Sleeping Killers
By tony leather, 25th May 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsOff Beat
It is a very fine line that has to be drawn, by both the legal and medical
professions, when it comes to trying to prove that a crime committed whilst
sleepwalking is no crime at all.
Sleeping Killers
We humans are really walking, biological computers, and our hard drives are
located in our skulls. Like any other computer, lots of useless information
gets logged in there every day, and our solution to the problem of unwanted
data is to go to sleep and dream. That's what dreaming is, basically, the
brain's programme ridding itself of all the unwanted information it has
gathered in that day.
We all know that some incredible things run through our minds during sleep,
but for most of us there is a chemical safety net provided. We produce a
substance, during sleep, that effectively renders ours limbs immobile, so we
can't be too physically active, whilst we slumber. At least most of us do,
but there are exceptions. Sleepwalkers.
Sleep researchers estimate that 50 percent of children sleepwalk at least
once. Ten to 15 percent do so repeatedly, mostly between ages 4 and 12.
Sleepwalking episodes peak at around age 10. In adulthood, the prevalence
drops to between 2 and 9 percent. The incredible aspect of this condition is
the seemingly unlimited amount of things these people can get up to.
The sleepwalker doesn't know where he or she is or how they got there. They
may be completely disoriented. Sleepwalking usually occurs during the third
and fourth stages of sleep, the really deep stages when we experience slow
wave sleep. Sleepwalking activity varies. Some sleepers may merely sit up in
bed, or get up and walk around the room, but others go much further than
that.
They walk, talk and eat, and they can have sex, too. An article in the
'Archives of Sexual Behaviors' last year described a man whose lover "became
alarmed when she realized one night that while having intercourse in their
darkened bedroom that the patient was snoring loudly." The woman noted that,
while sleeping he was "more aggressive and dominant than when awake, and
was more prone to "talking dirty."
One night in November 1998, in Florida, an elderly man decided to do a bit
of sleepwalking. He went a bit too far, or maybe in the wrong direction,
because when he did wake up, he found himself waist deep in a pond where the
alligators played. He was lucky. Neighbours managed to rescue him before the
alligators got him.
A sleepwalker's brain is partly asleep and partly awake, and dreams play no
part in what they do. In other words, behaviour while sleepwalking may be
disconnected from the person's daily life, sometimes in a gruesome fashion
A research project by the American Academy of Neurology has found that 32%
of sleepwalkers reported violent incidents occurring during their
wanderings, and 19% said they suffered injuries. Murder whilst sleepwalking
is not unknown either, and that's where you really start to wonder.
In 1992, in Ontario, Canada, Kenneth Parks stabbed his mother-in-law to
death. He claims he fell asleep watching television, and, while sleeping,
drove to the home of his wife's parents, bludgeoned his mother-in-law to
death with a tire iron and also injured his father-in-law. He then drove to
the nearest police station and turned himself in. At that time, he was still
asleep.
A jury acquitted him of the crime because he was sleepwalking and therefore,
he was not at fault. A guilty verdict would have sent him to jail for life.
A verdict of insanity would have sent him to a mental institution. The judge
ruled that sleepwalking was not insanity. Parks left the courtroom a free
man.
In Maricopa County Superior Court, in 1982, Steven Steinberg was accused of
murdering his wife, Elena by stabbing her twenty-five times with a kitchen
knife. He didn't deny killing her, but pleaded not guilty, because he
committed the crime whilst he was sleeping, and must therefore have been
sleepwalking when he did it. Sleepwalkers know nothing of their actions, and
again the verdict was not guilty so he walked away a free man.
Not every such killer gets away with it, though. In 1997, Scott and Yarmila
Falater had been married for 20 years, happily by all accounts , yet he
stabbed her 44 times with a hunting knife and then pushed her into the
family pool and held her head under water? Scott claimed he was sleepwalking
at the time, and knew nothing of the murder, but a jury decided that it was,
in reality, pre-meditated, and he's now in prison for life.
It is a very fine line that has to be drawn, by both the legal and medical
professions, when it comes to trying to prove that a crime committed whilst
sleepwalking is no crime at all. The arguments rage back and forth,
especially since the judges ruling in the 1996 murder trial of a man called
Burgess in Queensland, Australia. The judge ruled that He was not guilty by
reason of insanity, but two decisions made legal history. They were A) A
person is not criminally responsible for an act or omission which occurs
independently of the exercise of his will or an event which occurs by
accident." and
B) No act is punishable if it is done involuntarily; and an involuntary act
in this context - some people nowadays prefer to it as 'automatism' - means
an act which is done by the muscles without any control by the mind, such as
in spasm, a reflex action or a convulsion; or an act done while suffering
from concussion or whilst sleep-walking."
Food for thought, without doubt. If you are one of those who sleepwalks,
perhaps you should seek medication to control it. You could one day become
of these sleeping killers without ever knowing what you'd done, but then
again..?
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