Mental illness and justice are hard to balance

Are three small children whose last moments were defined by frenzied panic and terror entitled to a tangible form of justice? Or, are such notions irrelevant when issues of mental illness reign supreme in a courtroom? Is balanced justice an impossible mandate when illness and mercy are pitted against absolute and final damage?

Past attempts to equalize the scales have been difficult, sometimes polarizing. The focus on illness is sharp and unyielding while a victim's relevance frequently drifts from the centre of concern to almost forgotten.

Dean Wride was found not criminally responsible for his role in the murder and cannibalism of his wife, Esther, in their East Kildonan home in the latter part of the 1990s. He will likely be held indefinitely in a secure facility where public safety is assured.

Then, there's Vince Li. He killed and decapitated Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus during a now-infamous event and he, too, was found to be not criminally responsible. But unlike Wride, controversy rages as to whether he should be allowed escorted walks in a less than fully secure environment. Voices on both sides are loud.

Now Allan Schoenborn.

As a drifter he tracked and stalked his family to Merritt, B.C., in 2008.

There he ran afoul of the law for threatening a child near a school. Despite having no fixed address, a psychiatric history and a record of some concern, justice allowed for bail and he continued his aimless roaming.

Under some pressure, Schoenborn's ex-wife gave him some time alone with their three children. Something she'll regret forever.

Her return to the modest home she shared with the children was marked by the unimaginable: In the bedroom, 10-year-old Kaitlynne stabbed, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5, on the couch, both smothered, all dead.

Schoenborn had killed the kids and scrawled some cryptic words onto a wall before disappearing into the bush, only to be captured nine days later by a local trapper.

Justice gambled and failed when Schoenborn first showed up in Merritt. He could have -- perhaps should have -- been held in custody but he wasn't and three children paid an ultimate price.

The killings brought the national media out in full force. Reporters descended on the scenic town looking for answers with cameras zeroed in on the teary eyes of school chums and adults alike.

Schoenborn's mental condition became the central question.

There is general agreement mental illness is an imprecise business with symptoms and success sometimes as much a matter of interpretation as of fact. Winnipeg courtrooms have been the settings where well-respected psychiatrists, including the likes of Dr. Fred Shane and Dr. Stanley Yaren, have testified on opposite sides.

And this was no different as psychiatrists battled over the fate of Allan Schoenborn.

While jealousy, a powerful and often-seen precursor to murder, was at play, an argument of mental defect won the day in the judge-alone trial and Schoenborn was sent to a secure medical facility.

Judicial wisdom is put to the test any time someone's fate is decided. When mental illness enters the arena, that wisdom needs to be taken up a notch to ensure justice is balanced and the community remains safe.

Shortly after last spring's verdict, the Vancouver Sun reported that a mental health review board, "found that while Schoenborn had improved, he was still suffering from delusional thoughts, he had a striking sense of entitlement and a "profound lack of insight into his illness." The board also found that Schoenborn is "obsessed by or fixated on" his ex-wife, so he still posed a "significant threat."'

And now the media is abuzz again.

The killer of three children is now looking for escorted excursions to Starbucks and he'd like to go swimming. Such trips have been approved in principle, in part due to his participation in programs such as anger management coupled with his taking appropriate medication.

But given the imprecise science of mental illness, should anyone gamble with the public's safety so soon?

The last gasps and massacre of three little souls were surely marked by soft, shallow screams, deafening signals of an outlandish failure of monstrous proportion on multiple fronts.

With just a year since the verdict, justice continues to be a bitter and unsatisfying pill for a grieving mother who contemplates accountability far beyond that of her children's killer, a man who can apply to sip lattes on a field trip.

Robert Marshall is a former

Winnipeg police detective.

rm112800@hotmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 23, 2011 J6