Family wasn’t shocked

It was a verdict Tim McLean’s family knew was coming, one they didn’t want to hear.

Before a packed courtroom yesterday morning, Justice John Scurfield ruled Vincent Li not be held criminally responsible for stabbing, dismembering and decapitating McLean aboard a Greyhound bus last summer.

The decision means Li will not be going to jail, but a mental institution.

“Persons who are profoundly ill do not have the mental capacity to intentionally commit a crime,” Scurfield said.

“The goal of criminal law is to punish criminals, not persons who have a mental illness.”

Scurfield ordered Li to remain in a secure psychiatric facility until a hearing can be scheduled before the Criminal Code review board. Li is expected to then be committed to the Selkirk Mental Health Centre for long-term treatment.

Once lodged at the centre, Li will be subject to annual reviews to consider his release.

“We didn’t go into this morning with any surprises expected and we didn’t get any,” McLean’s mother Carol deDelley told reporters outside court. “We will now have to go on a yearly basis, instead of having a birthday party, to ensure Mr. Li is kept locked up to keep everybody else safe.”

“Knowing that killer might get out very soon is very hard,” said McLean’s father Tim.

At a trial earlier this week, two forensic psychiatrists testified Li is a schizophrenic who believed he heard the voice of God directing him to kill McLean.

McLean’s family is calling on the federal government to pass a new law requiring mandatory life sentences for murder, regardless of the offender’s mental state.

“There is still a possibility of him being freed,” deDelley said. “Is the likelihood there? I’m not sure, but the possibility shouldn’t even be there. He still did it, whether he was in his right frame of mind or not. There was nobody else on that bus holding a knife slicing up my child.”

Li’s two-day trial heard testimony from just two witnesses — the forensic psychiatrists who examined him. Crown attorney Joyce Dalmyn said because Li admitted killing McLean, there was no reason to hear testimony from the nearly three dozen passengers who were on the bus with them.

Awaiting clarification

Dalmyn said the Crown’s office is still awaiting clarification from the RCMP as to whether an NCR finding means Li will have a criminal record.

“Certainly it is something that the RCMP do track and is information that would be available to them were there any further finding or charges in the future,” she said.