Thursday, March 05, 2009

Canadian Beheader Found Not Criminally Responsible

How long until the Buffalo headchopper Muzzammil Hassan has his attorney try the insanity defense?

He's got some precedent across the border.
Vince Li has been found not criminally responsible for the unprovoked killing and beheading of fellow passenger Timothy McLean on a Greyhound bus last summer.

Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench Judge John Scurfield said Thursday that Li, 40, could not be found guilty of murder and is not criminally responsible for the crime because he was mentally ill at the time of the killing.

"These grotesque acts are appalling... but are suggestive of a mental disorder," the judge said.

"He did not appreciate the act he committed was wrong."

Li had pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. Psychiatric evidence at his trial suggested he is a schizophrenic who suffered a major psychotic episode last July 30 when he fatally stabbed McLean, 22, ate some of the body parts, and cut off McLean's head.

For five hours after the killing, Li wandered around on the bus, from which passengers had fled along the Trans-Canada Highway, defiling the body while an RCMP tactical team waited to subdue him.

Rather than go to prison, Li will be kept in a secure psychiatric facility, most likely in Selkirk, Man.

McLean, a carnival worker, was returning home to Winnipeg on the bus from Edmonton. Listening to his iPod while sitting in the back row of Greyhound bus 1170, he gave Li a friendly greeting as the stranger sat down beside him.

Then, around 8:30 p.m. CT, when the bus was near Portage La Prairie, Man., Li pulled a buck knife from his side and began stabbing McLean — for no apparent reason, witnesses said. After passengers fled the bus, Li was barricaded inside the vehicle.

During the stabbing, Li was heard to say, "get emergency." During the five-hour standoff, he walked around the bus carrying the severed head in one hand, the knife in the other. At one point, he threw McLean's head into the bus's stairwell.

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