That's messed up.
Man 'not responsible' for beating prostitute
By Daryl Slade, Calgary Herald June 21, 2011
More than four years after Gary Gordon Yuen used a baseball bat to severely beat a prostitute he'd been paying for sexual services for 21/2 years, then choked her, a judge has ruled he was not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.
Court of Queen's Bench Justice David Wilkins accepted Yuen's defence that he had been acting in a state of automatism, and was thus neither guilty nor not guilty of the five charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault and aggravated sexual assault, on Feb. 11, 2007.
He accepted the testimony of Dr. Colin Shapiro, a psychiatrist with a special expertise in parasomnia, a group of sleep disorders, as being key evidence. Shapiro concluded Yuen was not consciously aware of what he was doing.
"On my interpretation of (precedent) decisions and having found Yuen to have acted involuntarily by reason of a parasomnia, I must conclude that he is not criminally responsible for those acts and I so find," Wilkins said.
"The evidence before me is simply not sufficient to permit me to conclude that the parasomnia of Mr. Yuen is a non-mental disorder in that the evidence completely fails to deal with the public policy issues of any potential danger to the public."
Defence lawyer Balfour Der said outside court that Yuen was extremely relieved.
"He's a 48-year-old professional engineer with no criminal record, who hasn't been involved with the law before," said Der. "He says you have no idea how it feels to be walking down the street and have people look at you. . . . People assume you are guilty and meant to harm that woman.
"That's why an NCR verdict is so important for him; that he is not someone who would wilfully harm another person, particularly one he cared for."
The victim, who cannot be named because of a court order, wrote in a victim impact statement submitted to court that the near-death experience has left her unable to trust many people, especially men.
"I don't sleep very well these days. I can only sleep around people I know very well, because my biggest fear is I'll wake up dead or under attack," she wrote.
"I had very bad vertigo for a good couple of years, where if I would turn my head too fast I would get very dizzy and almost pass out."
Crown prosecutors Susan Pepper and Pamela McCluskey had argued against such an outcome in the trial.
"The Crown takes all cases of sexual violence very seriously and in this case argued strenuously against findings of not criminally responsible," said Pepper.
"While we respect the decision of the court, it is a complicated area of the law and we will carefully review the law and consider all options, including an appeal."
Yuen testified he has no memory of the event or why he would have attacked her at his home.
He said he awoke from a trancelike state to see the woman lying on the bed with blood everywhere, and there was a baseball bat nearby.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/responsible+beating+prostitute/4979242/story.html#ixzz1QLLvCtdc
What do you guys think??
