Murdering While Asleep
A person who commits a criminal act while asleep is not conscious ofhis actions and cannot be held legally responsible for them. The law calls these acts sane automatisms, and Lord Justice Lawton has described them as a "quagmire of the law, seldom entered save by those in desperate need of some kind of a defence."’ Recently defence counsels have shown less reluctance to enter this quagmire. It is therefore essential that the court examines critically any medical evidence presented in such cases.
Is it possible for people to act violently, and even kill, during sleep? Yes - but only exceptionally. A night’s sleep consists of cycles of slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM or dreaming) sleep, alternating in periods of about 90 minutes. What we think of as dreaming, with complex imagery and a narrative, occurs in REM sleep. Dreams and nightmares are usually easily and immediately recalled on wakening. Aggression is common in dreams6 (occurring in over half the dreams in one American study) but cannot be acted out because the body is paralysed during REM sleep. During the waking stages of a dream movements may occur, but clear consciousness returns too quickly for any coordinated violent act to be committed. Crimes after a nightmare are usually motivated and cannot easily be attributed to a confusional state.
Mental experiences do occur during slow wave sleep but are quite different from typical dreams. The imagery is poorly formed and non-narrative. If the sleeper is aroused, clear consciousness does not return immediately - it may take five or 10 minutes for him to become fully awake. Finally, there is poor memory or no recall, of the experience. The body is not paralysed during slow wave sleep, and it is during this phase that sleep walking, sleep talking, and night terrors occur. Sleep walking and night terrors usually occur in the deepest phase of slow wave sleep, within two hours of falling asleep.
Highly complex, coordinated movements are possible in both sleep walking and night terrors. There are reports of sleep walkers firing guns, driving cars, walking down fire escapes, and committing murders. Night terrors differ from sleep walking in that the dreamer shows intense emotional arousal: heart rate and respiratory rate accelerate, and there is profuse perspiration. The sleeper may scream piercingly and make physical movements, such as sitting up, or, very occasionally, assaulting a sleeping partner, or fleeing from the room. Night terrors have all the characteristics of experiences during slow wave sleep. Mental content usually consists of falling, being crushed, trapped, or abandoned, dying, choking, or being attacked, although rarely it may have a thin narrative quality.
Night terrors occur in about 3% of children between 1 and 14 years old. They are uncommon in adults and occur only in predisposed people, who usually have a family history of sleep disorders. According to Schatzman, murders during night terrors are very rare indeed. Only two cases have been reported in England in the past 25 years, though there have been other reports of violent acts committed during sleep that did not result in death.
The most recent case is that of Kemp, who killed his wife during a night terror in which he dreamed he was being chased by Japanese soldiers. This case is of interest because it lacks some of the usual features of a night terror. The apparent detailed recall of the dream content, with vivid imagery and a narrative, approximates much more closely to a nightmare.
Night terrors allow a defence of sane automatism, which, if successful, results in acquittal. For most other violent automatic acts carried out in an organic confusional state there is a mandatory referral to hospital, usually a secure one. This difference seems illogical and suggests that the law on automatism needs revision.
Section: General, Mental Illness, hypnosis
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