Louis Theroux: The people who are not guilty by reason of insanity

Louis Theroux: The people who are not guilty by reason of insanity

Louis Theroux is a damn fine reporter, and this article is a perfect example of his skills. Please check out our interview with Louis to find more out about this brilliant man.

The BBC News website will be changing next week. Learn more Every year in the US, courts find people not guilty by reason of insanity. Treating and evaluating them is a painstaking business, writes Louis Theroux. On my first day at Ohio’s Summit Behavioral Healthcare Hospital I met Jonathan. Thirty-nine years old, at one time he’d been an engineering student. But for the past seven years he’d been confined to a mental institution. He showed me his room – it was bare but not uncomfortable, decorated and furnished in the style of a modern hospital.

Louis Theroux: The people who are not guilty by reason of insanity

He showed me his room – it was bare but not uncomfortable, decorated and furnished in the style of a modern hospital. He had fitness magazines by the bed and a small selection of books.

Then he told me his story – how he had killed his father, stabbing him to death seven years earlier while in the grip of mental illness, before being found NGRI, not guilty by reason of insanity, and sent to Summit.

My idea had been to get to know some of the patients at a top American forensic facility. I wanted to meet men and women who have done some of the worst crimes imaginable – not through choice but under the influence of mental illness.