A man who confessed to burning down two Indiana covered bridges has had his guilty but mentally ill verdict reversed by a divided Indiana Supreme Court. The 3-2 majority cited unanimous expert opinion that the defendant is legally insane in overturning a jury’s conclusion.
In 2005, Jesse Payne was charged with two counts of arson after he was accused of burning down two historic Parke County covered bridges, as well as attempted arson of a third bridge. Those charges were supplemented with a habitual-offender enhancement, and a trial court later found Payne incompetent to stand trial until 2016.
At his jury trial two years later, Payne asserted the insanity defense and three court-appointed mental-health experts unanimously concluded that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorder that left him unable to distinguish right from wrong.