A U.K. man has been cleared of strangling his wife, as doctors and experts proved during his trial that he killed her during a nightmare. Brian Thomas suffered from a long-term sleep disorder and experts said he was in a state of automatism, where his mind had no control over his bod, when he strangled Christine, his childhood sweetheart and wife of 40 years in July 2008.
While prosecutors originally asked the jury to find Thomas not guilty by reason of insanity, which could have sent him a psychiatric hospital, they withdrew the case against him on Friday, saying expert opinion was that psychiatric hospitalization was inappropriate.
The trial began earlier this week. The defense had freely admitted that he had killed his wife, but the jury was told, and sophisticated tests by sleep experts confirmed Thomas' condition, that during a vacation in their camper van, Thomas has a nightmare in which he believed that someone was breaking into the van. During that nightmare, and the ensuing automatism, he strangled his wife.
This is not unheard of, but rare. Only 50 cases have been documented.
One famous example is the story of Kenneth Parks, which was shown on the series "Forensic Files." Parks was a married 23-year-old man with a 5-month-old daughter. He reportedly had a very close relationship to his in-laws.
However, in the wee hours of May 23, 1987, Parks reportedly arose while sleepwalking, drove to his in-laws' home and broke in, assaulted his father-in-law and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. He then drove himself to the police station.
His only defense was that he was asleep during the entire incident and was not aware of what he was doing. After careful investigation, sleep specialists confirmed his sleep disorder, even recording incidents in which he arose during sleep sessions. Parks was eventually acquitted of the murder of his mother-in-law and the attempted murder of his father-in-law.
Written by Michael Santo
HULIQ.com
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