involved. There is a reason, an explanation and an expectation of the circumstances involving war and all that it entails. We do not call a person who kills another while defending themselves, or their family and home a murderer. But death does happen in those circumstances. And a person who is suffering from a brain that does not allow them to see the difference between what is real and what is not, often times is involved in many tragic situations and yes, sometimes they can involve the death of another. But this does not make them a murderer. This makes them a person who is ill and who needs medical treatment. Studies show that almost 90 percent of those with a mental illness never commit a violent act of any kind. On the other side, more than one-fourth of persons with severe mental illness are victims of violent crime in the course of a year, a rate 11 times higher than that of the general population.

Davis said that “this is one of those cases of seeing the enemy and it is us.” You said the right thing, even if it was for the wrong reason. The enemy is us for allowing people like Schlosser and others to be ill and to ignore the warning signs. If we passed a man on the street exhibiting the signs of a heart attack or asthma and did nothing to help him, we would be criminals ourselves. So how is it that when we see the warning signs of mental illness and do nothing to assist the person, turning a blind eye is ok?
Wait, you don’t’ know what the warning signs are? Again, how can that be in this enlightened age of information?

Davis writes passionately and effectively, but unfortunately, there is not enough truth and facts in what he wrote today. He needs more information about mental illness and recovery and what both of these look like. I can help Mr. Davis. We all can help him. Write him at mdavis@wbap.com.