Insanity Pleas and Serial Killers

Thursday, November 12, 2009
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Whenever and wherever a serial killer comes to justice one question that is asked again and again is – “wasn’t the killer crazy?” That’s been part of the backdrop here with the discovery of eleven women brutally murdered and their corpses hidden at the home of the suspect, Anthony Sowell. As ideastream® reporter Ida Lieszkovsky tells us, the way the public answers that question about insanity and the way the justice system does are two different things.

A small crowd lingers before a makeshift memorial of photographs and stuffed animals across the street from the house of Anthony Sowell - a man suspected of raping and murdering at least 11 women. People wonder aloud how someone could do something like this. Around the corner, Eli Tayeh tends to his customers at Amira Imperial Beverage. Sowell used to be one of those customers before his arrest, and Tayeh says he always seemed normal.

Tayeh: He seemed like regular. He was a very nice man very quiet he never said anything never bothered anybody. He was actually from a very nice family. I mean I’m shocked because I know the whole family I know his father I knew his grandfather I knew his mother in law and now I’m shocked what he did.

When a murderer is exposed, neighbors will often wonder at how this could have happened. He seemed so normal, they say, but his actions were the act of a mad man. 

West: Society tends to believe what serial killers do is crazy.

Dr. Sara West is a forensic psychiatrist at the Cuyahoga County Jail. She says it’s not that simple.

West: Insanity or the presence of a severe mental illness is actually very rare in a serial killer because that requires a great deal of organization.

West says it’s likely that in a case like Anthony Sowell’s, the defendant will plead not guilty by reason of insanity, as did the infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. But Dahmer was not deemed insane, because the law is very specific and narrow in the way it defines insanity.  J. Dean Carro teaches law at the University of Akron, and he’s worked with several defendants who have pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. 

Carro: The legal concept is a person who lacks responsibility cannot be punished for the crime.

Basically, pleading insanity in a court of law means the assailant doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. Carro says the legal system treats the mentally insane as it treats children.

Carro: A civilized society does not punish individuals who are irresponsible. We only punish individuals who have the understanding of what he or she has done. If that person is insane, they lack that understanding.

Only 1 percent of defendants in felony cases nationally plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and in Ohio fewer than 2 in 10 of those are actually deemed insane by the courts. That’s partly because it can be extremely difficult to prove that someone was insane at the time of the offense. Plus, Dr. Sara West says it gets even more difficult to prove insanity in the case of a serial killer because they typically seek to cover their tracks which indicates they know what they are doing is wrong.

West: The serial killer has to be able to plan out a crime so that he or she won’t be caught when committing the crime and do this over and over again and sometimes do this for years. Mental illness tends to cause disorganization and dysfunction in a way that doesn’t really allow this to happen.

So, if serial killers usually aren’t crazy in a legal sense, how are they classified? West, the forensic psychiatrist, says serial killers often suffer from personality disorders, diseases commonly known as sociopathy or psychopathy. That pretty much means they lack empathy – they have no appreciation of another person’s feelings…and unlike other mental illnesses, there’s no treatment that can change that.

West: The idea that the person with antisocial personality disorder doesn’t care makes it very difficult for them to engage in any kind of therapeutic relationship, and no medications have been shown to be effective.

In Ohio, personality disorders are excluded from the legal definition of insanity. This is just fine with many of Anthony Sowell’s neighbors, including Andre Matthews.

Matthews: I don’t think he’s insane I think he really understood what he was doing so I don’t think an insanity plea is warranted in this, because I don’t believe he’s crazy at all.

If he is found guilty of these crimes, some of his neighbors say letting him go to a mental institution would be letting him off easy.