[Runscott]

By the way, Zack, I know someone who is in their early '20s and bipolar with schizoaffective disorder. Before his first manic break, it's true that he had drug problems, but he was not hateful or particularly angry. Now he is very angry and until recently hospitalized, was carrying a gun and threatening to kill people (while in a manic episode). No one who knows him ... now, with his new manic mind .... has any doubt that he would have carried out the threats. He's currently hospitalized, finally taking medication voluntarily, and doing very well. He didn't hurt anyone. This only occurred because he had a family that went above and beyond what many are capable of.

If more people asked questions about mental illness, then awareness might rise ,and as a result, funding. That leads to more hospital beds, more psychiatrists per patient, less inappropriate drugs administered simply because of lobbying, quicker identification by the public of mental illness symptoms....and fewer manic or psychotic episodes that result in harm to others. Wouldn't that be a good thing? I think the people related to the five who were killed at Cafe Racer in Seattle, by a mentally ill man whose parents had unsuccessfully sought treatment for for years, would agree with me.

If the person I mentioned in the first paragraph had not been hospitalized, and had killed a few people, I WOULD NOT have been looking for a death penalty for him. I would have been horrified that, while out of his mind, he had carried out actions that he would not have done otherwise.

If Ian Stawicki had gotten the help he needed, I doubt those people at Cafe Racer would have been killed. But who cares? Murder is murder - let God sort out his own.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program from the mountains of Idaho.