A MENTALLY UNHEALTHY TRIBUNAL

Mental health campaigners have called for a review of the system for releasing mental health patients after a paranoid schizophrenic was convicted of killing a policeman. Birmingham Crown Court ordered Glaister Earl Butler to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act yesterday after he stabbed to death Detective Constable Michael Swindells, 44, on a canal towpath near Spaghetti Junction last May. Butler, 49, who had a history of mental illness and violence and was known to harbour paranoid delusions about the police, MI5 and the security services, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility.

The Jamaican-born mechanical engineer, who joined Rolls-Royce in 1979 as the company's first black graduate trainee, was under the supervision of a community care team from the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust when he stabbed DC Swindells, a father of four who had 14 years' police service. Butler had been released into the community by a three-person tribunal.

In court, Timothy Raggatt QC, for the prosecution, questioned why Butler was released into the community. The jury also asked the judge, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith, in a note read to the court: "By what process does a three person (mental health) tribunal decide if he's safe to be released into the community?" The judge said it was a "what if"" and "if only" type of question that many people would raise, but he explained that it was not a matter for the trial.

The stabbing happened when Butler was being pursued by police on May 21 last year after earlier threatening to decapitate a council carpenter who had gone to fix his fence.

West Midlands police were sent to detain him, but he ran away, ignoring their shouts to stop and appeared unaffected when sprayed with CS gas. DC Swindells was two to three feet behind him and had shouted, "Stop, police!" when Butler swung round and stabbed him. Butler was hit in the back with a baton round from armed officers before finally being stopped.

Last night, Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said that the system of mental health tribunals, which enabled Butler to be discharged into the community, needed to be reformed. Ms Wallace said: "The tribunal system has failed time and again. Sometimes they go against the wishes of medical officers and frequently they take no heed of what patients' families say."

Michael Howlett of the Zito Trust, added: "All that tribunals have is a snapshot of what a patient is like on a particular day, and that is not enough." Mr Howlett said that mental health workers needed to be given more discretion in the way they handled patient confidentiality, so that they could warn the police if suspects had a history of mental illness and violence.

When police called the health authorities for information about Butler's history on the day of the stabbing they were wrongly told that he was not known to be aggressive or violent.

Sue Turner, chief executive of the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust, said that there would be an internal inquiry into the case as well as an independent inquiry.

OTHERS WHO WERE FREED TO KILL:

Peter Bryan, who became known as the cannibal killer after he cooked and ate the remains of one of his victims, committed two murders after a three-man mental health review tribunal agreed in January 2002 to release him from Rampton Special Hospital, Retford, in Nottinghamshire, where he had been detained for killing a woman.

John Barrett was conditionally discharged by a mental health review tribunal in October 2003 and was being cared for in the community when he stabbed to death Dennis Finnegan, a former banker, who was cycling in Richmond Park, southwest London.

Anthony Hardy was jailed for life in November 2003 after he admitted murdering three prostitutes, less than two months after being discharged by a panel of lay people from St Luke's Hospital in Muswell Hill, North London, despite repeated warnings from psychiatrists that he was a danger.

From The Times



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