NASSAU- A man with a mental health condition is seeking to challenge a Court of Appeal decision that has kept him detained at Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre for over 30 years.
Eric Stubbs was sent to the psychiatric facility for an indefinite period in 1985 after the Court of Appeal found him “guilty but insane.”
Stubbs’s lawyer is seeking special leave to take the case to the Privy Council. If that fails, Stubbs could spend the rest of his life in the facility.
Notwithstanding Stubbs’ history of mental illness, a jury found him fit to stand trial and criminally responsible for the 1983 rape and housebreaking of a woman in Lyford Cay.
He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on each count, with the sentences to run concurrently.
Broke into home naked
According to the evidence presented at his trial, on April 17, 1983, the victim awoke around 7am and met Stubbs standing naked by her bed. He then told her that he was going to have sex with her.
When she resisted, he punched her in her temple and her ribs before he raped her.
The woman eventually escaped and raised an alarm.
A security guard at Lyford Cay went to the home where he met Stubbs naked in the woman’s bed. His clothing was found a considerable distance from the woman’s home.
He told the guard that he was in his own house.
Believed he was Adam
During his sworn testimony, Stubbs told the jury that he believed that he was the reincarnation of Adam and his victim was Eve. He said he turned on the television after the woman ran away in the belief that “it was an instrument to turn on everlasting life in the Garden of Eden.”
When the guard and others came to the house, Stubbs said he thought they could not see him because he was a spirit.
Medical evidence
Psychiatrist Dr Michael Neville testified that Stubbs was first admitted to SRC on September 19, 1982. On that occasion, he had been violent at home and walked naked about the neighbourhood. He was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, which can cause delusions, put on medication and discharged on October 1, 1982.
However, Stubbs was re-admitted to Sandilands on October 9, 1982 after he began taking off his clothes and throwing them away. Once again, he was treated for epilepsy and discharged on November 23, 1982.
Dr Neville next saw Stubbs after his arrest.
Stubbs did not have a lawyer when he appealed his conviction on the basis that the jury’s verdict was unreasonable.
In its decision, the Court said, “Having regard to the nature of the delusion, that he was the reincarnation of Adam and the complainant his Eve, it was in our view difficult to appreciate how it could be found, as the jury did, that the appellant was a fit subject for punishment. In our view, the jury ought to have returned a verdict that the appellant was guilty but insane.”
As a result, the court directed that Stubbs remain at SRC until he was discharged by order of the Governor General.
