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Epileptic Homicide: A Case Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

John Gunn
John Gunn*
Affiliation:
Special Hospitals Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, Camberwell, London SE5
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Summary

This case report augments a paper published in 1971 (Gunn and Fenton) in which it was indicated that automatic behaviour is a rare explanation for the crimes of epileptic patients. It was claimed that although two possible ‘automatic’ crimes were committed by two epileptic patients among the 46 male epileptics at Broadmoor there were no such crimes committed by any of the 158 male epileptic prisoners who came into a national sample. Since then it has become clear that one man serving life imprisonment, excluded from the epileptic prisoner sample in 1967 because of a doubt about his diagnosis, is definitely epileptic and probably killed his wife during an epileptic attack or its immediate sequela.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 132 , Issue 5 , May 1978 , pp. 510 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1978 

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References

Fenton, G. W. (1972) Epilepsy and automatism. British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 7, 57–64.Google Scholar
Gunn, J. (1977) Epileptics in Prison. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gunn, J. & Fenton, G. (1971) Epilepsy, automatism, and crime. Lancet, i, 1173–6.Google Scholar
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