The state prison's secure psychiatric unit has housed killers, arsonists and sexual predators, all diagnosed with serious mental illnesses.
"People have called it a 'prison within a prison' because it's the most secure facility available in the state," said Jeff Strelzin, senior assistant attorney general.
Guarded by 38 correctional officers who oversee the 40-bed facility, it's where patients undergo a daily battery of counseling, medication and other treatment deep behind the walls of the state prison.
Sheila LaBarre hopes to make it her new home, after admitting she killed two boyfriends, Kenneth Countie, 24, of Wilmington, Mass., and Michael Deloge, 37, of Portsmouth, at her Epping horse farm between 2005 and 2006. Starting tomorrow in Rockingham County Superior Court, lawyers will begin picking the jury that will decide if LaBarre should be sent to prison for life or treated for a mental illness.
If LaBarre, 49, of Epping is found insane, a judge will review her case every five years to decide whether she should be recommitted or earn some degree of freedom.
LaBarre's insanity plea in February raised questions about whether she is simply trying to escape a murder conviction. But prison officials who oversee the secure psychiatric unit say those committed for their involvement in murder cases hardly have a short stay.
"From my standpoint, they are not a group of people who are originally sent here, then within a five-year period they are unencumbered with no monitoring at all," said Robert MacLeod, New Hampshire's director of medical and forensic services.
Mark Houle is a prime example.
In 1993, the 20-year-old Salem man was ordered to the psychiatric unit after the fatal stabbing of his grandparents, Gerard Proulx, 61, and Shirley Proulx, 58, of Salem. Houle hit the couple with a lug wrench before stabbing them several times.
Prosecutors agreed Houle suffered from mental illness at the time of the murders and allowed him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
Today, Houle is in custody, but now in a secure wing at New Hampshire Hospital, the state's psychiatric hospital, just down the street from the state prison. His case has routinely been reviewed by a judge since the 1990s, but he has remained in state custody.
Other inmates have spent their whole lives trying to win complete freedom — without success.
After his arrest in 1978, Jeffrey Westcott of Kingston tried several times to be freed, claiming he was fully cured from the mental illness that drove him to drown his 3-year-old son. Westcott, a former high school math teacher, died in state custody several years ago.
He was committed to the state hospital after throwing his son Rodney into a Kingston pond. The secure psychiatric unit in the state prison opened in the early 1990s. Described as highly intelligent, Westcott suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression. Over the years, Westcott did earn privileges so he could travel unescorted about the facility and leave the grounds for 10 hours a week. But a judge never found Westcott well enough to be free from oversight.
LaBarre is hoping for a New Hampshire first. No jury in the state has ever found a murder suspect not guilty by reason of insanity, according to several lawyers and legal experts.
"All of the cases I'm aware of where there was an insanity plea involved, it's been done where both sides agree the person is insane," said Will Delker, senior assistant attorney general.
In LaBarre's case, prosecutors are protesting her insanity claim, saying she acted deliberately when carrying out the killings.
New Hampshire's most recent example of an agreed-upon commitment occurred in March when Susan Disharoon, 49, of Franklin pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to fatally shooting her landlord, Syed Ali Hussain, the night of July 28, 2006.
Disharoon is one of seven people now committed to the state prison's secure psychiatric unit. Another 21 people found not guilty by reason of insanity are held outside the unit, at the state hospital. The prison's psychiatric unit has 30 beds for men, 10 for women.
Delker said there are still a few people who were committed under an older state law, which allowed for a hearing for recommitment every two years. The state is not required to inform the public when a murderer is set free from state commitment, according to Delker.
Sexual offender laws developed in recent years do require the state to notify the public when someone has been freed from a civil commitment via the state's Sex Offender Registry, Delker said.
Strelzin said state prosecutors go to court two to four times a year to ask a judge to recommit someone. A judge must also approve whether someone is transferred from the prison's secure psychiatric unit to the state hospital. The cases straddle a unique form of court-ordered custody.
"They are not convicted of an offense," Strelzin said. "It's a commitment."
People who commit crimes represent just a small portion of those ordered into state custody because of mental illness, MacLeod said. The probate court regularly commits people unable to care for themselves and in need of close monitoring because of mental illness.
"The state recognizes there are people who suffer mental illness who do not represent a danger to themselves or anyone else," he said.
That population may simply be unable to function in society, he said.
State prosecutors also deal with a number of cases where people are committed to the state hospital because they were found not competent to stand trial. There are currently five such people.
One of them is Helen Garland, a 77-year-old Hampton woman charged with second-degree murder for killing her sister Alice Keyho, 85, in 2004. In June 2007, a judge ordered Garland to be held for at least five years, finding she began suffering dementia after being charged. Her lawyers said Garland was incapable of participating in her defense. At the time, prosecutors suggested Garland could be rehabilitated to someday stand trial.
The LaBarre jury will have far more freedom considering evidence than jurors would in a typical criminal case. New Hampshire's insanity law is unique because there is no legal definition that a jury has to abide by, according to lawyer Richard McNamara.
It means LaBarre's lawyers will have the burden of proving she was insane.
"It's up to a jury, and they can apply their own common sense," McNamara said.
In 1978, McNamara argued an appeal that led to making insanity what is known as an affirmative defense. An affirmative defense typically requires a person to admit to their conduct, but ask to be found not criminally responsible.
"I think it's a very difficult defense to convince a jury of," McNamara said. "If there's a question about whether someone (was insane), jurors tend to be somewhat cynical if someone committed a violent crime."
If Rockingham County's last murder trial that hinged on an insanity plea serves as any indicator, jurors may take a long time to decide LaBarre's case.
In 1988, it took a week for a jury to decide former Hampton police Officer Robert McLaughlin was guilty of first-degree murder. McLaughlin pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for the shotgun killing of his neighbor Robert Cushing Sr. McLaughlin's wife, Susan, who was tried separately, is also serving a life sentence for her role in the murder.
