Justice was handed down.

I went to bed before the Jury came back with its verdict of not guilty on murder two and acquittal on all lesser charges. My facebook friends are filled with rage over the verdict and are pronouncing it an outrage and evidence of a justice system that is broken. They are ashamed of their country. They are disgusted with their fellow country women and men.

I am not at all surprised by the acquittal. Nor do I think it was a miscarriage of justice. That I am not surprised by the verdict has nothing to do with a belief that the system is flawed or a conviction that six female jurors from a southern state are racist and incapable of delivering justice. It has everything to do with the failure of the state to produce enough evidence to convict. I did not watch the trial proceedings very much, but my wife has the news on all the time and the presented facts of the case got repeated over and over  and over again. I was pretty sure that the jury would not be able to find guilt on a murder charge. I thought manslaughter possible but am not surprised that the jury was unable to convict on that charge either. With reasonable doubt as the standard of conviction, the bar was relatively high. I can see how there was not enough evidence to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt. There were no witnesses other than the defendant. And as much as we would like to convict based on our gut instinct about what may or may not have happened and about what the intent of the defendant was, the system would be broken if we did so. Here is an analysis from the New York Times:

But because of Florida’s laws, prosecutors had to persuade jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Zimmerman did not act in self-defense. A shortage of evidence in the case made that a high hurdle, legal experts said.

Even after three weeks of testimony, the fight between Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman on that rainy night was a muddle, fodder for reasonable doubt. It remained unclear who had started it, who screamed for help, who threw the first punch and at what point Mr. Zimmerman drew his gun. There were no witnesses to the shooting.

NYT – Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Trayvon Martin Killing

I believe there is racism in this country. I believe it possible that racism was a factor in the unfolding of events that led to Trayvon Martin’s death. I believe that George Zimmerman contributed to the circumstances he found himself in through the decisions he made. But I have no idea what happened at the moment of confrontation, which is all this case could have been about in criminal court. I don’t believe the results of this case are a vindication of the defendant but I do believe the system worked as it should have. We will have to find other things wrong to make right, there are plenty of them. But how the justice system operated in this particular case is not one of them in my opinion.

Managing Crazy

Twenty children dead. Six adults. Eight adults if you count the shooter and his mother. National hand wringing and morning is in full swing. My liberal friends have rushed to the ramparts to assail the NRA and demand gun control. My conservative friends have done the same to defend their constitutional right to bear arms. Its possible that this could be the tragedy that puts us over the top to making laws that keep weapons of quick destruction out of the hands of crazy, but I am not optimistic. When the theater shootings happened in Colorado just 6 months ago I was one of those liberal gun control believers that immediately posted to Facebook that we need gun control now! My conservative friends blew me off. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. The conversation became entrenched and made little progress beyond the yes and no’s of the gun control debate.

This time I did something a little different. I posted the following:

Still trying to wrap my mind around the tragedy. Not possible really. If I were a parent I would wonder what can make my kids safe in school. It doesn’t seem possible to crazy proof the world. Do we have armed security guards at the doors of all our schools? Do we arm all our teachers? Do we homeschool all our children? What about our kids and ourselves in the mall or anywhere else we may want to gather with our community? Do we arm ourselves to the teeth and let the best man/woman/kid win? What kind of society is that to live in?

Wherever we gather in numbers we are vulnerable to crazy. What exactly is the antidote to crazy?

An interesting thing happened. A much less heated conversation about the full spectrum of managing crazy ensued. All the same players, much less passion. And those on the second amendment rights side admitted that keeping guns out of the hands of crazy was a part of the management solution. We talked about moral values. We talked about the state of mental health resources in this country. We talked about the full spectrum of managing crazy.

My take away from my little sampling on Facebook? If we shift the focus of the conversation away from a debate on gun rights, and onto what we are really trying to manage, crazy, full spectrum conversation ensues and all options are on the table to be thought about.

It is the absolute truth that guns don’t kill people. People kill people. It is also true, however, that people will use the best tools they can find when they want to accomplish something. The better the tool, the more people get killed. So, from the perspective of managing crazy, it makes sense to keep crazy away from efficient tools for quick decimation. There are probably many ways to do this and not all of them are bans of weaponry. So when we talk about managing crazy, we talk about all the ways we can keep them from the tools of destruction.

But that is not the complete story. Even if we restrict the tools, we will still have crazy. So we also need effective means for detecting crazy or the potential for crazy and intervening before it gets out. Yet we have consistently undermined our ability to do so by slashing budgets for mental health programs at every turn. In 2011, after the Tucson shootings, PBS News Hour ran this item:

Over the past ten days, the story of 22-year-old Jared Loughner, the alleged gunman in the Tucson shootings, has unfolded on news outlets throughout the world. It’s a dark tale of a troubled young man who was growing increasingly out of control — yet it seems neither he nor members of his family realized he needed treatment from mental health professionals.

Until two years ago, there were a number of programs in his community that would have been available to Loughner and his family if they had sought help. Like many places around the country, Pima County had mental health programs for people through both Medicaid and at community health centers. But now those programs have been cut because the state of Arizona is wrestling with a massive budget deficit.

Arizona has long offered mental health services, such as case workers and prescription drug coverage, to residents who don’t qualify for Medicaid, but also don’t have private insurance that covers mental health services. But since 2008, the state has had to slash a whopping $65 million from that program, affecting as many as 28,000 people last year.

State Budget Cuts Slash Mental Health Funding

More funding for mental health programs and better insurance coverage of mental health treatment will certainly help.

Even when detected crazy can be hard to contain. Strong laws protecting individuals from attempts by family members to commit them unreasonably make it hard to manage the crazy we detect appropriately. So, in addition to restricting access to the tools of destruction and increasing our efforts to detect and treat crazy, we will need to revisit laws that may have gone too far in protecting the rights of individuals at the expense of society in general.

Crazy is a full spectrum problem. We make a mistake when we run immediately to the ramparts of the battle over gun control. It overtakes the real issue and radicalizes people who might otherwise find agreement if they were talking instead about managing crazy.