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- Sep 30, 2017
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He was able to drive with epilepsy? I guess he hadn't had a seizure in a long time. I have some experience with epilepsy and know that sometimes one can go into a petit mal seizure and lose memory of what was said,etc. I've seen complete personality changes when this happened as well.
Interesting about the epilepsy. Many moons ago I worked with a patient whose diagnosis was (I think) frontal lobe epilepsy with complex partial seizures. He could become extremely aggressive and would roam about for hours in a trance-like state with bad language, slurred speech and odd, repetitive motor actions. His balance would be terrible and to people who didn't know him he would probably have appeared to be drunk.
This would carry on until he would fall asleep naturally or we could get near enough to persuade him to take some tranquilizers. In spite of him once telling me where he'd like to put a knife in me, he was one of my favourite ever patients as he was an absolute sweetie when well and a very funny man. Although he was on high levels of anti-convulsants we couldn't completely control the epilepsy.
Sadly, he had a significant learning disability as well so he couldn't really articulate what his experience of these episodes was. But in no way could he ever have carried out any actions that needed any planning or complex thinking while in that state. Would I have testified that he wouldn't be responsible for his actions in that state - absolutely.
But then I have never seen anyone without a learning disability with this type of epilepsy, but in no way would I think it could be a defence for a calculating serial killer, there's just too much conscious organization, deceit and concealment going on. The last thing you would be would be an "efficient" and "competent" murderer.