When I was very young – in my early teens – I was alone, flipping around the TV dial late one night, and came across the Ingmar Bergman movie The Virgin Spring.
It’s not for young people. I didn’t know anything about it or about Bergman, but it seemed interesting and I started to watch it. It seemed to be about a medieval family in Sweden and its beautiful blond teenage daughter, who set out on an errand and – well, what happened to her profoundly shocked me. I didn’t see it coming, and it terrified me and affected me deeply enough that I remember it still, all these years later, although certainly not every detail. The images and plot, which featured beauty and innocence defiled, and retribution and revenge (sometimes literally overkill, I might add), were incredibly powerful. I didn’t really understand the movie and yet I partly did, at least on a visceral level.
You may or may not have ever seen the movie. If you haven’t, spoiler alert for the discussion in this clip. But I put the video up here because it features a number of scenes from the movie, and a summary of the film’s themes:
Yesterday, in pondering the murder of Iryna Zarutska, the video images of it that have been circulating, and the reaction to those images, I kept thinking about The Virgin Spring. There is noting racial in the movie, by the way; everyone is white because after all this is Sweden in the 13th century (or 14th, depending on your source). But the theme of evildoers defiling and ending the life of a young blond girl is there, and the “evil versus good” images are extraordinarily powerful. Thus it is with the video and images on the train. The still image of the killer, standing up, hand raised to strike, poised above the diminutive Zarutska who looks younger than her years, is blood-curdling and bone-chilling.
One wants to yell “stop!”, to go back in time and stay his hand. But no one can.
So there is blame, and suggestions for retribution. In this case, there are many many people to blame. The first is, of course, the perpetrator Decarlos Brown. He is a violent career criminal, and this was an utterly unprovoked crime against the most innocent – and unaware – of victims.
But wait – there’s also the judge who set him free for his last offense, which was a 911 call that he made and then hung up. A forensic psychiatric evaluation was ordered in that case at his lawyer’s request, but it never happened. Why? “The system” was broken, or set up to fail.
Then there is the soft-on-crime policy of the city, courtesy of Democratic politicians. And the idiocy of allowing people to ride the light rails without paying.
One thing I think is clear, however: no one on the train that night could have prevented the crime. Even if the equivalent of Daniel Penny had been there, Brown wasn’t verbally threatening anyone, and he acted so quickly I don’t think anyone could have stopped him. What they should have done afterward – and didn’t do – is another question, one I have dealt with previously in yesterday’s post and my comments on the thread there (see this as well as this).
Now, finally – and too late – Brown is in custody without bail. A great many people are calling for his execution. But although I understand the call, I’m not one of them – for the simple fact that I think Brown is almost certainly a schizophrenic. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think he’s not guilty. But mental illness of that nature, with active psychotic delusions – and his were documented prior to the crime and not just as an ex post facto excuse (which also happens sometimes) – can be a mitigating factor in the sentencing phrase. I am not in favor of executing people who commit crimes, even heinous ones, while under the influence of active hallucinations.
I would have to know more, however, because I could change my mind about Brown. But at the moment, life imprisonment would seem more appropriate. Brown is a very difficult case because he combines two things: a violent history that may or may not predate his schizophrenia, plus the schizophrenia itself. But the schizophrenia was documented prior to the murder – in fact, his original 911 call was about one of his delusions. To refresh your memory:
The alleged killer, however, currently has pending charges for misuse of the 911 system in January following a police welfare check — which revealed his troubling thoughts, the outlet [Charlotte Observer] reported.
Brown told authorities during the visit he believed someone had given him a “man-made” material that controlled when he ate, walked, and talked, an affidavit obtained by the newspaper said.
“Brown wanted officers to investigate this ‘man-made’ material that was inside of his body,” the affidavit said.
Officers then advised Brown that he was suffering a medical issue, and there was nothing more they could do to help him.
He became upset over their response and called 911. He was arrested after he hung up the phone, the outlet reported.
He called 911 and it sounds as though paramedics should have come, and/or he should have been taken to the hospital for an evaluation. Did the cops or paramedics try to do that, and he refused? I’d really like to know, because a hospital evaluation would have been highly appropriate. I’ve known people that has happened to, but it doesn’t even seem like he got a psychiatric consult. And yet, with evidence that he was actively psychotic and paranoid, plus his violent record about which the police had to have known if they checked, some sort of dramatic intervention was called for.
I’m not making excuses for him. I believe he needs to be locked up, probably for life this time. But he should have been locked up (and gotten treatment) earlier, and many people are at fault.
One more thing – you may think this interview (if real) is just Brown blowing smoke and making up excuses. But note that it’s very consistent with what he told the police many months ago when he made that 911 call and at the time of the original call he wasn’t facing charges for anything:
In a phone interview circulating online, Brown blames “The material. Put it like that. The material using my body. It’s that. You know, that’s not me.
“I’m talking about just for no reason. But since they did that, since they did that, now they got to investigate the material my body exposed to. Since they want to do all that, now they got to investigate.” …
“They lashed out on her. Well I was working out … Whoever was working the material, they lashed out on her.”
That is essentially what he told police long before the murder. It is consistent with a schizophrenic delusion, and also with the utterly unmotivated and unprovoked nature of the crime. You may call it BS, and perhaps it is, but the time frame indicates otherwise. Again, that does not absolve him of criminal responsibility, but to me it indicates that the death penalty should not be imposed. I expect a lot of disagreement on that.
NOTE: Here’s what happens at the end of The Virgin Spring (spoiler alert once again). You’ll have to click on the link to watch the scene, because embedding has been disabled.
Also, here’s Ang Lee on what the movie meant to him when he saw it at the age of eighteen.