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Getting Away with Beheading in Canada
The infamous Greyhound bus killer was found not criminally responsible for the gruesome murder of a fellow passenger.
A Canadian court has ruled that an immigrant who beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus and then ate his eyeballs is not criminally responsible for his actions because he has a “mental disorder.” The decision, which follows a series of spectacularly lenient judicial rulings in Canada in recent years, has outraged ordinary Canadians, who say that left-wing judges increasingly are sacrificing justice and common sense on the altar of bleeding-heart political correctness.
The high-profile murder case involves 41-year-old Vincent Weiguang Li, a man from China who immigrated to Canada in 2001. After more than half a decade of generous support (bilingual education, free housing, health care, and affirmative action) from the Canadian government to help him get settled into his new country, Li ended up divorced and unemployed.
Dejected, Li in July 2008 wrote a troubling farewell letter to his ex-wife with the words: “I’m gone. Don’t look for me. I hope you are happy.” He then bought a bus ticket using a fake name and boarded a Greyhound bus carrying a butcher knife. As the bus was passing through a desolate stretch of central Canada in the dark of night, Li stabbed, decapitated, and cannibalized his sleeping seatmate, 22-year-old Tim McLean. Li’s bloody rampage continued for more than four hours, until police eventually subdued him with a taser gun.
Many Canadians believe Li planned the whole act in advance as a twisted way of exacting revenge on his ex-wife. In any case, Li seemed to be hoping that the police would shoot him. At the crime scene, Li told police: “I’m guilty. Please kill me.”
After meeting with government psychiatrists, however, Li claimed that God had told him to kill McLean because McLean “was a force of evil.” Doctors later concluded that Li was actually a “decent person” who was suffering from untreated schizophrenia and was out of his mind when he attacked McLean. They also advised the judge that Li should be found not criminally responsible (NCR) for his actions based on his mental state at the time. “People who are mentally ill should not be convicted when they don’t know what they did was wrong,” the doctors said.
As a result, the sole issue for the presiding judge to decide was whether or not Li should be held criminally responsible. Not a single one of the three dozen witnesses to the killing was called to testify. When the court reporter read aloud the charge of second-degree murder and asked for his plea, Li responded in a clear, loud voice: “not guilty.” And the judge agreed.
The practical effect of the judge’s ruling is that instead of going to prison, Li will go to a hospital to receive medication and counseling, after which he may be released back on to the street in less than one year, with no criminal record. In Canada, anyone found NCR is not required to serve any minimum time in detention.
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Soeren Kern is Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.
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52 Comments
1. Dean_L:This is a classic example of how liberalism has created an opportunity for those wishing to escape the consequences of their actions. There’s a lesson to be learned from this latest example of social engineering – no matter what your mental state is, you still must be required to face the consequences of your actions, and no amount of social engineering, be it under the guise of compassion, tolerance, or even circumstance should change that fact.
There will always be those like Li, willing to twist that mis-directed compassion to their own ends. At the end of the day, Li is guilty and overt liberalism has allowed a killer to go free. Real compassion should have been reserved for the family and friends of the 22 year old victim. The courts, long a bastion of liberalism, have once again proven common sense is often beyond their grasp. Disgraceful.
Mar 15, 2009 - 11:03 am 2. Jacki:What do you bet that they use the “God” arguement to say that everyone with religios beliefs are nuts.
Mar 15, 2009 - 11:28 am 3. KansasGirl:We’re fighting for our lives here in the US. Hopefully we can push back Obamas’ same goals.
Mar 15, 2009 - 12:31 pm 4. geokstr:Jacki: “What do you bet that they use the “God” arguement to say that everyone with religios beliefs are nuts.”
Not sure if you are from Canada or not, or if you follow the controversy over the so-called “human rights commission” kangaroo courts there, but I think you are correct, but only to a point. That point being that ONLY Allah will be available as an excuse for murder, not Jesus, or Moses, or Shiva, or even L. Ron.
Mar 15, 2009 - 12:42 pm 5. Melissa:The perfect solution, then, is to have Li move in with the judge after he’s rehabilitated in a year.
Mar 15, 2009 - 12:47 pm 6. 11B40:Greetings:
If you will excuse a paraphrase, “Let he who can read the human heart release the first killer.”
Mar 15, 2009 - 12:59 pm 7. WestGuard:This politically correct “mentally incompetent / NCR” nonsense is absurd. Who cares if he knew what he was doing. That fact that he “did it” and “could do it again” (regardess of if he himself understands why) is “the point” and “the reason” he should be locked up permanently.
Mar 15, 2009 - 1:13 pm 8. El hefe:Jacki:
You can bet on it! Someone will say it. Anything “they” can’t control is a target. God? Well He cannot be controlled, many have tried and failed. They even try to put up 4 walls and lock Him in a box but He always escapes. So difficult to manage! And He has his own ideas which He has managed to preserve for thousands of years despite the best efforts of those who hate Him to destroy those ideas. “They” have even tried to kill all of his supporters on more than one occasion. “They” are still at it so I’d say you are holding a straight flush.
Mar 15, 2009 - 1:46 pm 9. bud:STUPID justice system.
Mar 15, 2009 - 2:30 pm 10. chuck:NO wonder the police force has so many frusterated employees!!!
When a murderer say to the cops shoot me ………does that not tell you he is guilty???
Mar 15, 2009 - 2:35 pm 11. Al Fontaine:How sick is the legal system ????????
Lets all start packing guns to protect ourselves from …bad guys???? since we are only doing what is politicaly correct.
Covering our asses to be polite.
When some dumb son of a bitch eats the eyes as well as other parts of another human it is very real he is GUILTY of murder>>>>>> wake up lawyers and judges…….what if it was your kid???
And the judge, in the near future, should invite Vincent Weiguang Li for a four-course dinner at his home …
Mar 15, 2009 - 3:13 pm 12. xchemist:Uh, so it’s OK as long as you only kill people to eat them and not for sport?
Mar 15, 2009 - 3:24 pm 13. Chuck Pelto:TO: Soeren Kern, et al.
RE: Wouldn’t This Thread Be….
“Getting Away with Beheading in Canada” — Soeren Kern
…BETTER ‘titled’, Getting a Head and a Bite to Eat….In Canada?
And why should we worry about some cannibalistic head-chopper on a bus in Canada when women amongst US can get away with shooting their husbands in the back with a shotgun in North Carolina?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Mar 15, 2009 - 3:30 pm 14. erny:P.S. Don’t we have enough problems at ‘home’?
Wake up America! We are next unless we can stop socialism.
Mar 15, 2009 - 3:42 pm 15. jigga.bo:well…why are Americans so very worried about Canadian laws….
Mar 15, 2009 - 4:00 pm 16. Miss-Sydney:Kansas Girl: Your comment was stupid. Also this is Yahoo canada, keep this canadian, not your rubbish American topics!
Mar 15, 2009 - 4:16 pm 17. Anonymous:an eye for an eye
Mar 15, 2009 - 4:32 pm 18. Gilbert Weinstein:What prevents the victims or victims’ family from exacting their own justice on the ‘NCR’ *criminals* and then using themselves an NCR defense?
Strangely (or not), the ‘progressive’ approach could lead to a regression back to the law of the jungle.
Mar 15, 2009 - 4:39 pm 19. Linguist:Apparently the new administration is paying selective attention to our Canadian neighbors. The “punish rather than reward hard work and initiative” is right up their alley.
Mar 15, 2009 - 4:41 pm 20. Elise B.:You should get all the facts right before getting on your high horses. The man – not a Muslim by the way – is schizophrenic and has been committed to a mental hospital.
Mar 15, 2009 - 4:56 pm 21. Jim Baker:Sheesh. I lived in Calgary for a couple of years in the 80s. I didn’t know it had gotten this messed up. But then, OJ Simpson played golf all over the USA for 13 years after he cut the throats of two people. So, I guess legal systems are just messed up everywhere.
It is a joke to allow NCR as a legal defense. NCR is not a defense, it is a mitigating circumstance. The question of guilt or innocense is just this: Did this person do this crime? Yes or no. The punishment phase of the trial can certainly take into account NCR, but the sombich is still guilty of the crime, isn’t he?
Mar 15, 2009 - 5:30 pm 22. mk:And don’t forget Karla Holmolka. Raped and murdered girls (including her own sister) with her bastard husband, Paul Bernardo. Instead of re-trying her for perjury and sending her away forever, the justice system decided that she’d learned her lesson or some such crap and she is now out of prison. And don’t even get me started on the fact that Paul Bernardo isn’t six feet under as he deserves to me.
Stupid Canadian justice system.
Mar 15, 2009 - 5:57 pm 23. mk:deserves to be.
Proofreading is your friend….
Mar 15, 2009 - 5:58 pm 24. NahnCee:The judge could serve Mr. Li a good chianti and fava beans.
Mar 15, 2009 - 6:10 pm 25. malclave:>>Doctors later concluded that Li was actually a “decent person” <<
Okay, I’m gonna have to come back later and reread the rest of the post, because I just can’t wrap my head around anyting past that line.
And, I apologize in advance for my language, and understand completely if it is edited or removed, but the only response I can make to this is:
What the f*ck?
Mar 15, 2009 - 6:34 pm 26. SaulA:Much as I hate to admit it, Mr. Pelto is right on this one. Besides, the canadian justice system did precisely what we would do, since the man sounds like a legitimate nut, incapable of knowing what he did was right or wrong. He’s a nut.
The man that shot Ronald Reagan was was found NG by reason of some mental issue, was confined but is getting “release time” now; Mrs. Bobbit cut off part of her husband and was acquitted with no mental issue at all except her feeling of being “abused.” The list in the US is endless and we hardly have any basis for moaning about what the canadians did. The only issue is when if at all the nut is allowed back on the street. I assume–hope–they will use the same good judgment the California parole board uses when Charles Manson repeatedly comes up for parole.
Mar 15, 2009 - 6:44 pm 27. Paco:There’s a whiff of vengance in Mr Li’s action. I’m not saying that true mental handicaps should be incarcerated, but perhaps, in this particular case, the judge has been a little too simple
Mar 15, 2009 - 7:12 pm 28. WestGuard:21: Jim Baker: “So, I guess legal systems are just messed up everywhere.”
————————————————-
The “western justice system” is the best there is but I think it is sometimes “overly fair” in regards to “loopholes, leniency, mistrials, technicalities, early release, endless appeals..”
The OJ trial and verdict was the greatest farce and travesty of justice I have ever witnessed. To think that a hip, slick talking lawyer got this chump off the hook with a cool jingle “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must aquit” is hard to fathom..
Mar 15, 2009 - 8:12 pm 29. anonymouse:Elise B.
He is violent schizophrenic and the hospitals in Canada have limited facilities to take care of such kind of person. As for diagnosis – the diagnosis of schizophrenia is often made because doctors do not know exactly what is really wrong with the person. And diagnosis for schizophrenia is soooo convenient. He is in his early forties and usually schizophrenia shows up before one is thirty, usually in the early twenties or even earlier. He shows some symptoms of schizophrenia (the god was telling him to do that, if he didn’t do that somebody would kill him) but I am still surprised that he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic so late in his life. There is also one other small thing. Many schizophrenics (violent or otherwise) do relapse because they stop taking their medication. It is very difficult to check if schizophrenic is taking medication and a relapse in case of violent schizophrenics can be very, very dangerous. Conclusion – in my view he should go to prison and not to the hospital.
Mar 15, 2009 - 9:10 pm 30. darkindy:Would a vigilante happens to kill Mr Li, or some other “reformed” repeat murder, be able to get off on a NCR plea? Would the editors that call for open minded understanding of mentally ill murderers suddenly scream bloody murder and make comparisons to the Wild West?
How long before citizens start using the loopholes to avenge a lost family member?
Mar 15, 2009 - 11:02 pm 31. Chuck Pelto:TO: WestGuard
RE: [OT] OJ’s Acquital….
….was a bit more complicated than THAT.
It didn’t help that the primary witness, i.e., the one who provided the ‘glove’, was discovered to be an outrageous racist.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Mar 15, 2009 - 11:43 pm 32. Jason:[Never judge a man till you have walked a mile in his shoes, 'cuz by then, he's a mile away, you've got his shoes, and you can say anything then.]
Reading some of the comments posted to the Canadian articles you linked to terrify me for the future of this country, as Obama shoves us closer and closer toward the same model of left wing European stupidity that has obviously turned so many (but thankfully not all) Canadian minds to mush.
What scares me the most is the moral priorities that these brainwashed leftists have. Their first concern is for the well being and rights of the killer. Not one of those who expressed concern for the rights of Li also expressed concern for the rights of ordinary people to live their lives without the threat of being attacked by such a psycho.
For instance, a common opinion is that “the role of the justice system should not be revenge, it should be rehabilitation.” Not once do such people recognize that the primary role of criminal justice is to protect the rights of the innocent. The thought doesn’t even cross their minds. The same mentality infects the mindset of those who kicked up a stink about the efforts of Bush to thwart terrorist attacks against us. The ‘right’ of someone to plan terror attacks over the phone is apparently more important than the right of innocent people to go about their lives without being blown to smithereens.
The trouble with leftists is that their brains are so infused with misguided emotion that they are not capable of making objective value judgments. It is not possible for them to sit down and consider the concept of a hierarchy of values, that some rights trump others, that the right of the individual to live trumps the ‘right’ of a dangerous psychopath to live life without restriction. They’re so intoxicated with the feeling they get from defending whomever they perceive to be the ‘underdog’ in any particular situation that it’s impossible to talk any sense into them.
I sometimes wonder if they can be categorized as sane humans themselves. Here in New York I’m surrounded by hardcore leftist liberals. I know people who stood and watched the 9/11 attacks close up in all their horror from mere blocks away downtown – yet within hours were expressing sympathy for the attackers and hoping that America would rethink its ‘oppressive’ foreign policy as a result. One girl I knew in Brooklyn told me “well I just think it’s great that they could actually do something like that, to teach those greedy capitalist bastards that they’re not invincible.” I’ll never forget those words as long as I live.
So while I’d like to think that these Canadian leftist would have felt differently had they been on the bus and witnessed the gruesome act, I certainly wouldn’t bet on it.
Mar 15, 2009 - 11:59 pm 33. kywrite:Hey, Anonymouse,
I was attacked by a schizophrenic guy who was not taking his meds once. It was at a bus stop (downtown during rush hour on my way to work), he was a bum, and stupid me gave him my umbrella because it was wet and I felt sorry for him. So what does he do but attack me with it, after punching me in the forehead hard enough to trigger Bells Palsy? He was pursuing me, apparently intending to beat the crap out of me with my own umbrella, when a man across the street at a bank yelled, “Is everything okay?” (It bothered me when my hero told me he wasn’t going to interfere when he realized that my computer case indicated I was “one of us,” but that’s a whole different issue.)
I was only one of four women he attacked, including a corrections officer after they incarcerated him. It seems he particularly hated women. Only because this corrections officer called me and the other two women involved did I discover that after only three days in jail – really, in the mental ward of our local public hospital – they were getting ready to release him. Why? Because they had “stabilized” him on his meds again and could not hold him due to his condition!
The four of us raised holy hell. Because I was the worst injured, I was nominated to file a mental inquest warrant on him, a move generally undertaken only by a relative. The officers were very confused until I explained the whole situation.
Even then, he never went to trial. The prosecutor stated he would not pursue it because he knew he could not get a conviction. My only option was civil court, which was ludicrous as the guy was a bum! Ultimately, the mental hospital got hold of his family in Detroit and shipped him back there, purchasing a bus ticket at state expense and sending him unaccompanied. Whether he ever got there, I have no idea. If the man had killed me or one of the other women, I wonder, would he have been imprisoned for a serious period of time — or would they have just let him out when he was considered no danger to himself and others because he was on meds again — the same meds he had stopped taking? Did he attack others in the years since? I have no way of knowing. It’s entirely possible he did manage to kill one or more women, and almost certain that he attacked others.
This all happened in the United States, in Kentucky. I have not trusted our “justice” system since. Without some system in place to incarcerate or at least monitor insane people who attack others, we are all in danger. Myself, I’d toss them into special prisons and let them stay there — not nice, but better than the alternative. Just as you can’t let an unpredictable dog remain in a neighborhood with children, you can’t allow mad dog humans to roam freely and unrecognized through neighborhoods and be assured they are safe.
Mar 16, 2009 - 3:37 am 34. Canuckistani:Part of the problem is that these guys are on the street in the first place. Then to be rid of them, city authorities buy individuals like Li a bus ticket out of town and look what happened. In our caring society you can’t keep dangerous, crazy … er … sick people hospitalized against their wills. They have rights. Apparently not even when they do something terrible. Yet when they end up sick and wandering aimlessly, far from home, Greyhound therapy is permissable and preferrable? Can you hear the lambs?
Mar 16, 2009 - 5:14 am 35. Meryl:16 Miss Sydney.
Oh, that’s rich.
You getting in the face of Kansas girl because this is “Canadian yahoo”…..
…for years I’ve watched posts from the Queen’s subjects from all over the world ripping on and passing judgment on the United States, presenting all the answers, tied with a bow and delivered with ridicule and sarcasm.
So deal with it. He killed and ate the the Greyhound customer in Canada, not the United States.
Mar 16, 2009 - 8:04 am 36. AlanABQ:Liberals seem to need to repeat their mistakes over & over while the society they impose their social experiments on gets to pay the price. To say that Li acted out in a way that was a cry for help is analogous to saying that pedophilia is merely a sexual preference, which they also claim. If they want to help these monsters so badly, then they ought to give them free room & board in the same rooms their own kids sleep in.
Mar 16, 2009 - 8:05 am 37. deguello:You know, since they’re just misunderstood & all….
At least he didn’t use a gun! Another triumph for gun control.
Mar 16, 2009 - 9:00 am 38. deguello:Hey! Obama just found the new minority affirmative action hire, White House Chef!
Mar 16, 2009 - 9:01 am 39. Laura:Trudeau was recently listed as the worst Canadian ever. Not worst leader, but worst Canadian. He deliberately and thoroughly destroyed this once great nation and no leader since has done anything to rectify the rape of Canada. The justice system here is a joke…. thanks to socialism, far-leftists, multiculturalism and political correctness. Li got off because he is a non-white immigrant. There, I’ve said it, but it’s the truth. Unless Americans do something about Obama NOW, you will follow our path.
Mar 16, 2009 - 9:33 am 40. David W. Lincoln:What I wrote in a Canadian newspaper is still timely. When you have people off their meds, and people suffer from their actions when they are off their meds, and when the professionalism of those outside the judiciary is not taken
into consideration – accountability is thrown out of the window.
Make sure that the one off his meds does not get access to life outside where he will be treated, because he simply
Mar 16, 2009 - 10:02 am 41. Frank:cannot be trusted when he is off his meds.
A couple years ago a 12 year old girl in Canada sued her father, who had grounded her from going on a field trip with her class because she used Myspace after he forbade it. The girl won; the dad had to let her go on the trip.
Mar 16, 2009 - 11:04 am 42. cletus:The man isn’t crazy. This was an attempted suicide by cop. This whole thing was in the same vein of virginia tech, columbine, westroads, or new life.
Mar 16, 2009 - 11:07 am 43. Mr Howell IV:Laura: I can’t say I was a big fan of Trudeau, who tweaked the US like DeGaulle, but what is wrong with the Canadian justice system?
What happened with that head-removing nut sounds very much like what would happen here. Someone who is proved not to know right from wrong does not go to a regular prison; he goes into a psych ward till a shrink will put his career and our lives on the lines by saying he’s “normal” again. That can take years or decades. The only ways Canadian justice system appears to differ from here are no death penalty and the hate crime tribunals I recently heard about.
Mar 16, 2009 - 1:41 pm 44. gnubi:What it really boils down to is the judge doesn’t care nearly as much about the victim as he does about the perp. That seems to be really common in Canada and the US and probably won’t change until bleeding hearts start having their own loved ones fall at the hands of the crazies. Why not incarcerate for life? Society will be safer and the insane won’t even know the difference.
Mar 16, 2009 - 6:14 pm 45. JS:Sadly in Canada you can’t carry a concealed weapon. If I was on that bus and armed I would have shot this Li dead about 2 seconds after I saw him sawing through the poor kids neck.
Take away an innocent person’s ability to protect him/herself and you create a defenseless victim.
Mar 17, 2009 - 10:04 am 46. Wade:Well, maybe McLean WAS a force of evil. Okay, bad taste.
I love Canadians in general. They are polite and gentle, and have produced some of the funniest people in the world. However, I would not want to rely on one in any kind of confrontation.
When I first heard about this, I just could…not…imagine any group of Americans filing out past a guy who was busy knifing a fellow passenger, and then cowering dutifully to have a head dropped on them from the bus. The guy would be so down on the ground in seconds. These passengers were cowardly. Yes, cowardly.
Now, the Canadian court system has shown similar cowardice in the face of evil. Apparently all one needs to do to escape criminal charges in Canada is to commit a horrific crime.
Shouldn’t the Vancouver pig farm murderer also be exonerated? Wasn’t Ted Bundy really “out of his mind” as well? What about Dahmer…oh yeah, he wasn’t responsible for the cannibalism either…this is the limit.
Americans are often described as aggressive and bellicose. Even if we are, it comes in handy sometimes when defending the innocent.
Mar 17, 2009 - 3:43 pm 47. Oscar the Grump:Laura
Mar 17, 2009 - 5:07 pm 48. Venham:What do you suggest we do? I’m just curious.
Jason#32 it’s called sophisry,MissSydney that’s why we have concealed carry laws in all but three? states.Google the fbi crime stats to see the impact concealed carry laws have affected crime in the U.S.
Mar 17, 2009 - 8:11 pm 49. Venham:That’s sophistry
Mar 17, 2009 - 8:11 pm 50. cubanbob:Now if some of the victims families were to go ‘nuts’ and hang the judge……..
Mar 18, 2009 - 10:32 am 51. Paul -Indiana:#44. Gnubi, the idea of incarcerate for life is ok with me if the life is ended in a couple of days.
Mar 18, 2009 - 1:45 pm 52. big J:I can’t believe they will let this man out of jail. If he was in china they would of executed him. What about the family does the judge take in to concidration what they feel like.And can this judge tell the public that he will not kill someone else.why don,t they deport him back to china and see what they do to him.uuuuuuuuuuunbelievable
Apr 3, 2009 - 8:01 am