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Tuesday, October 24, 1995 Page: 8A
`Insanity’ should not be a killer’s easy out
“Why?” screamed Susan Howorth, lying shot and bleeding on the floor of
her home, her husband shot and killed not far away. “Why?”
Son Jeffrey’s response, according to the prosecuting attorney: He slapped
another clip into his .22-caliber rifle, rammed home the bolt and shot her
againAnd today, as the smoke clears from Jeffrey’s acquittal by an Allentown
jury, stunned observers are left asking the same question:
Why?
As a rule, we think citizens should be deeply reluctant to question the
verdict of a jury. Only the jury saw all the evidence and heard all the
testimony. Only the jury heard all the arguments in the closed confines of the
jury room.
And as always, the fact that all 12 jurors agreed with each other gives the
Allentown verdict great weight.
But the acquittal of 17-year-old Jeffrey Howorth by reason of insanity may
still point out grievous faults in our system of law. In other words, maybe
the jury did believe Howorth to be insane under the current legal definition
of the term.
If they did, though, then that definition should be changed.
Because any definition that equates Howorth’s problems — severe depression
and mild brain damage — with insanity is absurdly and tragically broad, and
swings a sledge-hammer at a cornerstone of our justice system.
That cornerstone is the notion of personal responsibility. Deep cracks
already mark the spots where it has taken too many hits.
Think back to what you heard about young Howorth. He was a Boy Scout. He
attended church regularly. He swam on a local team.
He did his homework, carried on conversations, went shopping without
drawing stares.
By what legal stretch of the word could Jeffrey Howorth be called insane?
Insanity, to a layperson, means a near-complete inability to function in human
society. It means babbling. It means wetting or messing oneself.
It’s the kind of problem that in harsher times got treated with a
straightjacket or a padded cell.
It does not mean a problem — even a serious problem — with learning or
with mood. If professionals call those things insanity, then the professionals
are in some serious way wrong.
Because depression and learning disabilities are afflictions within the
human norm, and have been for thousands of years. Labeling them “insanity”
belittles the vast majority of depressed and learning-disabled people, who do
not go out and murder their parents.
It also gives the murderous minority of depressed people an altogether too
easy excuse. Do we want a society in which medical depression is a successful
defense for murder? Just remember that the condition afflicts 5 to 10 percent
of the human population before you answer.
And there’s another reason why the term “insanity” seems deeply troubling
in this case.
The verdict means Howorth will stay in a mental institution until doctors
turn him loose, saying he does not pose a threat. But exactly how are the
doctors supposed to know this?
Psychiatry is not physics, after all. A person is not nearly as predictable
as a ball bouncing on a lab table. Especially not a person such as Jeffrey
Howorth, who clearly fooled his teachers, his friends, his coach, his family,
his doctor and his guidance counselors quite readily for years.
What divine insight will make psychiatrists right where all those others
were wrong? And what will the good doctors say if Howorth kills again after
they’ve guessed wrong? “Whoops. Gosh, he sure fooled us,” maybe.
In fact, there is only one prediction that lawyers and psychiatrists can
make with 100 percent accuracy upon Howorth’s release. They can say, without
fear of contradiction, that Jeffrey Howorth will not kill his parents when he
returns to society.
Yes, about that they can be perfectly sure.