Murder, Not-Guilty by Reason of Insanity, and Claiming Responsibility

Personal involvement in healing as an offender of a crime and the systemic implications on my mental, emotional, & spiritual health.

In 2012 I killed someone.

That was almost 14 years ago now, and it took the last seven to really begin understanding what the hell happened.

Mental illness was clinically indisputable, “textbook definition” I recall hearing. During those first two weeks, I remained in a suicide cell with round-the-clock eyes. This period was wild, as I had refused medication and drifted deeper into psychosis. Lights in the cell and bay remained on 24/7, an unending daytime. Severely unstable, I recall eating my own feces and being very disruptive with singing & shouting. I’m sure it was a sight to see as I ran stark naked around the infirmary after being maced, ending with my collapse to the ground as a taser sent a current of electricity through my body.

Forensic psychologists deemed me “incompetent to stand trial” and the judge ruled that I was Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI). This path steered me away from a jury trial and directly into psychiatric rehabilitation within a criminally insane psychiatric system. Over the course of time I passed through two psychiatric facilities before a lengthy conditional release. These conditions primarily focused on a gradual increase of freedom while simultaneously decreasing mental health oversight.

A treatment team was assembled every three months throughout the duration of both psychiatric incarceration and conditional release. This team consisted of a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, and a nurse or mental health tech from whichever ward or facility I lived in. Their goal was to evaluate the level of danger/safety I presented to determine the “least restrictive living environment” for continued stability.

Being labeled “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity” had requirements, as the treatment team wanted to ensure that I was in fact mentally ill and my mind was to blame. A very important metric they were looking for was “remorse”, or the feeling of guilt. Personally I was surprised to discover a cognitive dissonance. I was constantly proving the mind was to blame while also trying to feel an emotion, guilt. Logic and feeling created strange internal sensations that needed time and space to unfold.

Most people completely black out when they’re in the depths of psychosis and commit a crime. I used to think the memories were a curse. Through integrating memories with meditation I have been gifted with a process. This has been essential in providing space for reflection and curiosity, resulting in an unfolding of the internal experiences themselves.

Very specifically, the internal experience leading up to the crime was one where I had an intrusive thought, “Kill him”. I believed this to be God and my body immediately filled with the fear of what may happen if I don’t listen to divine direction. I was confused, alone, and completely misguided by my own mind.

Release from the psychiatric system and each step of conditional release introduced physical freedom, yet mentally and emotionally I felt shackled to something I couldn’t name. I vowed to myself that I’d pursue internal liberation until it was discovered. If the internal thought wasn’t God, what was it, and where did it come from?

Cognitive dissonance felt insurmountable, and the mind was unable to release the stress. Imagine a whirlpool of internal civil war where no thought or emotion could be explored because nothing could be trusted. I realized I had to accept responsibility entirely, disregarding the effects mental illness may have had on the experience. How else could I allow the blamed mind to no longer “be wrong” so trust could be rebuilt?

“Being wrong” was how the mind found it’s identity, trying to fix everything both internally and externally. A hamster wheel of absolute craziness. I thought I was insane before, but even when emotions were stable, the mind was chaotically maddening. Whether criticizing the traffic patterns around town or stopping my thoughts for fear of grandiosity, the cycle was unrelenting.

I also became the defendant and the prosecutor in the courtroom of my mind. Driving on the highway I was always internally defending every simple decision, as though a cop were going to interrogate me at any moment. Walking my dog, explanations for her occasional barking or reactivity arose nonstop. No area of my life remained untouched from this internalized judgment of being wrong.

So how could I actually change the internal state to not be fighting myself all the time?

I had participated in a variety of trauma-informed therapeutic approaches, which helped but required consistency. Mindfulness-based meditation seemed to bring relief, but it was also transient, a break from the harsh inner reality, but not quite translating to my life outside of practice.

Not surprisingly, unconscious behaviors assisting in avoidance became the only way to function with such a large amount of trauma. Eventually I stopped traditional trauma therapeutic interventions, unable to build enough trust due to the intensity of psychiatric and psychological conditioning within the criminally insane psych system. The treatment team requirement of “proving insanity” was impossible to question or discard while in a practitioner’s office. I felt an expectation of judgment from any clinician, so the body remained on defense, never feeling safe enough to process psych harm.

To address the trauma, I began to cultivate a large container of awareness for it to move. Spiritual practice felt contradictory to my initial diagnosis, but I was desperate to discover some semblance of peace. Could God be a safe enough container to feel the wound and renew my inner world?

Over the course of many years, I slowly built this structure of loving-awareness, of unconditional love, of all that is. The practice became a personal meeting of every piece of discomfort within my mind and body with a curiosity, is God here too? Stubborn beliefs and rigid thinking began to melt away under the light of unconditional love. There was no way I could do this on my own, and I’m grateful for the incremental process of finding reliability with God as the pilot.

I call this relationship an inner welfare system. Asking questions and waiting on internal answers provides additional perspective surrounding any thought, emotion, and feeling, gradually transitioning away from warfare to well-being. Eventually this welfare was strong enough to shine the light of awareness onto the wound of perpetual wrongness. A thought occurred to me that has been applied to many other areas within my meditative process:

Could I actually acknowledge the experience to move through it?

If the mind was not to blame, what would it feel like to fully accept that I ended someone’s life and it was my fault? This responsibility was previously evaded by the label of “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity”, proving both to myself and medical professionals that my mind was at fault.

Taking responsibility shocked me to my core. I didn’t pause and question the intrusive thought or fear during the moments before the crime. Looking back, it doesn’t matter if I was unable or unwilling to pause, because I simply didn’t. An attempt to blame the lack of pause, elusive emotional intelligence, or a nonexistent inquiry into the arising thought is still only perpetuating the internal warfare.

Plain and simple: I fucked up, and someone died.