That’s the logic of those who look at a case like Andrea Yates‘ and conclude that no sane person would kill her own five children. But the sad fact is that people do evil things all the time, and it doesn’t necessarily make them incapable of appreciating the consequences of their actions.

While Yates’ case got much more publicity, a local case here in suburban Chicago featured frighteningly similar circumstances. On March 4, 1999, Marilyn Lemak laced her three children’s peanut butter with drugs and then smothered them to death. They were 7, 6 and 3 years old. She was found guilty last December and now a judge has sentenced Lemak to life in prison, lecturing her in court thusly:

“It is appropriate that you spend the rest of your life thinking about these children,” Circuit Judge George Bakalis told Lemak in a blistering and rare display of outrage before a hushed courtroom full of spectators in Wheaton.

“It is appropriate that, every day, as you look at the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the bars, you will see the faces of these young children and hear these young voices asking you: ‘Why, Mom? We loved you, Mom. Why did you do this to us?'”

What a brave display. Indeed, holding people responsible for their crimes is not cruel, but rather gives people the dignity of shame. When we harm others, we should feel guilty and we should pay for our crimes. If nothing else, we need to make sure that violent people aren’t allowed another opportunity to kill again. Conversely, we owe nonviolent people the dignity of freedom. Instead, what we do, as psychiatry critic Thomas Szasz has noted throughout his career, is lock up innocent people we believe are crazy and set free guilty people we believe are crazy.

There may be some cases where a person is truly incapable of appreciating the consequences of his
actions. But why set them free, if a person who has demonstrated violent tendencies and cannot tell right from wrong is clearly a danger to society? “Guilty but insane” sounds good to me. Lock them up in a special psychiatric facility for the remainder of their lives. The important thing is to appreciate who really is dangerous to society and who is just someone who makes life hard for his family or the psychiatrist assigned to care for him.