|
|
| Highway Shooter Assigned to Ohio Prison |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/03/2005 |
|
An Ohio highway shooter has been assigned to a prison in southwest Ohio where he can apply to build furniture, bind notebooks or train a dog. Charles McCoy Jr., 30, was assigned to the Warren Correctional Institution in Lebanon, about 140 miles southwest of Columbus. He was classified as "close" security, one step below maximum. The assignment came 10 days after McCoy dropped his insanity defense and pleaded guilty Aug. 9 to involuntary manslaughter and several other charges in the five-month shooting spree that terrorized central Ohio in 2003 and 2004. He was sentenced to 18 years. McCoy's attorneys and the judge who accepted his plea had asked that he be put in a psychiatric facility in a Lima prison for treatment of his severe paranoid schizophrenia. The Oakwood Corrections Facility is meant only as a temporary placement until an inmate with a mental health problem is stabilized, said Brian Niceswanger, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. At McCoy's security level, he lives in a cell either alone or with a roommate instead of in a dormitory. He's allowed to order two packages a year of food or other items from a state-approved catalog, but relatives can't send packages. Assigned prisoner number 499760, his thick brown hair was shaved for a prison mug shot. McCoy's first trial ended in a mistrial in May when jurors could not decide if he met the legal definition of insanity, meaning he didn't understand the shootings were wrong. He could have faced the death penalty if convicted of the most serious aggravated murder charge in that case. Prosecutors said they wouldn't seek the death penalty in a second trial because of the severity of his mental illness, but McCoy changed his plea rather than go through another trial. McCoy was charged in 12 shootings but told psychiatrists he dropped objects off overpasses and fired his handgun about 200 times to quiet voices in his head that called him a wimp for not standing up to television programs and commercials he believed were mocking him. |
MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|
Comments:
No comments have been posted for this article.
Login to let us know what you think