When Nancy Culpepper set her apartment on fire, she wasn?t thinking about the three people who lived in the building.
“This effort was essentially a suicide attempt thwarted,” said Howard County Assistant State?s Attorney Brendan Clary. “No one else was injured. The firefighters got there quickly, luckily.”
Howard Circuit Judge Dennis Sweeney Thursday ruled Culpepper not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder and ordered her committed to Clifton T. Perkins Health Center, a maximum-security psychiatric hospital in Jessup.
Culpepper has been detained at the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup since February 2007, but because of the severity of her mental disorder, she would be endangered in jail, according to court records.
“As a result of the [August 2007] psychiatric evaluation, Ms. Culpepper was found competent to stand trial; however, she was not criminally responsible at time of alleged offense,” Clary said. “There was substantial evidence bearing on mental illness.”
Culpepper, 53, of Columbia, pleaded guilty to one count of reckless endangerment, and the first- and second-degree arson charges were dropped.
She could have faced up to 30 years in prison for the first-degree arson charge and 20 years for second-degree arson, Clary said.
According to court records, Culpepper started the fire with a stack of papers and a cigarette lighter below a window in her bedroom in May 2006. She was unconscious on her bed when Howard firefighters pulled her from the blaze.
“I set the fire, because I wanted to commit suicide,” she later told investigators at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. “I wanted to die.”
A court finding of not criminally responsible is rare, Clary said.
“A lot of folks will file an insanity or psychiatric defense, but rarely will evidence bear that out,” he said.
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