Christopher Okello Onyum raised the defence of insanity when he was indicted for the murder of four infants, whom he hacked to death on April 2, at the Ggaba Early Childhood Development Centre. During the trial, Okello did not deny killing the children, but stated that he did not act intentionally or deliberately. He stated that although he had been examined and declared mentally sane, he had an undetected mental illness which caused him to kill.
During the trial, Okello stated that he was under the control of some people whom he occasionally called friends and that between January and March, he entered an especially distressing period because he was being watched by some people who were watching him, making many demands of him, and threatening to kill him, and they were following him closely. They began demanding money from him, and he noticed that they were capable of doing harm to him. As a result, he left the Bunga neighbourhood where he was staying and started sleeping on the streets.
He added that he tried several things to end the challenges he was facing, including fleeing the country, attempting to rob a bank and attempting to kill his brother’s family. He invited the court not to honour the murder charges against him because there were circumstances that forced him to kill the children. He further told the court that the people who were carrying out surveillance on him influenced his actions on April 2. Okello, in a nutshell, raised the defence of insanity.
A psychiatrist who examined Okello on April 7 noted that he had a history of past mental illness and was treated between 2016 and 2025 for schizophrenia associated with both auditory and visual hallucinations. He killed his two to three-year-old in 2016 or 2017, reportedly to save him from the troubles of this world. He also attempted suicide in 2023. The doctor noted that Okello was a sickle cell patient on treatment. To the doctor, the findings were suggestive of a mental condition with psychotic episodes.
The murders that Okello committed had the hallmarks of crimes of insanity. The killings were senseless, bizarre, ghostly and
gruesome; he slaughtered four infants for no apparent reason. Neither the children nor their parents were known to him. He killed the children in broad daylight for all to see, and made no attempt to hide the evidence. He acted alone and had no accomplices. He showed no remorse at the time of his arrest and at his trial. In fact, he was often seen chuckling during the trial.
Psychopathy or psychopathic personality is a recently recognised mental disorder and is characterised by impaired empathy and remorse, persistent antisocial behaviour, along with bold, disinhibited and egocentric traits. The psychopath has an inclination to violence and psychological manipulation, impulsivity and narcissism. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress, which create an outward appearance of normality.
The law states that a person is not criminally responsible for an act or omission if, at the time of doing the act or making the omission, the person, through any disease affecting his or her mind, is incapable of understanding what he or she is doing or of knowing that he or she ought not to do the act or omission. A person is not criminally responsible for an act or omission if at the time of doing the act or making the omission, he or she, as a result of any disease, was incapacitated to understand what he or she was doing or omitted to do. However, on the other hand, one will be held liable if that disease does not, in fact, incapacitate the person from understanding what they are doing. It is a rule of universal application that a man cannot be condemned if it is proved that at the time of the offence, he was not a master of the offence.
For the defence of insanity to stand, the defence must show that the accused person did not really understand his or her actions or know that his or her actions were wrong. The defence of insanity is twofold. First, an insane person does not have control over his or her conduct. This is similar to a person who is hypnotised or sleepwalking. Secondly, an insane person does not have the ability to form a criminal intent. Without the ability to control conduct or the understanding that conduct is evil or wrong by society’s standards, an insane person presumably will commit crimes again and again.
The test of insanity in law is the McNaughten Rule, which requires that the following three tests be proved: that an individual suffers from a defect of reason, that the defect was caused by a disease of the mind, and that, as a result, the person does not know the nature and quality of the act or that it is wrong. The unsoundness of mind must relate to the time of the offence, and the inquiry must be in relation to the mental state of the accused person at the time of the alleged offence as distinct from his mental condition at the time of trial.
The defence of insanity seeks to do away with an essential requirement of malice aforethought, which is an ingredient of murder that must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. It seeks to prove that the accused person did not have the intention to cause death or did not have the knowledge that such an act or omission would cause death.
In law, however, every person is presumed to be of sound mind, and to have been of sound mind at any time which comes in question, until the contrary is proved. The presumption of sanity, therefore, puts the burden on anyone who claims insanity as a defence. The person must prove that he or she was not in the right mental state at the time of the act or omission. When insanity is advanced by the defence, the burden of proof is on the defence, although it is not a heavy one. It is not required that this must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, but must satisfy the preponderance of the probabilities; it must establish the probability of what is sought to be proved.
The onus was on the court to establish whether Okello was suffering from the disease of the mind at the time he hacked the children to death, and whether the disease of the mind rendered him incapable of knowing the nature and quality of his actions and whether he knew or did not know that what he was doing was wrong by reason of that disease of the mind.
REASONING
The defence of insanity seeks to do away with an essential requirement of malice aforethought, which is an ingredient of murder that must be proved beyond reasonable doubt.