Confessed murderer could be released

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - A Mobile judge has a big decision to make Thursday. Judge Michael Youngpeter is scheduled to decide whether to release a mental patient who confessed to a brutal murder in 2000.

Jeremy Bentley has been in a mental facility for the past seven years. Recently, the Department of Mental Health has petitioned for his release.

Bentley was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole. However, that sentence was appealed. That’s when he was found not guilty by reason of mental disease.

His physician at the Taylor Hardin Facility in Tuscaloosa said he is no longer insane and should be released.

District Attorney Ashley Rich said he is a serious danger to society, and she will do whatever it takes to make sure he stays locked up.

Bentley confessed he killed a man "just to see what it was like, the thrill.”

Bentley and David Kabat kidnapped 24-year-old Jamie Tolbert from a bar in Biloxi.

His body was later found in a wooded area near Grand Bay. Tolbert had been beaten and strangled.

Now the Alabama Department of Mental Health is claiming he's cured and should be released.

"I am very shocked. It is very disturbing that they would ask for him to be released. He's only been in there since 2005,” Rich said.

The department claims “he is showing no signs or symptoms of mental illness and has no mental disorder for which any appropriate treatment is available."

Rich said her office is ready to fight the request in court.

"When they file the paperwork, the evidence will show that the defendant was actually in solitary confinement at the time that they filed the paperwork for misbehaving while at Taylor Hardin. So, we're strenuously opposing any release of Jeremy Bentley from Taylor Hardin,” Rich said.

In a sworn affidavit from Bentley’s current physician, he said Bentley shows no sign of a mental disorder and "he has admitted on multiple occasions that he has feigned mental illness in the past, that he has made threats as a manipulative tactic to 'get what he wants' or in order to avoid what '(he) does not want.'"

Rich said she disagrees.

"We have no evidence that he has ever been faking a mental disease or disorder in fact my experts are going to talk about the fact that he suffers from psychosis and that he has delusional identity disorder which can also be characterized as multiple personalities,” Rich said.

Both sides will be heard in Judge Youngpeter’s court room. If it's decided that Bentley will be released Rich said she has the power to re-try him.

"If for some reason the judge lets him out tomorrow and says that he is no longer suffering from mental disease or defect, he cannot claim not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect for capitol murder,” Rich said.

The experts that testified that Bentley was mentally incompetent in the original trial are now working with Rich.

They will give their testimony Thursday in court.