Alex Ophel, the former ANU student accused of trying to murder his tutor and classmates with a baseball bat, was found not guilty by reason of mental impairment on Wednesday, days after a judge issued a stinging criticism of the Crown case against him.
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But as Justice John Burns told the jury last week, the law recognises Mr Ophel, 20, could still pose a danger to the public and so he ordered the former student be detained in custody for review under mental health laws.
Mr Ophel will not be released until treating doctors believe he no longer poses a danger.
Even after his release, Mr Ophel may be subject to a psychiatric treatment order requiring he be medicated for his diagnosed schizophrenia.
Before the attack August two years ago, Mr Ophel's mental illness had gone undiagnosed.
The jury took more than three days to reach the verdict, returning on Tuesday to say they had reached an impasse before the judge urged them to continue working towards a unanimous verdict.
The jury, in an unusual request, at one stage asked for a copy of the oaths and affirmations taken at the beginning of the trial to give a true verdict according to the evidence. On Wednesday, they found him not guilty by reason of mental impairment on all five counts of attempted murder.
"This was the correct verdict,” Mr Ophel’s solicitor Jacob Robertson said after court. “This is evident by the fact that the Crown chose not to lead the most relevant evidence in relation to the issue of mental impairment, resulting in the judge being critical of the way that the Crown conducted the trial.”
It was the second time Mr Ophel had faced a jury after a first was unable to reach a decision, centred again around the question of his mental illness.
The 20-year-old had not denied that on the morning of August 25, 2017, he stood up in his Australian National University tutorial and began swinging a baseball bat with violent force.
The victims were trapped in the classroom and described a sickening ordeal in which the tall, teenaged basketball player violently swung at them, cracking their skulls and causing brain injuries.
One woman suffered two broken arms after raising them to shield herself from the assault.
There was, the student witnesses said, blood splashing across the room. The frenzied attack only ended when one student grabbed Mr Ophel in a bear hug and tackled him to the ground.
In the months following, a parade of doctors diagnosed Mr Ophel with schizophrenia.
Mr Ophel reported being under the control of aliens and higher beings. His parents, shocked by the diagnosis, spoke of the young man's declining mental state.
But Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold declined to accept Mr Ophel's plea of not guilty by reason of mental impairment, rejecting the suggestion that at the time of the attack the student was impaired to the extent he could not be held criminally responsible.
The Crown contended Mr Ophel had acted on pre-existing violent tendencies, and the jury heard Mr Ophel would make comments about raping women and had an alleged obsession with school shooters.
In summing up to the jury on Thursday, Justice Burns launched into a scathing assessment of the Crown case.
The judge said the Crown had failed to call Mr Ophel's parents and his treating doctors, even though their evidence was relevant. It was left to the defence to call those witnesses.
"You may well ask yourself 'why were they not called as part of the Crown case'? Was it because their evidence did not fit the Crown theory of the accused's mental state?" he told the jury.
He said they might think the Crown knew there was no expert testimony supporting their case theory.
He added that may have led them to make the "extraordinary suggestion that you effectively dismiss the expert opinions and engage in a bit of do-it-yourself psychiatry".
"What I have said about the prosecution in this case should not be taken to be a suggestion that the Crown has set out to mislead or deceive ... but, rather, that sometimes zeal may overwhelm good judgment," Justice Burns said.
None of the expert witnesses expressed any concern that the accused was exaggerating, malingering or fabricating, he said.
Mr Ophel will now be remanded in custody and assessed by the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal under the territory’s mental health laws.
As part of the process following a finding of mental impairment, Justice Burns will later give an indicative sentence for how he would have sentenced Mr Ophel were he not mentally ill.
That term will set a cap for how long the territory can keep Mr Ophel in custody.
