The Connecticut Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) has granted conditional release to Tyree Smith, who in 2011 axed Angel Gonzalez to death then ate part of his brain and an eye, washing it all down with sake. In 2012 judges deemed Smith not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced him to 60 years in a maximum-security psychiatric facility.

According to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Caren Teitelbaum, Tyree Smith has “maintained clinical stability” and denied both “visual hallucinations and a desire to harm others or himself.” In hospital Smith was “a joy” and once stable “he is considered a support to the other people there” and “a really calming presence for other patients.” So Teitelbaum, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, overrides the court’s 60-year sentence and frees an axe murderer and cannibal. Astonished locals had to wonder what medical science empowered this psychiatrist and her profession.

The American Psychiatric Association, for those keeping score, is an organization that has managed to transform simple human experience such as shyness and grief into mental disorders, labelling millions of people mentally ill who aren’t. In 1952, the APA listed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance but by 1974 homosexuality was no longer considered a disorder. By contrast, the American Medical Association has not suddenly changed the definition of diabetes to something other than a disease.

Despite these vagaries, a psychiatric pronouncement somehow overrules the court and frees an axe murderer and cannibal. This act of white coat supremacy troubled several state legislators.

“This terrible decision puts public safety in jeopardy and is yet another terrible message to send to CT violent crime victims and their families,” the legislators said in a statement. “This person should never be out. We are dumbfounded at this injustice. In what universe is this okay?” Talitha Frazier, sister-in-law of Angel Gonzalez, wondered, “how do we really know he’s not going to do this again?” While Americans ponder that prospect, consider a similar case north of the border.

Vince Weiguang Li was born in the People’s Republic of China in 1968 and after coming to Canada in 2001, the alleged software engineer worked at menial jobs. Li became a Canadian citizen in 2006 and on July 30, 2008 boarded a Greyhound bus for Winnipeg. The Chinese immigrant took a seat next to Timothy McLean, 22, returning from work at a summer fair.

Without warning, Li brandished a knife, stabbed McLean in the chest then cut off his head, displaying it as a trophy to terrified passengers outside the bus. While heavily armed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) waited outside, Li began eating the victim’s innards. According to one report, police found McLean’s nose and tongue in Li’s pocket but the victim’s eyes and part of his heart were never recovered.

Li appeared in court in Portage La Prairie and was charged with second-degree murder. A psychiatrist diagnosed the killer as a schizophrenic who supposedly believed McLean was about to kill him. Li did not know McLean and there was no evidence he had planned the murder. On the other hand, Li had attempted to drive off with the bus, which the driver had disabled, and took other evasive actions. That constituted evidence that Li knew what he did was wrong, but based on the psychiatrist’s diagnosis, the court found the killer not responsible for the crime.

In June 2009, Li was remanded to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre. In 2010 he was allowed outside the locked ward and in 2012 granted short, escorted visits into the city. In February 2017, Li received an absolute discharge with no requirement to attend reviews or abide by conditions. Chris Summerville of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada told reporters “society has nothing to worry about, really.” McLean’s mother, Carol deDelley, didn’t think so.

“Vince Li committed one of the most horrific murders in Canadian history and has faded back into society,” she told reporters. “My son is still dead.” And because Li, who changed his name to Will Baker, and officially has no criminal record (NCR), it is entirely possible that “the crazed killer turned patient could potentially be working with children, the elderly and vulnerable.” Here on full display, as in Connecticut, is the latest medical model of human behavior.

For the white coat supremacists, beheadings, axe murders and cannibalism involve no criminality or injustice, much less any demonstration of outright evil. It’s all about mental illness, which absolves the cannibals of all responsibility for their actions. This outlook leaves little if any sympathy for the victim’s loved ones, and dismisses the possibility of future deadly action against innocents. These same dynamics were on display in Davis, California, in April of 2013.

Daniel Marsh, 15, tortured, murdered and mutilated Oliver Northup, 87 and his wife Claudia Maupin, 76. The police report said the couple had been killed with “exceptional depravity,” which was no exaggeration. After disemboweling both victims, Marsh placed a cell phone inside the corpse of Maupin and a drinking glass inside Northup. The autopsy report runs 16 pages and 6,658 words, and after seeing crime scene photos, members of the jury needed counseling.

In trial it emerged that Marsh had planned the killings for months, purposely acting at age 15 to avoid any possibility of the death penalty. The teen admired serial killers because they rid society of the old people he considered useless. After killing Northup and Maupin, Marsh took evasive action and before he was apprehended had plotted to kill another victim with a bat, so his crimes wouldn’t be linked.

In a five-hour session with police, Marsh confessed that the double murder “felt amazing” and gave him “pure happiness.” With strong evidence against him, Marsh changed his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity, which shifts the burden of proof to the defendant. Marsh’s taxpayer funded attorney tried to blame the killings on the depression medication Zoloft. A state psychologist told the court she was not aware of any research showing that Zoloft “causes people to research serial killers,” but there was more to it.

Marsh’s taxpayer funded expert witness, Dr. James Merikangas, testified that Marsh was in a “dreamlike dissociative state” when he killed the elderly couple. Prosecutor Michael Cabral wanted to know when the dreamlike, dissociative state ended. Merikangas said nobody knew, including Marsh. Shortly after the killings, Marsh elbowed his friend in school and said he made the news. “Was he in the dreamlike state then?” Cabral wondered. Merikangas had no answer and the insanity defense failed.

Marsh got 52 years to life, but attorneys tried to get the double murderer retried in juvenile court. That bid also failed but during the proceeding Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1391, under which anybody under age 16 can murder any number of people, be tried only in juvenile court, and gain release at age 25. Brown heard testimony from crime victims, including relatives of Northup and Maupin, claimed the testimony “weighed on me,” but then signed the bill anyway.

Daniel Marsh will be eligible for parole in his early 40s, so for the time being innocents on the outside are safe. The jury is still out on cannibals Vince Li and Tyree Smith, again at large. Canadians and Americans can be forgiven for looking askance at the profession of psychiatry, and if the friends and relatives of Angel Gonzalez and Tim McLean thought psychiatry has no place in the judicial system it would be hard to blame them.