When the calendar requires the release of insanity defendants in Oregon, harms often follows

(Illustration special to the Enterprise by Katherine Lam)

After Sean Rieschel punched a woman at a laundromat for refusing to give him $3.50, he was found “guilty except for insanity” in 2010 and sent to the Oregon State Hospital.

There, he was treated for bipolar and substance-use disorders — help he would not have received in prison if he’d been convicted of assault — and twice improved . . .

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