Consider Andrea Yates, the Texas woman last year convicted of drowning her five children even though she had a well-documented history of schizophrenia and was in the midst of postpartum psychosis. The Houston jury that convicted her had no idea that finding her insane would have resulted in her commitment to a mental hospital. It took them three hours to find her guilty of first-degree murder and just 40 minutes to decide to spare her the death penalty.
"If she had gotten the death penalty, that would have been very controversial," says Bard. "Just like we wouldn't have executed a four-year-old who killed another kid. It's on a continuum."
Dantwon Charles
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Some legal scholars are convinced that, given information on what would befall her if she were found not guilty, the jury might have concluded she was insane. Almost certainly she would have been convicted of a lesser crime, such as manslaughter. In the wake of her case, there is a push in Texas to make it legal to tell juries that someone found not guilty by reason of insanity will be committed to a psychiatric facility.
It may be hard to imagine a jury would ever have as much sympathy for Darren Odell as for Andrea Yates. But that's precisely why it's so important that the law better reflect modern psychiatric knowledge, according to Odell's legal team.
"There is no doubt that Darren Odell's actions were a direct result of his mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia," Odell's attorneys, Tucker, Sarah Bocaner, and Bryan Leary, explained in a written response to questions from City Pages. "He was predisposed by nature, by genetic misfortune, to develop this terrible illness as a young adult. He was untreated for years before he was compelled by his illness to act, not as a free agent choosing to do evil but as a severely ill man following the dictates of his delusional thinking. He acted on a false belief, that his father was driving him to suicide. That is why this case is important. Because the law in its present state does not take into account the fundamental fact that the mentally ill are not as culpable as those who are free to choose an alternative path.
"The law does not look beyond the effect or the result, and consider causation. The law applies a 19th-century solution to confront contemporary issues of mental illness. Medical science has long since abandoned the use of leeches as a form of treatment for physical illness. Modern psychiatric science has also abandoned outdated treatments, and so too must the law abandon this antiquated 'test' to measure culpability.
"The cold irony is that Darren Odell took the life of the one person who cared the most about him and his well-being. Darren Odell's father loved him, cared for him, agonized over the effects of his mental illness and did everything a devoted father could do. It was his father's care and concern that catapulted the mental illness to the point it became the tragedy it is. If that is not proof of severe mental illness and its effect, what is?"
