Society can’t take risk of his ‘recovery’

Vince Weiguang Li is one seriously psychotic dude. He hears voices he says commanded him to kill a man, instruct him when to board buses and tell him he’ll have to take part in his own demise one day.

He’s not really sure if it’s God’s voice or an evil spirit tricking him. What he is sure about is the voices told him to stab, mutilate and dismember a travelling carnival worker on a Greyhound bus last year.

If he didn’t, the carnival worker — Tim McLean — might assassinate him, he told a forensic psychiatrist. He believes penguins might take over the world and insists when he turns to the sun God speaks to him.

In all likelihood, the only reason Li was able to sit in a courtroom yesterday without falling into a psychotic episode is he’s on heavy doses of anti-psychotic medication. He’s taking more than most, a forensic psychiatrist testified. If he wasn’t on the medication, he would likely experience regular bouts of psychosis, court heard.

Even with the medication, Li still has conversations with hallucinatory friends. He is schizophrenic. And there is no cure for schizophrenia. But one day, Li might make a “recovery,” the experts say.

That’s a buzzword in the mental health community that means with heavy medication, years of psychiatric intervention, Li may — just may — be able to manage himself in the real world again.

“There is the potential for significant recovery,” said Dr. Stanley Yaren, a forensic psychiatrist who performed 19 separate interviews with Li. And that’s what scares the hell out of me about this “not criminally responsible” process.

Both the Crown and the defence believe Li was not criminally responsible for his actions because he was in a state of psychosis when he killed, mutilated and ate some of Tim McLean’s body parts. He didn’t know what he was doing was wrong. He was simply responding to commands from God.

So rather than go to prison, he will leave the justice system and get transferred to the world of psychiatry, likely housed in a secure mental health facility.

And there’s the problem. It’s no longer up to judges and Crown prosecutors to decide what happens to this guy in the future. Li’s future will be determined by the fate of a medical review board who will decide when and if he walks the streets again.

The problem with that is these review boards seem more interested in helping people like Li “recover” and live semi normal lives in society than they do about public safety.

Does anybody really think this guy should ever walk the streets again? I don’t care what “progress” Li is showing, he should never — ever — be released into the community.

He’s simply too high risk. A guy capable of doing what he did can do it again. What if they let him out in three, five or 10 years and he goes off his meds and can’t handle the real world?

What if he snaps again and claims God is telling him to kill somebody else?

Is that a risk innocent people living in a free society should have to face?

As far as I’m concerned, Li’s “recovery” and right to freedom is trumped by society’s right to live in safe communities. No forensic psychiatrist in the world can tell us a guy like Li will “recover.” In fact, I would say Li is lucky he lives in a country where our justice/mental health systems show him as much compassion and care as they do, given the horrendous killing and mutilation he’s responsible for.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask, in return, he never be released into the community again, period.

It’s simply not a risk that we should have to bear.