Held to answer

For a prison inmate, transferring to a mental hospital is a step up.

As a convicted murderer in California explained it to me – in language too blunt for most newspapers – a mental hospital offers two big advantages over prison: “Better drugs and a shot at some pussy.”

What he didn’t mention is that a prison inmate in a mental hospital immediately becomes a patient. And “patient” sounds so much better than “inmate,” doesn’t it?

Have you ever been a doctor’s patient? Or a hospital patient? Then you may be no better than Kip Kinkel, who wants to stop being an inmate and become a patient.

In 1998 when he was 15, Kinkel killed his parents in their Springfield, Ore., home and then went on a shooting spree at Thurston High School where he killed two classmates and injured 25.

After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to 111 years in prison. He stayed at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn until he was 24, and then he was transferred to the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem.

For the past several years, he has been trying to change his plea to guilty but insane so he can move to Oregon State Hospital in Salem. After being rejected at various levels in state courts, his case is now in the federal courts where his attorney, Dennis Balske, thinks he has a better chance of prevailing.

As Balske explained on OPB’s “Think Out Loud” this morning, state judges are answerable to the people; federal judges are appointed for life. With the public paying for these appeals, it’s not surprising that Balske envisions the case going on and on until the appeals run out.

Balske described Kinkel’s life in prison as “not great … not fun.” In a mental health facility, Kinkel’s life “would be more pleasant.”

His attorney was not as candid as that convicted murderer I interviewed once in California, who described in randy detail what it’s like to go from a maximum-security, all-male prison to a coed mental hospital where the “patients” have an opportunity to interact.

Kinkel, now 28, wants a chance at more freedom, which he will indisputably get at a mental hospital. At some point, he could be found stable enough to leave.

Balske said the world views Kinkel “as an evil, terrible person … I view him as someone who was severely mentally ill.”

Guys like Kinkel give the mentally ill a bad name. Most mentally ill people are not violent. When I volunteered at a crisis hotline for a mental health agency in Washington state, many of the regulars – the most mentally ill – were more likely to harm themselves than anyone else.

Whether or not Kinkel is mentally ill is irrelevant. He’s violent. That’s what is relevant.

Look at two cases of violent, mentally ill men who went to mental hospitals instead of prison, one a low-profile case, the other notorious.

Most people never heard of Phillip Paul until September 2009, when he “escaped” from a group outing at the Spokane County Fair. He was one of 31 patients from Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Wash., who was allowed to wander about the fairgrounds. He was also a paranoid schizophrenic killer. In 1987 when he was 25, he strangled and slashed the throat of Ruth Mottley, a 78-year-old Sunnyside, Wash., woman who was working in her garden. After killing her, he doused her body with gasoline and buried her in the garden.

After Paul escaped from the fair, all kinds of interesting facts tumbled out about his case, the things mental health “experts” don’t want the public to know:

• Just a few weeks before mental health professionals approved Paul for a supervised visit to the fair, a judge ruled that he was a threat to public safety because he had become more aggressive.
• Field trips for criminally insane patients to public events were common; Paul, despite an escape history that included injuring a sheriff’s deputy, took supervised trips to other fairs and baseball games and rodeos.
• In an interview with the Yakima Herald-Republic in 1993, Paul mentioned that he had previously won an award at a Spokane fair for a woodcarving of an eagle. (That’s right, a guy who cut a woman’s throat was allowed woodcarving instruments. See how much more fun a hospital is than a prison?)
• Paul had been granted numerous conditional releases allowing him to live outside the hospital. During one release, he dated a Spokane woman and got her pregnant. The child, a boy, was placed in state custody.
• Although the mental health experts at the top of Eastern State Hospital’s hierarchy approved Paul’s field trips, the rank-and-file hospital workers who had daily contact with the patients, did not.

Paul was captured in Klickitat County three days after his escape, and his story faded away.

Then there is the notorious case of John Hinckley, Jr. In 1981, Hinckley, hoping to get the attention of actress Jodie Foster, attempted to assassinate President Reagan and permanently injured James Brady but was found not guilty by reason of insanity – the verdict Kinkel hopes to score if he can get a new trial.

Hinckley was sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital. In an interview with Penthouse magazine he described a typical day there: “See a therapist, answer mail, play guitar, listen to music, play pool, watch television, eat lousy food and take delicious drugs.”

Hinckley also said some of the patients asked him for his autograph, and he admitted enjoying the notoriety. Five years after shooting Reagan and Brady, Hinckley was allowed a 12-hour visit with his family at a prison ministries center. By 1999 he was leaving the hospital for supervised visits and a year later, unsupervised visits for progressively longer periods of time. He’s had a sexual relationship with at least two women, one of whom was bipolar. In 2009, he was allowed to get a driver’s license.

Brady remains paralyzed on his left side. He and his wife blame the gun Hinckley used, not Hinckley. In fact, they have been careful in interviews over the years to say they are not bitter about Hinckley’s freedoms. Should he want to get the attention of another woman in the future, maybe he’ll pick up another gun – which no law can prevent – and perhaps the Bradys will let their bitterness bloom for a different cause.

We don’t know how to cure mental illness any better than we know how to cure violent behavior. We do know how to protect the public from violent people – whether or not they are mentally ill – and that is by restricting their freedom and keeping them confined.

News photos show that Kinkel, the weak-eyed boy, has grown into a weak-eyed man. Instead of our state allowing him unrelenting, public-financed appeals, he should do what we all have to do: craft a life for himself with what’s available to him.

Compared to four of his victims, he’s got a lot.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons