Jury Duty

I've just come out of two weeks of jury duty. 

I will never forget the case. A 50-year old man who stabbed his mother 40 times in a 'frenzied' attack with her kitchen knife. He had never been violent before. She had never worried about her safety. He had paranoid schizophrenia and although it had started worsening just as lockdown began, COVID closed all the support structures. 

It is a tragedy bound up in the failure of our mental health system and the unknowable consequences of COVID.