<p>“Life without parole?” Well, that waits to be determined. </p>
<p>Kenneth Shipp, the U of A engineer at Redstone Arsenal, was convicted a few days ago of capital murder in Huntsville, Alabama (killing a policeman) and will be sentenced in March. The judge can sentence him to life or death.</p>
<p>^ Well, AB will likely be 44 years old before sentencing, so parole seems unlikely. Do you really think Alabama will choose to execute the lady?</p>
<p>The lack of social skills creates a downward spiral that is constantly self-reinforcing, but I think it is somewhat separate from her main problem, her anger over slights. She is easily upset and feels a lot of justification of her anger. I have no doubt that her brother’s shooting was not entirely accidental - a younger brother can be annoying in 1000 ways, some of which must have triggered her capacity for violence. The extremes to which she carries out her anger and revenge are mind-boggling. Whether she was in academia or worked on an assembly line, she would have been subject to these outbursts.</p>
<p>In this discussion of who was responsible for the coverup of the Braintree incident, I was reminded of the transition in mental health care that happened at that time in Illinois. Was Massachusetts similar? Nearly all of the state homes for the mentally ill were closed in the 1980’s with the idea that the new psychotropic drugs would allow people to live normal lives in the community. The reality was that a lot of first-line mental health care shifted to police departments. It took years for those departments to recognize and adjust to the new challenges. Couldn’t this have been part of the problem in Braintree? It seems to me to be partly a reflection of the times, with unimaginable consequences.</p>
<p>But having worked for several software companies, including a system software company where people were programming in assembler and never interacted with anything even close to an end user, I would say that that environment is far more tolerant of individuals with no social skills and decidedly “weird” people than the typical business environment, even the typical software development environment. As long as they have the intellectual goods and programming skill, all kinds of strangeness is forgiven.</p>
<p>I happen to enjoy working in that kind of environment, I must say. It’s fun to be with smart people who like to continue learning and value brains.</p>
<p>Oh, and one guy I knew was indeed a genuine paranoid schizophrenic. He had a break while sitting in the cube next to mine. But he was not violent.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my lab partner senior year of HS was a mass murderer. He killed 4 members of his family our senior year. Was he odd beforehand? Yes. And socially isolated. And he had been known to become rather violent when teased by jerks. But I always found him to be pleasant and kind.</p>
<p>Yes, that happened in Massachusetts too (I recall my mother talking about it). I think that Bridgewater State served the South Shore.</p>
<p>I don’t think that this would have affected Amy Bishop though. There’s nothing that has come out indicating that she was ever institutionalized. I don’t know if she ever saw a psychologist or psychiatrist (as a teenager) but I would hope that a psychologist would have done a far better job in teaching her some kind of coping skills. I think that it will come out if she were on meds as I could see that as an attempt at a defense.</p>
<p>The family information in this thread would give me the impression that they could probably have afford private care if they thought to look for it.</p>
<p>I recall that state homes for the mentally ill were closed in MA in the early 80s, too. But that would not explain what happened to Bishop. A verdict of accidental death would not lead to her being required to receive mental treatment. Nor, I would think, a statement (following the IHOP incident, but never issued as an order) that she attend anger management counseling. There appears to have been a cover-up and a lack of follow-through on the exact circumstances of her brother’s death. But no sign that she was mentally deranged.</p>
<p>The recollections by her former NEU schoolmate do indicate possible Asperger’s. Lack of social skills, while socially isolating, do not explain her actions or her inability to control her anger. She seems to have had a hair-trigger temper (as in the IHOP incident) but also to have allowed her anger to simmer for a long time and to lead her to premeditated murder. Was she in the habit of carrying a weapon everywhere, or did she bring it with the intent on killing colleagues? I lean toward the second explanation.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the typical environment look like. There are plenty of occupations where people are not required to interact with others. In fact, I would think that there would be more of those than jobs in which people skills are important.
I would think that academia is a field in which people skill is a huge factor. Even someone working in a lab full time would need to communicate/cooperate with others. Amy Bishop was a professor. Whether good, bad, or indifferent, she had to interact daily with others. It’s not a profession for loners.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if the operation of a state university is a “governmental function” under Alabama law?</p>
<p>Execute her? Well, seems as if there are several possible aggravating factors and (1) not a lot of sympathy for “loss of tenure” stress and (2) if she ditched her gun and washed her hands afterwards and left the scene that may be viewed as evidence of awareness of the illegality of what she had done.</p>
<p>As posted earlier, the two women awaiting execution in Alabama are child killers. In my State (Texas), we have 10 women waiting to die and some of the facts are in line with systematically executing people while the remaining ones wait locked in fear for their own death.</p>
<p>Re: BCEagle’s post about Bridgewater State Hospital. It was the setting for Frederick Wiseman’s documentary “Titicut Follies” (1967).
But I agree that Bishop was not insane. She knew exactly what she had done and why.</p>
<p>Weird: I tried looking up the ‘actual’ definition via Google. There isn’t a single meaning, and in fact the one that gets top billing includes hints of the supernatural, apparently related to its Old English origins.</p>
<p>The reason a couple of us don’t like the stereotyping is because of the association of ‘weird’ with dysfunctional or even distasteful. If all it means is ‘charmingly different and highly intelligent’ then, hell, call me weird any day (jk).</p>
<p>I didn’t realize the level of barbarism there. I guess that I shouldn’t be all that surprised given what happened at one of the institutions in Waltham. What surprises me more is that the State Judiciary tried to cover it up - I guess that they could back then.</p>
<p>It always surprises me that governmental entities try to pull the cover-up crap in a state that is so well-educated.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine the conversation between Amy and her husband about the borrowed gun. Wouldn’t he wonder why she borrowed it? And didn’t he accompany her to the firing range? I’m not implying or even thinking that he knew her plans, but I just can’t imagine what he was thinking about why she had borrowed a gun or needed to practice with it. I mean it surely would raise questions for me!</p>
<p>I think Bishop was clinically depressed her entire life because of social isolation. There are tons of people out there just like her. Most depressed people won’t commit acts of violence; they just deal with it and persevere. The mystery is why, for a tiny fraction of people, that depression turns to rage.</p>
<p>And I am not trying to cut her slack. Death penalty/life in prison- either is fine by me. I am just trying to have an intelligent conversation about why she did what she did.</p>
<p>I don’t think that you can hide a gun from your family if you are carrying the thing every day.</p>
<p>The only time I’ve ever held a gun was when I was eight or nine years old. It was locked in a chest in the attic and I later found out that it was a WW2 souvenir. I picked it up and just put it back. Kids can get into just about anything.</p>
<p>Marite, i was hoping to hear from you! I’m sorry if I didn’t make my point clear. I was thinking that the dismantling of mental health facilities put an exceptional burden on the police department. They suddenly had to make decisons in an area where standard definitions of criminality didn’t apply, and that takes a great deal of experience. </p>
<p>To this day, in Illinois, we have mentally ill or mentally challenged people shot by police who have misjudged the situation. In this case, I think they erred on the side of downplaying the situation and hoping for the best. Certainly, access to a stronger state mental health system and more recognition of a behavioral crisis could have helped.</p>
<p>Well sometimes the barbarism comes back to haunt “the man.” </p>
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<p>On the system pulling a cover-up in a well-educated population, it is “funny” that it was the beat cops and the guys down at the shop at the car delearship who seem to have spotted this as not passing the sniff test. Notice that many CC posters are willling to give U of A a pass for not acting on student complaints about a professor instead of yelling “cover-up.” It seems to be a matter of perspective.</p>