EPILEPTIC HOMICIDE - CASE-REPORT

This case report augments a paper published in 1971 (Gunn and Fenton) in which it was indicated that automatic behavior is a rare explanation for the crimes of epileptic patients. It was claimed that although two possible 'automatic' crimes were committed by 2 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 1 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.