Criminally Insane

According to a recent report, a psychiatric evaluation is to be done on Stephen Fray, the Jamaican man who attempted to highjack a Canadian plane at the Montego Bay airport recently.

You know, I have often wondered why more persons who are charged with serious crimes have not sought the ‘temporary insanity” plea that we so often see in the movies. In fact, I recall in the early 90’s when Mary Lynch murdered her husband, I condemned her for not having chosen that option. For after all, did not all the evidence in that case suggest that she had been physically and mentally abused for years? In fact, from the evidence I heard, no woman could have survived that relationship without suffering from permanent insanity.

This is a topic I raised recently with a friend who works in the correctional sector when the news of Fray’s pending assessment broke. I was shocked to learn from him that there is no such plea as insanity allowed by the Jamaican courts.

According to him, an attorney can put in an “Unfit to plead” plea for the defendant.. This in short means that you are mad but instead of such a person being sent to Bellevue which is our official insane asylum, since Bellevue is not gazette as a penitentiary he/she would be sent to the Tower Street penitentiary where they have a section for the criminally insane.

While inmates there are visited from time to time by a psychiatrist, he remains incarcerated “At the governor General’s Pleasure. “. In short, he can only be released when the governor general signs a document saying he is now sane and can go back into society, not when the courts or psychiatrists decide. Only problem is, I am told, most times the governor general does not even know of the existence of these persons, so an insane person who committed a minor offence e, e.g. breaking a glass window, could get lost in the system for decades. In fact just a few years ago, we heard of one such man who had spent some 28 years in the Tower Street penitentiary for just that reason….he was simply forgotten in the system.

That, I am told, is what usually happens to poor people. It will therefore be interesting to see how the case with Stephen Fray pans out; for he is by no means poor I am told and we know that in JA, there are two types of justice, one for the rich and one for the poor