A Virginia jury declared Lorena Bobbitt temporarily insane after she chopped off her husband's penis.
Jurors acquitted Lorena Bobbitt of the crime, agreeing with the defense that she suffered an "irresistible impulse" caused by the abuse, the Times reported.
Bobbitt was ultimately committed to a mental hospital. However, the judge ordered her released from the hospital five weeks after her acquittal, according to the LA Times.
A Chicago-area doctor was found not guilty by reason of insanity after he killed his wife and daughter.
Lee Robin killed his wife with an ax and drowned their nearly-3-month-old daughter in 1988, The Chicago Tribune reported at the time.
But instead of running from police, the Palatine, Ill.-based doctor waited at the family's home. Robin reportedly sat at the foot of the stairs and told police the bodies were upstairs when they arrived.
He was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity after a trio of mental health experts decided he was too psychologically ill to understand his actions were wrong, according to a 1999 Chicago Tribune article.
Robin spent about 10 years at the Elgin Mental Health Center before a judge ruled he could be transitioned back into the community.
Steven Steinberg
teven Steinberg became the subject of the book Death of a Jewish American Princess, seen above, thanks to a terrible thing he did while living in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1981: He stabbed his wife, Elena, 26 times with a kitchen knife.
Steinberg didn't deny killing Elena. But he claimed to have done so while sleepwalking, which technically meant he wasn't in his right mind at the time. The closest corollary to this assertion was the insanity defense.
At trial, his attorney called witnesses to testify that Steinberg may have been sleepwalking or in a short-lived "dissociative" mental state when he stabbed his wife.
Defense attorney Bob Hirsh alleged that Steinberg's "Jewish American Princess" wife had driven him mad with nagging and spending too much money. A jury found Steinberg not guilty on the grounds that he was temporarily insane when he'd killed her. Because he was deemed "sane" at the time of his acquittal, Steinberg walked out of court a free man.
Mom Accused of Drowning Girl Wins With Insanity Defense; Now, Can She Re-Enter Society?
Bigham was found not guilty of murder and child abuse by reason of insanity on Jan. 22 after her daughter was drowned in a bathtub inside a relative's home on Jan. 14, 2010, in Patterson, Calif.
The Stanislaus County District Attorney's office is determining whether to appeal the judge's ruling to release Bigham, questioning whether he based it upon the proper standard.
"We think he used the wrong standard," said Carol Shipley, assistant district attorney for Stanislaus County. "It wasn't just [that] she was restored to sanity."
She added that the judge also should have considered the question: "Would this community be safe if she were released?"
An attorney for Bigham did not return a call for comment.
Bigham was held at the Stanislaus County Jail and treated at a local hospital. Two doctors testified that Bigham no longer exhibited the symptoms that led to the psychotic breakdown, the Modesto Bee reported.
"People found insane beat the rap, but in reality they may lose their freedom for a longer time," Resnick said.
Steven Michael Stagner
Stagner shot Angelica Toscano, 19, and six other Hispanics in a Rifle RV Park and a grocery store parking lot on July 3, 2001. The others who died were Juan Manual Hernandez-Carrillo, 44, Melquiades Medrano-Velasquez, 23, and his brother, Juan Carlos Medrano-Velasquez, 22. Those injured were Rudolfo Beltran, 30, Efred Marinmotes-Ortega, 18, and Medel Ortega-Venzor, 24.
Three years ago, Steven Michael Stagner began leaving the fenced and guarded grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo to go on camping trips and community excursions, much like grade-school field trips, accompanied only by unarmed hospital staff members — against the objections of Garfield County prosecutors.
The spree killer could, in a matter of a few years, be living in a neighborhood somewhere in Colorado.
A Denver Post review found that three-fifths of 41 killers determined “not guilty by reason of insanity” over the past 25 years in Colorado have been moved from the mental hospital into halfway houses and homes across the state, sometimes as soon as three years after their commitments.
Robert Dunn
The prospect of releasing Robert Dunn from the mental hospital sent shock waves through Manitou Springs, where a few years earlier on June 28, 2000, he stabbed his 7-year-old daughter, Aaren, believing she was possessed. After she yelled, “Daddy, Daddy, you’re killing me!” he slashed her throat from ear to ear and tried to pry her head off with a crowbar. Dunn was committed that December.
Hospital psychiatrists began seeking off-grounds privileges for Dunn in 2003, less than three years later. In 2004, when a second request was made and publicized, school teachers wrote letters opposing the move. One had counseled Aaren Dunn’s best friend.
Years later, the hospital sought court approval to let Dunn fly to Hawaii. Prosecutors opposed the trip, “fraught with danger,” because it called for “peers” ensuring that Dunn took medications. Schwartz approved the trip, based on the hospital’s safety plan. He let Dunn move into a halfway house in 2011 and into an apartment in 2014.
Dunn must attend group therapy, keep a daily diary and take blood and urine tests to ensure he is taking medications and not drinking alcohol. A case manager checks up on him randomly, doing apartment searches for weapons and drugs, court records indicate.
Mary Winkler
Mary Winkler, 32, was charged with the first-degree murder in the March 22, 2006, shotgun shooting death of her husband, Matthew Winkler.
Winkler had been serving as the pulpit minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee. He was found dead in his home by church members after he failed to show up for an evening church service that he was scheduled to lead. He had been shot in the back
A jury convicted Mary Winkler of voluntary manslaughter after hearing testimony that she was physically and mentally abused by her husband. She was sentenced to 210 days and was free after 67 days, most of which was served in a mental facility
Jennifer Lynn Bigham
Three years after Jennifer Lynn Bigham drowned her 3-year-old daughter in a bathtub at a Patterson home, a judge ordered jail officials to release her from custody because doctors say the woman no longer is insane.
The court already had ruled that Bigham, 26, was not guilty of murder and child abuse by reason of insanity in connection with the death of her daughter, Alexandrea Bigham. At a hearing Tuesday, the judge had to decide whether the defendant should be confined in a secure medical facility.
Two doctors testified that Bigham no longer exhibits the symptoms that led to the psychotic breakdown, causing the defendant to drown her daughter. Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Thomas Zeff said the law clearly dictates that he has to order the defendant's release if she has fully recovered her sanity.
The court ruled that she was not guilty based on reports from two doctors, Phil Trompetter and Jocelyn Roland, who examined the defendant and determined that she suffered from severe mental illness when she drowned her daughter.
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Dr. Stephen Montgomery, a forensic psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., said people found not guilty by reason of insanity and released from psychiatric care need close monitoring to protect themselves and those around them.
While society may be skeptical, Montgomery said, people released from prison with no major mental illness are a greater threat.
"Those are the kind of people that are going to be at risk with future violence," he said, "as opposed to those people found not guilty ... by reason of insanity."
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I could misquote the OP title and say "What are American authorities thinking??"
But as already pointed out:
A "big picture" observation. That is, that the laws involved, and the sequence of events after his arrest, aren't based on a single group of people working out a "package" of things to do to deal specifically with him. They are the collective result of a very long series of procedures built up over centuries, with each element being added or taken away in response to some new concern.
In other words, it's not really logical to ask "what were they thinking?"
It's mostly a side effect, or a downside to living in a nation that is based on the rule of law, as opposed to some other system. The Rule of Law is chosen, in order to make sure that everyone is treated the same way, for the same crimes. It is to protect all of us from the people in power selecting individuals to punish. But it also means that when we would LIKE to adjust the exact response to a criminal, in order to deal with something like this, that we can't.
my bad ...
