BEL AIR, Md., April 18 (UPI) -- A prosecutor in Maryland says he doesn't have enough evidence to prove a man is criminally responsible for killing and eating the organs of a family friend.
Alexander Kinyua was charged with first-degree murder and a weapons charge in Harford County after he allegedly told police he killed and dismembered Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, 37, The Baltimore Sun reported.
The slaying came while Kinyua was out on bail for an assault that took place on the campus of Morgan State University where Kinyua was a student.
In December, Kinyua pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible in the assault case. At that time, Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said he would pursue the murder case and would try to prove that Kinyua was in control of his actions when he killed Agyei-Kodie.
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However, on Wednesday, Cassilly said he had reviewed psychiatric reports from Clifton T. Perkins Hospital, where Kinyua has been held since December, and said that doctors had found that Kinyua was not criminally responsible in both the assault and murder cases.
"To dispute the Perkins findings, I need some sort of evidence," Cassilly said. "I don't have any opinion that would dispute their findings."
During a recent hearing in the murder case, Judge Gale E. Rasin said Kinyua suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and believed reptilian aliens were coming to destroy Earth and that he is now taking two psychotropic drugs at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital.
"The evidence is overwhelming that Mr. Kinyua was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the offense," Rasin said.
Julie A. Drake, a former city prosecutor who is now a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, said that in cases where a defendant is found not criminally responsible for a crime, they are committed to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
"If at any point he's medicated sufficiently or reaches a stage where the facility believes he is no longer a danger to himself or others, he's released, but it's a conditional release," Drake said. "That's a little bit like probation, and the defendant is required to take his medication, check in for counseling."
