OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) ? A judge on Tuesday decided that a physician who killed his young son in a psychotic rampage two years ago should remain in a state mental facility.
Dr. Stephen Paul Wolf is now in a legal limbo of sorts -- not guilty of murder, but confined indefinitely for a horrible act of which he has no memory.
Wolf's case is unusual because most criminal defendants who seek acquittal on insanity grounds are found guilty anyway and sent to prison, said Brian Stettin, policy director of of the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Virginia.
Those acquitted of crimes on insanity grounds face long odds on winning their release, particularly if their case reaches a certain notoriety, as the Wolf case did in Oklahoma, he said.
"It's quite rare for them to be released," he said.
Juries are not always prepared to show mercy to a psychotic defendant. In 2002, Houston-area housewife Andrea Yates was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for drowning her five kids. But four years later, a new jury sent her to a mental hospital instead after a judge overturned the initial verdict due to faulty witness testimony.
Would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. still lives in a mental institution 30 years after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity of trying to kill then-President Ronald Reagan.
If it ever comes, Wolf's release rests entirely with the judge who found him not guilty.
A successful internist in spite of mental health issues that began in his mid-20s, Wolf, 52, was declared not guilty by reason of insanity in June in the slashing death of his 9-year-old son Tommy.
Medical experts for both the state and the defense agreed he was insane in the predawn hours of November 16, 2009, when he attacked his son and slashed his wife as she tried to save their only child at the family's home in a wealthy enclave of the state capital.
Wolf, diagnosed as bipolar with psychotic episodes, told police and psychiatrists he was convinced his son was evil.
He was sent to the Oklahoma Forensic Center, an inpatient behavioral health facility, on June 8.
But the possibility of his release was raised when the center's forensic director recommended on July 11 he be conditionally released.
A few weeks later, after the local media reported the recommendation, the statewide medical director of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Service stepped into the case and told the judge in a report that Wolf should continue treatment while confined.
In remarks from the bench on Tuesday, District Judge Donald L. Deason said he never seriously considered releasing Wolf, who has a history of not taking the medication he needs.
The doctor's lawyer told Deason his client did not want to be released, even though psychiatric reports state he has responded to treatment and medication.
(Editing by Greg McCune)
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