In rare ruling, Kendrex White found not guilty by reason of insanity
AUSTIN -- Two psychiatrists who evaluated former University of Texas student Kendrex White after he fatally stabbed a fellow student and wounded three others reached the same conclusion and determined he suffered from a mental illness that was so severe at the time of the May 2017 attack that it prevented him from discerning right from wrong.
The findings in their reports were shielded from the public for several months until Tuesday, when prosecutors stepped into a Travis County courtroom for the start of White’s trial and told state District Judge Tamara Needles they had accepted the doctors’ conclusions and believe White meets the state’s legal definition of insanity.
Needles entered a judgment of not guilty by reason of insanity. The rarely granted ruling means the judge agreed that severe mental illness had inhibited White’s ability to distinguish right from wrong when he killed 19-year-old Harrison Brown in the middle of the day near UT’s Gregory Gymnasium. Three other students survived the attack without life-threatening injuries: Stuart Bayliss, who required surgeries to his back and to his right hand; Jonathan Han, who needed staples to close a cut to the back of his head and therapy sessions to make sense of the event; and Eli Kahan, who declined an invitation from prosecutors to testify at Tuesday’s setting.
White is the 53rd defendant in Travis County in the past 10 years to be found not guilty by reason of insanity and to be confined to a mental hospital rather than sentenced to jail or prison. In the next month or so, White will transition from the Travis County Correctional Complex to the maximum security North Texas State Hospital in Vernon and stay there until he is has fully recovered from his illness.
Read more: https://www.statesman.com/news/20181211/in-rare-ruling-kendrex-white-found-not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity
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