A man who killed and ate a man has been released back into public life after ten years.
Tyree Smith, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, killed a homeless man and then ate his brain and eyeballs according to officials.
The horrific case made headline news, with Smith found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity after a July 2013 trial.
In lieu of a stint behind bars, Smith was ordered committed to a state psychiatric hospital for 60 years.
But now, ten years after the grim incident, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board said Smith was ready to be transitioned back into the community.
Smith has been released from the facility, Connecticut’s most secure, as of writing.
He will be living in a Waterbury group home, and is not allowed to associate with anyone involved in criminal activity.
The board stated in its report: “Tyree Smith is an individual with a psychiatric illness requiring care, custody and treatment.
“Since his last hearing Tyree Smith has continued to demonstrate clinical stability.
“Mr. Smith is medication compliant, actively engaged in all recommended forms of treatment, and has been symptom-free for many years.”
During the trial, Smith’s cousin Nicole Rabb claimed he arrived at her Connecticut home in December 2011, talking about Greek gods and ruminating about needing to go out and get blood.
When she saw him the next evening she noticed what appeared to be specks of blood on his pants and that he was carrying chopsticks and a bloody ax.
Smith then allegedly told Rabb he killed a man and ate his brains in the Lakeview Cemetery while drinking sake, and grimly warned he intended to eat more people.
A month later, police found Angel Gonzalez’s mutilated body in the vacant apartment on Brooks Street in Bridgeport where Smith had lived as a child.
Police later recovered the bloody ax and an empty bottle of sake in a stream bed near the Boston Avenue cemetery.
The defense’s case rested on the testimony of Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor, who testified that Smith had kept his lust for human flesh after his arrest, even offering to eat her.
Kapoor claimed Smith suffered from psychotic incidents since childhood and heard voices that told him to kill people.
She then said the voices ordered Smith to eat the victim’s brain so they would get a better understanding of human behavior and the eyes so that they could see into the “spirit realm.”
Kapoor added that Smith went to Subway after eating the man’s body parts.
The report on Smith’s release said: “He denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.”
The American punitive view vs. a rehabilitative one is terrifyingly real in these comments. It was an awful awful thing that happened, and he should be monitored the rest of his life, but if it is determined by medical professionals (a.k.a. not you) then he deserves to lead a full life, and have the opportunity to contribute to a society that he caused harm too instead of being a cost to taxpayers everywhere for the rest of his life, while he is medicated and able to rejoin society, that harms everyone even more in the long run.
This man should have had the health supports he needed before this ever happened, likely something exacerbated by the US medical system.
Also to dispel some common myths:
- Due to legal fees, it costs significantly MORE to sentence someone to death in the US (sidenote, also one of the few 1st world countries still conducting the backwards barbaric practice), than the cost of them continuing to serve life in prison; it is not the “cheap” option.
- Insanity pleas on average 1) yield longer sentences in mental facilities than similar cases where there was no insanity plea, b) if not successful in getting an insanity sentence yield longer jail sentences on average. From a criminal judicial standpoint, there is very rarely any advantage to pleading insanity, and it’s even rarer still that someone actually gets it when they were not in fact insane. The testing, and level of evidence needed far exceeds what you can gather from a casual read and comment online. It is a hugely rare thing legally, we just tend to hear about them as they’re represented in the media at disproportionate rates compared to standard trials.
To all my American friends, not shitting on you, you’re a wonderful country, of largely wonderful people, but with some bad bad bad policies that I hope will improve in coming years.
Love,
Your hat.
- yield longer sentences in mental facilities than similar cases where there was no insanity plea
Is that including the actual length of the sentence rather than the title amount which is reduced later? Seems like 60 years to 10 years is a much larger reduction than is usual for prison sentences.
I’m not 100% sure, that’s a good point, I’ll look into this. I agree in this case is does seem that way, but be careful for falling prey to making conclusions on a sample size of 1, there are outliers in any data sample. To be sure there are without doubt cases where the insanity plea yield shorter sentences, but from my education on the topic it’s always been my understanding that this is the case on average (to be clear, this isn’t through internet articles or word of mouth on Facebook, this was from multiple sociology and criminal psychology courses taught by PHd educated individuals. As a disclaimer while I have a Masters in Psychology and have done original research in political psychology, my main field is not criminal psychology specifically).
I looked for a solid while and couldn’t verify the claim of my past professors, I found one study in New Zealand contradicting this claim specifically saying that on average NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity cases) served shorter sentences (note the wording of “served” referring to how much time they actually served, rather than just the sentence as you were asking about initially) on average in murder cases compared to other individuals with serious mental illness that did not receive NGRI sentences. However they take this as evidence (since it’s based on actual time served, rather than the initial sentence), that murder cases treated as NGRI are a positive vs. putting these same individuals in prison given the taxpayer pays for them to be incarcerated for a shorter period of time, AND alongside this results in a lower likelihood of future reoffending upon release. Some things I found across studies was 1) there is heavy racial and gender bias present in when NGRI pleas are granted, 2) recidivism rates are generally lower in NGRI cases upon release.
Thanks for raising this point, I learned some things!
Links below:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/cbm.2120
https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.fsiml.2020.100033
I believe that is the case where the defendant was found guilty, unlike here. In this case, the person was found not guilty of murder, yet still was held for 10 years.
Justice is not only about rehabilitation, a punitive component serves the common good.
That may sound barbaric, but consider an alternative where prisoners are released as soon as they are rehabilitated (i.e. when it is clear that they no longer pose a threat to society):
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A man is killed by a drunk driver. The driver is fully repentant and it is very quickly clear to all that they will never drink again, much less drink and drive. The driver is released as soon as this is clear.
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The man’s son is horrified that the driver was punished so lightly. He kills the driver in revenge. But it is clear this will never happen again, you can only lose your father to drunk driving once. The killer is soon released.
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The driver’s son is horrified that his father’s killer was punished so lightly. Since nobody else will do anything, he kills his father’s killer in revenge. Clearly he can never do this again …
See the problem? Judicial punishment isn’t about some vague societal bloodlust, it’s an intercession that prevents unsatisfied victims from taking matters into their own hands and starting an endless vendetta.
This is the most idiotic whataboutism I’ve ever seen. You know there are other countries that focus on rehabilitation, countries that do not have repeat offenders like we do, right? Stop justifying a clearly broken system with theoretical nonsense, especially when that nonsense is already disproven elsewhere.
There are certainly countries that strongly focus on rehabilitating prisoners, which is admirable.
But even in countries like Norway, which is a good example of the above, prisoners are not automatically released once they are rehabilitated or no longer deemed a threat. They must always serve a certain fraction of their sentence regardless, which demonstrates that at least part of the original sentence was punitive in nature.
All my data points relied on actually data and trends rather than needing a highly unlikely hypothetical. Furthermore, the only issue with your hypothetical is the continuing view of the killers being a retributive one as well, they, and anyone with a retributive view on crime is the problem. The goal of our justice system is not (at least in most of the developed world), the US excepted and should not be to make another human suffer until, paraphrasing your own words, the original victim is satisfied.
The goal of the justice system is partly rehabilitative and partly retributive. This is true throughout “the developed world”.
People can be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in the UK, Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands among other places. That sentence is incompatible with a purely rehabilitative justice system.
