From the outset, Grafton Thomas’s mother and attorney harped on his 20-year history of mental illness. They said he was diagnosed with schizophrenia long ago and ceased taking his anti-psychotic medication two months before he allegedly drove to a Chanukah party at a rabbi’s house in Monsey, N.Y., on Dec. 28, and wounded five or more Orthodox Jews with a machete.
It is plain that Thomas could present an insanity defense if and when he faces a trial. One never knows what a jury would do, so it is meshugah (Yiddish for crazy) to give the likes of Thomas that opportunity. Thomas, 37, could be found not guilty by reason of insanity. The murderer of a Jewish woman in Seattle almost got away with it.
I consider use of the insanity defense to be an insane process. My opinion is shaped partially from covering criminal trials as a newspaper reporter. In an attempted murder case, the defense argued that the suspect could not distinguish between right and wrong, and the prosecutor documented how the defendant planned her offense, targeted her victims, intentionally traveled to the scene of the crime and harmed her victims one by one.
With the Chanukah incident, Thomas may well attempt to prove that he could not distinguish if it is right or wrong to harm Jews. Let me repeat that: Whether it is right or wrong to harm Jews.
By that standard, Ku Klux Klanners could claim it was right to lynch African Americans; homophobes are right to murder gays and lesbians; and any of us “real” Americans can snuff out the lives of Muslims and immigrants.
The groundwork for an insanity defense was being laid in the immediate aftermath of the Chanukah incident, as his mother said, “Grafton is not a terrorist. He is a man who has mental illness in America, and the systems that be have not served him well.”
If Thomas did indeed stab these men, then he is a terrorist. He would have committed a terrorist act. If he is not anti-Semitic, why did he pick a rabbi’s house 20 miles from his home?
He was indicted Monday by a Rockland County grand jury on six counts of attempted murder in the second degree, three counts of attempted assault in the first degree and two counts of burglary in the first degree. One victim, Josef Neumann, 71, could succumb to his head and brain injuries, and that would add a charge of homicide. Thomas has denied stabbing anyone.
I have had varied feelings about the insanity defense. How can a stable person commit a violent crime in the first place? A man or woman must be mentally unstable to think it is suitable and at times commendable to murder an innocent person.
The legal community needs to reassess the insanity defense. I believe that a defendant’s mental condition should be taken into consideration during sentencing, and maybe an insanity defense can be allowed under narrower circumstances.
Does any reasonable person believe that Grafton Thomas should be found not guilty – by reason of insanity – because of his mental condition? Besides, whose fault is it that he was off his medication?
Thomas’s trial would be the third involving anti-Semitic violence here in recent years in which the defendant employs the insanity defense.
Rashid Baz vainly tried the insanity defense after murdering 16-year-old Ari Halberstam when Baz fired on a van carrying Orthodox Jewish students on a ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge on March 1, 1994. He claimed that he suffered from post-traumatic stress due to growing up during the Lebanese civil war, according to The Forward.
He was convicted and is serving 141 years in prison, The Forward reported. He later admitted to following the van because of an attack by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, according to The Forward. The newspaper cited Baz’s quote in The New York Post that, when asked if he would have shot black or Latino people, he said, “No, I only shot them because they were Jewish.”
Naveed Haq got a reprieve at his first trial – repeat, his first trial – when the jury deadlocked on most charges stemming from his one-man siege of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on July 28, 2006, when he murdered campaign manager Pamela Waechter and wounded five other employees, according to The Seattle Times.
At least one juror, if not more, obviously bought his insanity defense. Perhaps the juror or jurors agreed that Haq could not distinguish between right and wrong when it comes to killing Jews.
The King County Prosecutor’s office retried Haq and readjusted its strategy, winning a conviction of aggravated first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder, the Times reported. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
Far worse is France’s kid-glove treatment of Kobili Troare, who admitted to beating Sarah Halimi, 67, to death in 2017 inside her Paris apartment as neighbors heard him quoting from the Quran and calling her a “demon,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
During the past month, the Paris Appeals Court upheld a lower court ruling that Traore is unfit to stand trial because his consumption of marijuana brought on a “delirious episode.”
Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, asked, “Does the court wish to set a new jurisprudence in our country, making cannabis, which is normally an aggravating factor, a mitigating one for an anti-Semitic murder?”
Prosecutors challenged Traore’s claim that he was not in charge of his faculties, but they stressed that even if he was, his choice to “voluntarily consume” marijuana meant that he “directly contributed” to his delirium and is therefore criminally liable for his offenses, JTA reported.
Traore’s fate reflects a disturbing pattern in France’s legal system, but that subject can consume a whole other commentary.
Back in America, the legal network has its own work cut out for it where mental health issues intersect with anti-Semitism. It is only right that attorneys and judges re-evaluate the insanity defense. If they do not, that would not only be wrong but meshugah as well.
*Bruce Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World.