Legally Sane Man Shoots Dead 35 People.

I have started this thread as a counterpoint to the thread "28 year old untreated schizophrenic stabs mother 77 times" where 'Concerned Citizens' logic is that the only way to stop these tragic events is to use preventitive measures to ensure mandatory antipsychotic treatment for anyone diagnosed with schizophrenia.

On the 28th of April 1996 Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people in Port Arthur Tasmania. He was examined by psychiatrists and was declared LEGALLY SANE and fit to stand trail. He will spend the rest of his life in jail to prevent him repeating this tragic event.

Using 'Concerned Citizens' same logic, every 'SANE' person should be thrown in jail as they could potentially murder someone without such preventetive measures in place.

The facts are people labeled schizophrenic are no more violent than 'sane' people and 'Concerned Citizens' thread is designed to stigmatise a miinority group of law abiding citizens.

I am seething with rage about such stigmatising #######4 being posted on these forums.

"It is difficult to imagine a more chilling catalogue of crime," the sentencing judge, Chief Justice William Cox, said in November 1996 as the trial of Bryant came to its conclusion.

"The prisoner killed two persons against whom he held a grudge, and then embarked on a trail of devastation which took the lives of a further 33 people who were total strangers to him."

Cox said while Bryant was borderline intellectually disabled, "he knew what he was doing and that it was something he ought not to do."

Cox, who would go on to become Governor of Tasmania in December 2004 and will attend the 2006 service, sentenced Bryant to life imprisonment on each of 35 murder counts, and ordered that he never be eligible for parole.

Bryant remains in Hobart's Risdon prison, confined to the hospital area because of the danger to him posed by other prisoners.

The Risdon prison authorities refuse to release any information on him, though recent media reports talk of a listless man nearing 40 who, while not insane, is sinking further into mental incapacity.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiap ... ortarthur/