[Minnie]

Here's the thing.

I get that he has a mental illness and that lots of people do. But sometimes, medication or not, their crimes are so heinous, that there is no single reason that they should walk the street again; there should be no 'field trips' - nothing. We've done this before, locked up mentally ill murderers. Because it's what's good for the rest of us. Because it protects us. And also because it protects them. There's no guarantee that the medication will work. There's no real idea of what is going to set him off, even when he's medicated. The disease can be that strong.

I'm not unsympathetic to his issue. It's a foul fiend of a disease, I've seen it first hand. But he didn't just wander around talking to trash cans that he thought were George Washington, or stare off into space with no indication he's on this planet, or wander onto a world stage during a leader's funeral and pretend to be the sign language interpreter. He got up and and carved a man up. He ate pieces of his victim. He traumatized a great many people that day, and destroyed their lives. He split from reality completely that day, and the disease was so virulent, that the most horrific thing happened and that isn't just the sort of thing that is helped in such a short period of time - there's been a push for a long time, for him to get unsupervised field trips - it's ridiculous. I'm pretty ok with him never being able to get free from an institution for any reason, and never ever having the most minute possibility of Van Gogh'ing someone else's loved one. And, I'm comfortable with how I feel about this.

If they think he's so safe and controlled by his medication, then the board and his doctors should remain with him every minute he's not institutionalized. If they're not comfortable with that idea, I can't imagine why they think the rest of us would be.