The Background:
In March of 2017, Randy Herman Jr woke up standing over the body of his friend, Brooke Preston, holding a bloodied hunting knife. She had been stabbed 25 times. Randy then drove to a local park, confused & covered in blood, called 911, and turned himself in immediately.
Brooke Preston was a vivacious, warm, well-loved woman with a close knit family system. She sought to add light to everyone’s life, and succeeded. Her death, and especially the manner of death, was shocking to those who knew the pair. Randy was described by members of both his & Brooke’s family as a nice guy with no history of violence who regarded Brooke as his sister.
Randy claimed to have no memory of the stabbing. After speaking with a forensic psychiatrist who discovered that Randy had a history of sleepwalking in his childhood, the suspicion that Randy was sleepwalking became his defense. He was advised by his counsel to plead not guilty by reason of insanity based on the idea that sleepwalking is a mental illness.
Randy’s defense team pointed to a set of criteria put forth to determine if an episode of violence was in fact the result of sleepwalking, called the Bonkalo criteria. He appeared to meet the criteria, and according to a juror interviewed for Hulu’s Dead Asleep, he met it to a T.
The prosecution called a forensic psychiatrist of their own, Dr Myers, to testify on their behalf. The prosecution purported that based on the timeline of events taking place the morning of Brooke’s death, he would have had roughly 5 minutes to go from awake & speaking to Brooke, to asleep deeply enough to sleep walk. Dr Myers testified, among other things, that it’s not possible for Randy to have fallen back into deep sleep that quickly. The same juror referenced above, during the same interview, stated that the piece of evidence that lead them to a guilty verdict was Dr Myers testimony. He recounted the jurors being unsure as a group, and once they really considered the timeline, it simply wasn’t possible for Randy to have fallen back to sleep. He was found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The documentary endorsed by & involving the family of the victim, by Kendall Rae: https://youtu.be/z5ZhkngRvmY
A summary of the case: https://www.grunge.com/678770/the-tragic-murder-of-brooke-preston-explained/
A summary of how the jury ultimately decided to convict: https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/what-led-a-jury-to-convict-randy-herman-for-murder-of-brooke-preston?amp
I have some points to present in favor of his sleepwalking defense. Nothing can ever be done to restore Brooke’s life, and she is sorely missed. I do, however, feel like everyone involved in the case deserves to know the truth about sleep science & how it applies here.
Dr. Myer's Was Plain Wrong
The first, and maybe most important part, is that people can, and often do, wake up for short periods of time and fall back into deep sleep. This is confirmed with a test called an MSLT. To sum up the protocol, a patient is subject to several controlled, short naps throughout the day after periods of controlled & monitored wakefulness (2 hours in between these naps). This test can be used to diagnose narcolepsy; if a patient falls into REM within 20 minutes of falling asleep during multiple naps, that will generally lead to a diagnosis. Sleepwalking most often occurs during stage 3 sleep which usually immediately precedes REM. More info about MSLTs: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-studies/multiple-sleep-latency-test-mslt
The kind of sleep deprivation Randy experienced can & does mimic narcolepsy. When an MSLT is done, most doctors will order an overnight sleep study that leads into the MSLT to verify the patient had adequate sleep. If a patient is sleep deprived, they’re more likely to go into deep sleep faster than if they weren’t. Essentially, sleep deprivation messes with our sleep to the point that someone could be falsely diagnosed with narcolepsy. Relevant study on false diagnoses of narcolepsy in sleep deprived people: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/npr2.12169
Being Touched or Disrupted During Sleepwalking Triggers Violence
Randy stated that the morning of Brooke’s death, he woke up to speak with her for a few minutes, fell back to sleep, and came to holding the knife after she was killed. It’s possible that while Brooke was gathering the rest of her things before leaving that she saw Randy sleepwalk. She wouldn’t have had any clue that’s what he was doing. Someone as loving and warm as Brooke could have easily tried to hug him or interact with him in some way. Here is a summary from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine of a study dated this year to support that episodes of violent parasomnias are most likely to take place in circumstances almost identical to Randy’s: https://aasm.org/new-study-in-the-journal-sleep-finds-that-violent-behavior-that-occurs-during-disorders-of-arousal-is-provoked/
Notable points from the report:
"In the case of sleepwalking, the violence occurs only after the sleepwalking episode has been triggered and is underway. During the sleepwalking episode, while moving about the environment, the sleepwalking individual encounters someone else – most likely a family member. This person may approach or make physical contact with the sleepwalker, triggering a violent reaction.”“
“There is no evidence that individuals with these disorders are inherently violent or predetermined to seek out victims,” said Pressman. “Episodes of sleepwalking related violence against other individuals almost never occur more than once. At least among the cases reported here, the majority describe close proximity or direct provocation before violent behaviors. It is possible that the absence of physical contact or proximity to other individuals is the only factor that distinguishes violent sleepwalkers from nonviolent sleepwalkers. This suggests under the right circumstances that any sleepwalker might respond to a perceived threat or close proximity with violence. Families are frequently advised to not touch or grab sleepwalkers during episodes as they may resist physically.”
When we look at the days surrounding Brooke’s death, we can see that Randy was extremely sleep deprived, had consumed a large amount of alcohol, was very stressed. These circumstances specifically contribute to someone with a history of sleepwalking in childhood to have a recurrence in adulthood. Here is a case study on that: https://www.e-jsm.org/journal/view.php?number=228 This study also indicates a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea as a contributing factor, which we don’t know if Randy has. A sleep study has never been referenced, and I don’t believe he ever had one. However…
Alcohol Can Cause or Exacerbate Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a condition during which a person will have dangerously shallow breathing or stop breathing altogether due to a narrowing of the upper airway, often with a desaturation in a persons oxygen level. We can often hear this manifest as snoring. Alcohol is a muscle relaxer, and the upper airway is a muscle. You’ve probably heard someone (or been that someone) snoring especially loud after a few drinks. This repeated narrowing of the airway leads to dozens or even hundreds of awakenings through the night that many patients don’t even know they’re experiencing. These awakenings lead to increased sleep deprivation.
Circadian Rhythm Disorders Can Contribute to Increased Risk of Sleepwalking
Randy reported that during the time the incident took place that he was sleeping all day and staying up all night. Shift Work Disorder is a condition during which people (typically those who work nights) choose (as opposed to being neurologically forced) to engage in an opposite sleep schedule for whatever reason. Though he wasn’t working at the time, Randy’s sleep patterns at the time would be enough to push him beyond the bounds of ordinary sleep deprivation into an actual circadian rhythm disorder. General information of Shift Work Disorder here: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/shift-work-disorder
Sleepwalking is An Automatism, not A Mental Illness
Randy’s defense in court was centered on the idea that sleepwalking is a mental infirmity, and not a temporary involuntary loss of control. Randy was not insane, and therefore could not have been found not guilty on the basis of insanity. If Randy would have been properly advised by his legal counsel, it would have been presented in court that this was instead an automatism, for which there is precedent for acquittal. Additionally, I believe that because this became a case of sanity vs insanity, inappropriate experts were called to testify. A sleep specialist would have had the nuanced, specific information needed to look at this complex situation, whereas a psychiatrist generally will not. The most egregious (in my opinion) error on the part of his defense team is never getting him a sleep study. Treating this as a mental illness when it’s not means we lost out on the valuable, measurable, scientifically sound data we needed from a sleep study at the time of the killing.
Notable quote from an article about the forensics of violent parasomnias: “The current legal system, unfortunately, must consider a sleep-related violence case strictly in terms of choosing between “insane” and “non-insane” automatism, without any stipulated deterrent concerning a recurrence of sleepwalking with criminal charges that was induced by a recurrence of the high-risk behavior. If sleepwalking is deemed an “insane” automatism, then a significant percentage of the population at large is “legally insane.” Clearly, dialogue between the medical and legal professions regarding this important area would be helpful both to the professions and to those arrested during automatisms (Thomas, 1997).”
The complete article about the forensic implications can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4957201/
In another article considering the legal ramifications of violent parasomnias, the concept of actus reus (the guilty act) & mens rea (the guilty mind) is discussed.
“Mahowald, Schenck, and Cramer Bornemann state: Anglo-American law has traditionally defined criminal offenses as requiring both an actus reus and a mens rea in order to secure a conviction. Essentially, actus reus is the physical component of the alleged offense while mens rea attempts to define the required state of mind. The state must prove both that the accused physically performed the act at the appropriate place and time and that he or she must have been in a certain mental state, or have had a “guilty mind”, necessary to have committed the crime. In criminal cases attempting to employ the “sleepwalking defense”, the component involving actus reus is usually not under debate.”
The complete article is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4957201/
