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The Court of Appeal set aside an NCRMD verdict and substituted criminal harassment convictions.
The appellant was convicted of two counts of criminal harassment by threatening conduct based on her legal name change to that of Mark McBride, with whom she had been obsessed for over a decade.
The trial judge found her not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) due to Delusional Disorder, Erotomanic Type.
The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding the NCRMD verdict was tainted by legal error.
The trial judge had conflated the issues of whether the appellant knew her act was wrong with whether her mental disorder rendered her incapable of knowing it was wrong.
The court substituted convictions and imposed a conditional discharge with one year probation.
The accused was found not criminally responsible for criminal harassment due to an erotomanic delusional disorder.
The Crown brought an application to have the accused found not criminally responsible (NCR) on the basis of mental disorder following her conviction for two counts of criminal harassment.
The accused had been found guilty of changing her surname to that of a man she had been obsessed with for approximately fourteen years.
Expert psychiatric evidence established that the accused suffered from Delusional Disorder, Erotomanic Type, a chronic psychotic disorder characterized by the false belief that another person is in love with the individual.
The court found that the accused's mental disorder rendered her incapable of knowing that her actions were morally wrong, despite her general understanding that the act was legally permissible.
An NCR verdict was recorded.
