The Sleepwalker: The Trial That Made Canadian Legal History

Tay Wilson is an associate professor of psychology at Laurentian
University.

There is little reason to read The Sleepwalker’s first 185 pages,
which present a sleepy formula-written soap opera full of irrelevant
detail. The legal case of a “sleepwalker” who murdered a relative
after a considerable drive in a car is, however, interesting for its
implications. Interested readers can read page 10 and perhaps page 252,
then skip rapidly through Chapter 10 to page 220—where the report of
the trial and appeal (largely quoted and hence clear and to the point)
is presented. There, among other things, we learn what medical and
scientific experts say about sleepwalking. Expert and legal precedent
both conclude that sleepwalking is a normal condition and that the
situation under consideration involved non-insane automatism. The jury
so found. The Court of Appeal clearly affirmed that there was no medical
evidence and almost no jurisprudential support for deciding that
“sleepwalking crime” evinces a disease of the mind. Overlong by more
than two-thirds (100 pages would have sufficed), this book should
probably have been written by someone else.