Criminally Yours: Have You Ever Met A Psychopath?

I’ve been watching the television series Narcos on Netflix lately. The show covers the history of the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia in the 80s and 90s and its chief master, Pablo Escobar.

According to the show, Escobar was willing to kill (or have others kill) anyone, even a 10-month-old baby, to get what he wanted – control of the drug trade, a truce with government, simple revenge. Yet the series depicts him as a guy who loved his children, his mother, his wife – a killer with a heart of gold, but only for the things he held near and dear.

My kid took issue when I called Escobar a “psychopath.” According to my son, if someone loves anyone, he’s not a psychopath — maybe he’s a sociopath, but psychopaths, he argued, can love no one.

I’ve been interested in this distinction — representing the people I do — for a long time, so I did a little research this weekend and got the American Psychiatric Association’s take on the subject.

Both sociopathy and psychopathy are listed under the heading of Antisocial Personality Disorders (ASPD). Both share the following traits:

• A disregard for laws and social mores;
• A disregard for the rights of others;
• A failure to feel remorse or guilt; and
• A tendency to display violent behavior.

But each has its own unique characteristics.

According to the Association, sociopaths tend to be nervous and easily agitated. They are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, including fits of rage. They are likely to be uneducated and live on the fringes of society, unable to hold down a steady job or stay in one place for very long. While it is difficult for them to form attachments to others, many can form attachments to a particular individual or group. Any crimes committed by a sociopath, including murder, will tend to be haphazard, disorganized, and spontaneous.

These, thus, are my clients. They are, for the most part, arrested shortly after committing their crime — following a bar fight, a jealous rage, a drug-turf war — because someone on the scene calls 911. They often show little cleverness and little self-control. In my experience, this is the majority of the people in jail for violent crimes. I’ve met my fare share, and most are not violent, except when the proverbial push comes to shove.

Psychopaths, on the other hand, are much more insidious. According to the Association, they cannot form emotional attachments or feel empathy with others, but they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at mimicry that they maintain families and long-term relationships without those people ever suspecting their true nature.

Interestingly, I’ve known psychopaths in my day-to-day life, but never in court. Psychopaths (not necessarily the ones who kill, but just the ones who lie and hold out whole different personalities to different people) are not all that uncommon. All of us probably know at least one. A friend of mine while attending Harvard Law School fell in love with a fellow student who was one of the most charming people I’d ever met. He was sweet, down-to-earth, seemingly honest. He was the kind of guy you’d be happy to have your friend marry. Turned out he was a psychopath. After they married, things slowly unraveled. He led a double, even triple life, with not only other lovers, but a fictionalized past that revealed itself only little by little as things didn’t add up. They eventually divorced but only after years of struggle, some of which involved a temporary restraining order. Who knows where he is now and who he’s emotionally torturing.

According to some studies, non-violent psychopathy can actually be a useful trait in getting ahead. Lack of a moral compass and the ability to empathize with others can make a CEO a cat in a world of mice. That’s why they’re such great fodder for movies, books, and folklore. (Read the recently released The Hand that Feeds You, by A.J. Rich.)

By law, it doesn’t make for a better defense if you’re a sociopath or a psychopath. I suppose because sociopaths generally have mitigating factors that underlie and explain their violence, there’s more play in trying to win them some sympathy. Psychopaths, however, have a brain disorder that has nothing to do with their upbringing. It’s difficult to get much data on what percentage they make up of the population precisely because they’re so difficult to identify and because there’s often a blur between run-of-the mill sociopathy and psychopathy.

I’m certainly no expert, but in my anecdotal experience (and that of my colleagues) it’s interesting that the people who the public generally associate with violent crime – the Ted Bundys and Sons of Sam — are in the minority.

It may afford some sense of relief to know that there’s far more Pablo Escobars out there than Hannibal Lecters.

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Toni Messina has been practicing criminal defense law since 1990, although during law school she spent one summer as an intern in a large Boston law firm and realized quickly it wasn’t for her. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a journalist from Rome, Italy, reporting stories of international interest for CBS News and NPR. She keeps sane by balancing her law practice with a family of three children, playing in a BossaNova band, and dancing flamenco. She can be reached at [email protected] or tonimessinalaw.com.