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.”
Some of y’all really need to figure out the difference between punishment and rehabilitation…
And which one actually works.
Stop stroking your hate boners and start advocating for real solutions. You don’t fix pain with more pain. All that does is exacerbate the cycle.
The problem is our justice system only focuses on the punishment part. Rehabilitation is either non-existent for most inmates or completely inadequate. The likelihood of this man being mentally stable enough to be safely reintegrated into public life is extremely small.
He didn’t go to prison though, he went to a pysch ward, seems like exactly the kind of thing you’d be advocating for.
So the fault lies with the inadequacy of the justice and healthcare system. But my point still stands - simply locking someone away does nothing to actually help.
maybe not… a high profile case like this may well have attracted the attention of more competent psychiatrists, or motivated his care team/state to seek it out. it also seems possible to me that his psychosis was very treatable with the right meds, but that he had not been able to access that care previously.
so yeah. mental health care is health care, and in this case it’s important not only to the well-being of Mr. Smith but to his community as well. i agree with you that, for the american “justice” system, most cases are treated as it punishment is the correct response.
The US justice system unfortunately runs on emotion and punishment rather than rehabilitation, thanks in no small part to the whole privatized prison system. The average American would rather see someone suffer than get the help they need. This is a particularly strong mindset ironically among the conservative religious, but there are plenty of liberals who think that way too. This country needs reform on so many systems…
what exactly is the solution to a fucking murdering cannibal?
Serious mental health treatment, rehabilitation, and medication. Extensive monitoring by mental health professionals, routine check-ins… Basically what they’ve done.
I’m not saying just release the dude, wash their hands of him, and say “good luck”…
Did he fuck him too?
If this comment was on Reddit you’d be downvotes to hell.
That’s crazy, but it’s not
What are “real” solutions, in your opinion? What do you feel should be done for the victims and their loved ones and family?
Nothing can really be done for them. Locking him up won’t do anything for them, either. One could argue for some form of restitution, but then you’d have to ask if they even want anything from the guy.
The real solutions are adequate mental healthcare and access to medication, as well as routine monitoring and check-ins. All following an extensive inpatient treatment and rehabilitation program… So, basically what they’ve done here. Fighting pain with more pain doesn’t do anyone good. It’s entirely reactionary. Locking someone up for life does not help anyone.
Helping the person get the treatment they so desperately need does.
I am not talking abou the perpetrators, though. I wanted to know what should be done to care for the victims of violent crimes.
Like I said - restitution.
Locking someone up doesn’t do anything for the victims or their families…
Also, just take a look at wrongful conviction rates - and that’s just the confirmed ones… How many do we miss?
Are we really willing to let so many innocent people be locked away or even killed? Debts can be repaid for a wrongful conviction, but a prison sentence cannot, and a death sentence- well, duh.
Again, like I’ve said - and I feel like a broken record with this - prison does not help anyone. If anything, it makes things worse. I mean, you’re really gonna try to tell me that locking a bunch of convicts together for years or decades at a time and then just dropping them back into society once they’re done is a good idea??? No.
Help. Support. Therapy. Proper monitoring and, if necessary, medication. THAT helps. Don’t look at the “what”, look at the “why”.
We need to STOP the cycle of institutionalization, and START reforming people into productive members of society.
Also, it’s way fuckin cheaper on the taxpayers, if that’s what you care about
I only care for the victims and I still didn’t get an answer. “Restitution”, what does that entail in detail? What’s your concrete plan of action to help the victims of violent crimes? How do you stop them from getting revenge? How do you handle them if they do take revenge? What happens with criminals who are repeat offenders? What about those were people know they plan an attack on someone?
People like you pretend to care for people but I never get an answer to these questions. Victims are blissfully ignored in your crusade to help and protect violent criminals. It’s just an interesting observation you can make all the time.
estitution (noun):
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the restoration of something lost or stolen to its proper owner.
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recompense for injury or loss.
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the restoration of something to its original state.
Didn’t think I had to spell it out for you…
Obviously in this circumstance it would be definition number 2.
What kind of recommendation do you suggest if someone eats your husbands brain for example, or rapes you? What if someone wants, as decompensation, that the other person suffers as much as they did? What if they want a sum of money the person can not pay? What if they want the person to go to prison for life?
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He ended someone’s life. That alone should remove him from society forever.
Now his entire release hinges on him being compliant with his meds to not end someone else’s life.
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Well then it’s a good thing you don’t make the rules
Same thing happened up here in Canada
And look at all the crime he’s committed. Oops, wait, he hasn’t.
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Naw this dude is damaged goods. What happens when they cut his meds or if he stops taking it? Other peoples brains gonna be looking very tasty in that group home.
No, this a death penalty thing and that’s a mercy. You kill a guy and eat his brains there’s no coming back, just kill the bastard cheaply and use the resources to rehabilitate someone that can readjust like a drug user.
Planets fucking full anyways to keep a cannibal alive tbh. Make room for good people.
Technically cannibals would be one solution to a full planet.
Lol you ain’t wrong. Maybe we can air drop a bunch into a gated community somewhere 🤔
Planets fucking full anyways
Piss off with this Malthusian bullshit, will you?
Never been stuck in traffic huh?
A problem easily avoided by using more space efficient modes of transportation, and also not particularly relevant to my objection that overpopulation is a Malthusian myth.
Which will never happen because you’d have to rip up cities and replan them.
But whatever I’m sure your gonna say it’s a “matter of resource distribution” not a space problem but I’ll just say this, we will never solve the distro problem because of greed.
Plus every new person born is gonna generate a shit ton of carbon. They’re gonna need a place to live. That’s space that used to be an ecosystem.
So idk maybe you want the planet to be turned into Courascant (one big planet sized city). Sure there’s space for trillions of humans if we stack em up high! Good luck feeding them.
So, resolve a murder with more murder… Yeah, that’s a real great solution
That’s kinda how we dealt with shit for millenia. One thing about humans is we are very good at making more.
Too bad the guy who got his brain ate can’t be rehabilitated.
One thing about humans is we are very good at making more.
By that logic, let the man keep eating brains. Let the man eat YOUR brain. You’re clearly not using it, and we can always just make another person to replace you, right?
Fine! But I get to try to kill him first. If he can beat me he can have my stupid fucking brain. Being alive sucks anyways. You’re doing me a favor. One less wage slave for the corporations OH NO!!!
He ate a man’s brains and eye balls.
Eww gross.
He went to subway after eating the man’s body parts.
EWWWWW! GROSS!
We have crab juice or mountain dew
I’m all for rehabilitation over incarceration, full stop. But holy fuck this is a wild ass story.
Yeah this is one where I don’t think you should ever get out. Ain’t worth it.
If it’s dependent on him being compliant with meds and doesn’t have someone constantly ensuring he’s on them, it isn’t gonna end well. What happens when he just decides he’s fine and doesn’t need them anymore?
Then the group home that administers his medication reports it?
Are all group homes equally stringent? I’m not trying to be mean here, but to be honest, this guy being free freaks me out.
No. There are different levels of care, different staffing ratios, etc. He’d obviously been in a higher level of care
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.2020.100033Thanks for digging into this! Very informative.
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.
But wasn’t he found not guilty because of the insanity plea? If he hadn’t pleaded insanity, presumably he would get a different sentence. My question is whether that would likely have been longer or shorter than the 10 years he ended up serving.
The unfortunate reality is our system doesn’t typically rehabilitate anyone. So, it’s understandable that people are incredulous. I wish things would change. Never seems to be much political interest in how prisoners are treated.
Regular people thinking they know more than experts + internet forums. Name a more iconic duo.
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.
This is true to an extent, I think the focus there (if done correctly) isn’t on being retributive so much as ensuring a very safe “err on the side of caution” buffer that often means longer times spent imprisoned than the exact point that they are rehabilitated.
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Justice is not only about rehabilitation, a punitive component serves the common good.
Yes, he opened his comment talking about this American view of justice where it’s all about an arm, a leg, and an eye for an eye.
It’s not just American, retribution is a component of sentencing in most developed countries. No adult justice system is purely rehabilitative.
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.
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If the antipsychotics are working, then fine. This dude was truly cracked at the time to both admit it to people and offer to eat his doctors.
Back at the buffet
I am literally at tears of laughter.
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Taking the story at face value, imagine how horrible you’d feel knowing what you’d done. I really hope they are doing better now but fuck having those memories.
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Well now I’m confused cuz I thought Lemmy didn’t want a vindictive criminal justice system? If he caused problems by being unwell and is now well after treatment, why should he continue to be punished by being held against his will?
I think your mistake is in thinking that Lemmy is a single person with a single train of thought.
This post coulda fooled me
How do you casually ask to eat your therapist? 🙃
Mind if I eat you real quick by the way?
“You know… you don’t have to attend that lunchtime meeting with your boss…”
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.”
“Disassembly reveals useful pathways”…
Any stats on the recidivism rate for the mentally ill who are treated and cleared by the Psychiatric Security Review Board, versus convicts who serve conventional terms?
Recidivism for offenders that simply serve a prison sentence as opposed to getting actual treatment is much, much higher.
I’m not sure of the exact stats in this situation, but I know domestic abusers that simply go to prison are some ~230% (give or take a couple tens, I can’t remember off the top of my head) more likely to reoffend than those who are actually treated.
Again, idk the stats for this case, but you will find that those who are simply punished rather than treated have higher recidivism rates across the board.
Everyone can change
Not in my experience it ain’t . Once an asshole always an asshole. That shits in your DNA. The most they do is go sociopathic and pretend they changed but they always crack.
If you have depression and tried to commit suicide, will you always end up depressed and try to end your life?
Or is there more to it all?
Mental illness is not that straightforward.
Even DNA isn’t that straightforward. Epigenetics is a whole subfield dedicated to studying how and why genes in your DNA are or are not expressed.
Dude ate a guy. Would you live next door to him?
Unequivocally, yes I would. I work with people who have severe psychiatric disorders pretty regularly. The difference between someone who is untreated vs. someone who is stable and adherent to their med regimen can be light years.
Part of the reason we fear people with psychiatric disorders so much is because we, as a society, fail these people. We have no reliable system for remanding them to get help, if we see signs they are decompensating. The only system we provide is one that only starts to function when they’ve reached crisis level.
That’s not their fault; it’s ours. They deserve better. A better system could have prevented this crime.
“We as a society fail these people”
How do we fail people that would die off without continuous support?
There is a difference between pointing out that certain policies have better outcomes and ascribing moral fault to a society for the actions of an insane fringe.
You are expressing a very modern and ahistorical paradigm of what makes a human being valuable. Deep history shows us fossilized remains of people with injuries like broken femurs or no teeth that would have been absolutely fatal without continuous support. Disabled people are valuable simply because they are human every bit as much as able-bodied people are, and historically we have dedicated resources to caring for the disabled among us.
It is a very modern idea that labor is the only value a human being possesses, and that those who cannot care for themselves are worthless. What use is anything that we do, if we can’t even be bothered to care for people who cannot care for themselves? What kind of monsters does that pretend we are? And make no mistake, we all start and most of us will end our lives not being able to care for ourselves.
Personally, I view caring for the helpless as a fundamental function of humanity. And yes, we as a society fail at that function, primarily because we fail to recognize it in the first place.
People who voluntarily cause societal harm are not the same as people who suffer temporary (and relatively minor) injuries.
And no those people were not pandered to and taken care of, they were evicted from society or even killed.
“Personally I view caring for the helpless as a fundamental function of humanity”- And you would be wrong. The only fundamental function of humanity is to continue existence.
You are inserting a moral imperative to “save the helpless”. Where the “helpless” are a handful of people who attack and in this case, eat others, and of course their existence is societies fault.
Like I already said there is a difference between making a prescriptive claim that we should do something out of practicality, and a moral claim that society is responsible for the actions of the fringe.
“It’s a very modern idea”- Imagine accusing someone of ahistoricism, and then immediately make false historical statements. Infanticide and senicide have historically been quite common, it is only in modern society where we have enough labor surplus that we are willing to condemn convenient deaths. Of course this is all irrelevant since at no point was I talking about people with injuries, but rather the case of violent perpetrators actively harming others.
I almost want to ask your opinion on abortion, since you are making a deontological right-to-life argument but are directly copying left-wing arguments and phraseology1 and left-wingers are vehemently pro-choice, not that there is any logical rule that they should be.
- Yes, you all talk the same way, make the same statements; you’re not intellectuals, you are parrots.
You know who else thought certain negative personality traits were genetic?
MY MOM!!
Kinda wild to compare this situation to just people you don’t like at work.
Tell me you know nothing about mental health without saying it
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i hope the guy is truly rehabilitated and is getting the ongoing treatment he needs.
but lets be honest, id rather he not live on my street
Dude should have never been released simply because we can’t ever be sure he’ll take his medication or adhere to treatment in the future. At some point, the safety of an individual and the public takes priority over turning them loose on the streets.
Anyone else think the Sake part of the story is really weird too? Like, is that the preferred pairing with human flesh? Who makes that recommendation? A cannibal sommelier?
Thats the weird part? Not Subway?
Yeah that’s a little weird too. A discerning cannibal would’ve chosen Potbelly.
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