The Burning Bridges

Two historic covered bridges in a rural county were burned, and someone tried to burn a third. A man who had received psychiatric treatment since the age of thirteen, with repeated involuntary commitments and a diagnosis of chronic paranoid schizophrenia, was charged. He was found incompetent to stand trial and was not found competent until eleven years later. The prosecution pointed to his conduct: he acted late at night to avoid witnesses, gave police a false explanation that fuel he had bought was for camping, and produced store receipts as an alibi — signs, it said, that he knew what he was doing was wrong. At trial he testified about a conspiracy of officials who had terrorised him. The defence relied on three court-appointed experts who all concluded his illness left him unable to tell right from wrong.