 |
|
Ten years ago, 19 year-old Aaron Lindh walked into the City-County Building in downtown Madison and fatally shot a secretary and the Dane County Coroner.
A jury later convicted Lindh of murdering Eleanor Townsend and Clyde "Bud" Chamberlain, and trying to kill Erik Erickson, a state Justice Department worker who had stopped in to pay a parking ticket.
But jurors rejected Lindh's insanity defense, which meant that he went to prison rather than to a mental institution.
Jurors are to be picked to hear Lindh's second plea of the insanity defense in his claim that he was not criminally reposible for the murders 10 years ago.
A 7th U.S. Court of Appeals ruling earlier this year decided that Lindh's rights had been violated ~ the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, so it came back to Dane County.
If the jury accepts the insanity plea this time, Lindh could go to a secure mental instituion until he is found fit to return to society. If found criminally responsible for the murders, he will return to prison.
On the third day of Lindh's sanity trial before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Robert Pekowsky, Dr. Kenneth Clark testified that Lindh suffers from "reactive attachment disorder".
The disorder stems from disruptions in baby care, and, as one consequence, makes it difficult for children to ever intimately connect with other people.
...Lindh's lawyers will argue the disorder makes people vulnerable to psychotic episodes -- the linchpin of their defense.
...It is a repeat of the sanity plea of Lingh's trial held a decade ago, ordered earlier this year by a federal appeals court.
The central questions in this trial are whether Lindh had a mental disease at the time and whether it prevented him from controlling his conduct or knowing right from wrong.
Perhaps the biggest point in prosecutor Burr's cross-examination of Griffith was when he asked, "Can you have a mental disease and still be responsible for your conduct?"
Griffith answered yes.
Nine women and three men took 2 1/2 hours Saturday to find Lindh was not mentally ill when he killed Dane County Coroner Clyde "Bud" Chamberlain and county secretary, Eleanor Townsend and wounded Erik Erickson.
Lindh wil be re-sentenced at 10 a.m. on Monday.
So, this past week, key players at the trial 10 years ago met again in the courtroom of Circuit Judge Robert Pekowsky. And again, family members returned to hear about the last terrifying moments of their loved ones' lives.
People who saw him that day returned to the witness stand, this time more subdued than emotional, to describe his behavior: coherent, focused, agitated, angry.
But prosecutors repeatedly countered that Lindh was an angry young man whose sole way of dealing with rage was to lash out.
"You don't escape criminal responsibility because you had a bad day, because you're mad at the world," Heitz told the jury. "When he pulled the trigger three times and killed two people, he did so purposefully, he did so without a mental disease and he should be held criminally responsible."
