By KEVIN NEVERS

The man who stabbed to death former Chesterton High School student John Edward Trowbridge in Las Vegas, Nev., in 2001 is scheduled to be conditionally released this week to a half-way house from the psychiatric institute to which he was committed for 10 years in 2004.

For Trowbridge’s mother, Robbin Trowbridge-Benko of Chesterton, the release of Michael Kane, 24, is not—not this time—another failure of a system which, she believes, first betrayed her when a jury unaccountably found Kane not guilty of her son’s murder by reason of insanity.

On the contrary, Kane’s release into a supervised “step-down” program is a positive victory, Trowbridge-Benko told the Chesterton Tribune on Thursday, because it was made possible by the Nevada Legislature’s enactment last year of a bill which closed loopholes in the state’s insanity statute. To Trowbridge-Benko’s way of thinking, those loopholes made one travesty of justice possible and another one all too likely.

“John’s Law,” as that bill has been informally dubbed, was the fruit of nearly three years of ferocious lobbying on Trowbridge-Benko’s part, and as wielded by Las Vegas District Court Judge Jennifer Togliatti at a status hearing on March 14 that law will either force Kane to prove himself to be a productive member of society or it will land him in prison, where so far as Trowbridge-Benko is concerned he always deserved to be in the first place.

The Facts of the Case

On the night of Oct. 22, 2001, in a Las Vegas apartment, Kane stabbed Trowbridge to death with an eight-inch replica of a Roman dagger. In September 2004 a jury found Kane—who claimed to have acted under a paranoid delusion—not guilty by reason of insanity. In December of that year Togliatti ordered Kane committed to Lakes Crossing Center for the Mentally Disturbed Offenders in Sparks for a period of 10 years, the maximum permitted under state statute.

In Trowbridge-Benko’s view the jury made a grave and absurd mistake in accepting at face value Kane’s claim to insanity, to her mind the baldest of ruses to avoid prison. For, according to the testimony of numerous witnesses at his trial, Kane was under no delusion when he stabbed Trowbridge. Instead he had a much more mundane motive, they testified: Kane simply didn’t like the young man.

It would only get worse. Six months after Kane’s commitment to Lakes Crossing his attorney petitioned Togliatti to release his client on the ground that he was no longer mentally ill. Togliatti rejected the petition and ordered Kane re-committed, as she would do on a couple of subsequent occasions, since under the Nevada law then on the books Kane was automatically granted a status hearing twice a year.

Still, Togliatti could have agreed with Kane’s attorney that the killer was no longer mentally ill. She could have ordered him released from Lakes Crossing. And had she done so, under state statute at the time, Kane would have been free to enter the community at large, unsupervised and unmonitored, as there was no mechanism then in place to keep tabs on his movements and progress.

John’s Law, however, has changed all that.

Step-Down

For Kane John’s Law will prove either a carrot or a formidable stick. Trowbridge-Benko rather suspects it will be the latter. Sometime this week, he will enter a step-down program created by John’s Law for the express purpose of transitioning into the community persons committed under the state insanity statute but deemed no longer mentally ill. He will move to Reno to reside in a halfway house for convicted felons with drug addictions. And he will find himself, nearly every waking hour, under constant scrutiny and surveillance.

Among the conditions Togliatti placed on Kane’s release are these, Trowbridge-Benko said:

•Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., every weekday, he must either be looking for work or working.

•After punching out he will be allowed 30 to 45 minutes to return to the halfway house. If he misses his curfew he will be considered in breach of the conditions of his release.

•Every time Kane returns to the halfway house, he must submit to a body cavity search. In short, he must submit to a minimum of five body cavity searches every week.

•When not at work he will have household chores to complete.

•He must attend a daily group therapy session and two one-on-one sessions with a psychiatrist every week.

•He must meet with his probation officer twice every week. That officer will monitor Kane’s activities outside the house and verify that he is interviewing for jobs or showing up for work.

•He must abide by the rules of the halfway house: no alcohol, drugs, or tobacco, no fighting or arguing, no disrespecting staff or peers.

Togliatti made it perfectly clear to Kane at his status hearing, Trowbridge-Benko said, that he has no leeway. A single violation of any of the conditions of his release, however slight, and under John’s Law Kane will be on his way not to Lakes Crossing again but this time to prison. “If he misses his curfew, if he argues, if he quibbles about a cavity search, anything, Togliatti told him he’d go to prison for at least two years and up to six.”

Trowbridge-Benko is candid in her belief that Kane will fail to fulfill the conditions of his release and be violated to prison. At Lakes Crossing he was required to attend therapy sessions and work in the laundry. “But that was it,” she said. “He had a pretty easy time of it there. No one was breathing down his neck. As soon as he blinks wrong at the halfway house he’ll be going to prison.”

Apparently Togliatti shares Trowbridge-Benko’s belief, at least to the extent she feels that Kane will find step-down a hard slog. “‘By the time I get done with you,’” Trowbridge-Benko quoted the judge, “‘you’ll wish you never left Lakes Crossing.’”

Trowbridge-Benko conceded that, given Kane’s history of murderous violence, even his conditional release poses a certain risk. And Togliatti said as much at the status hearing. But the alternative posed a far greater risk, Trowbridge-Benko said: Kane’s unconditional release from Lakes Crossing at the end of his 10-year commitment in 2014, when he would have been utterly free, an ex-patient not an ex-con, with no supervision or monitoring. Togliatti “weighed the options and decided she would rather place Kane in the halfway house. Better he screw up there and go to prison than screw up later in society.”

“The best thing for me is that the judge spent an hour and a half at the status hearing laying out the conditions,” Trowbridge-Benko said. “She expressed her dissatisfaction with Kane’s attorney and promised she would never forget John. She said things that made a difference. I felt wonderful that she literally pointed a finger at Kane and said ‘You’re going to wish you hadn’t taken a life.’ She had a voice, she used it, and I think she recognized that it was my voice.”

John’s Law

It’s too late to help Trowbridge-Benko, but John’s Law does one other thing. It creates an option for juries hearing insanity cases: guilty but mentally ill. A Nevada jury faced with a defendant who is clearly unhinged—but not to the point of being unable to tell the difference between right and wrong—need no longer be tempted to find him not guilty by reason of insanity as a way of dealing with his illness. Rather, it now has the ability to split the difference between zero culpability and total culpability. And a defendant found guilty but mentally ill is liable to any term of imprisonment which a judge might impose on someone else who pleads or is found guilty of the same offense.

John’s Law does require the Department of Correction to provide appropriate medical treatment to a person found guilty but mentally ill during his confinement.

Posted 3/24/2008