Parents of a young Lincoln man  stabbed to death by a friend who was high on cough medicine were frustrated by the judge’s decision the killer was not guilty of murder because of insanity.

So they took their frustration to their state senator, Amanda McGill, and are hoping senators quickly pass a bill that won’t allow anyone else to use the same defense.

A proposal that would eliminate the “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense for a person voluntarily intoxicated at the time of the crime will be part of the 2008 legislative session.

Attorney General Jon Bruning made the bill part of his legislative package. McGill will sponsor it.

Everything about the trial and the judge’s decision was frustrating, said Lori Lubben, whose son, Andy Lubben, died in 2006 after a friend stabbed him two dozen times.  

District Judge Karen Flowers determined Shane Tilley, who had taken 32 cold medicine pills, didn’t know the difference between right and wrong the day he stabbed Lubben.

Police arrived that day to find Tilley in his apartment, naked, uttering nonsense and suffering from apparently self-inflicted knife wounds to his chest and neck, according to trial testimony.

Word is out among attorneys about this defense possibility, Bruning said Monday.

Having others try the same defense “scares the dickens out of us,” said Bruning, because many people who commit crimes “are drunk or high.”

Tilley is in the Lincoln Regional Center and cannot be released until a psychiatrist determines he is no longer dangerous and a judge agrees.

Bruning said he would hope a mental condition that causes a person to murder someone “will keep him behind bars for decades.”  

“But now it’s in the hands of psychiatrists, and that’s what scares me,”  Bruning said.

Tilley had been experimenting with this drug since he was a freshman in high school, said Jeff Lubben, the victim’s father. “He knew what the drug does.”

“You tell your children that everything is fair. And it’s not,” said Lori Lubben.  

“We wish it (the proposed law) could be retroactive, but we know it can’t be. We hope it gets passed swiftly,” Lori Lubben said.

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.