Long Island’s accused puppy-love killer who allegedly fatally shot his teenage ex in a botched murder-suicide is too loony to stand trial for at least a year, a judge ruled Friday — as the victim’s family openly wept.
Austin Lynch, 18 — who is accused of killing ex-girlfriend Emily Finn as she was visiting her Long Island home from SUNY Oneonta on Thanksgiving break — was issued the extremely rare ruling by Judge Anthony Senft.
Senft determined the teen too mentally “incapacitated” to stand trial at the moment and ordered him held in a mental-health facility for the next year and then have his mental fitness for trial reevaluated at the end of the stint.
“I find that Mr. Lynch is, in fact, incapacitated and could not assist his own attorney in his own defense,” Senft said in court — much to the dismay of Finn’s family, who got visibly upset, crying in the courtroom.
Senft detailed that multiple medical professionals evaluated Lynch and reached the same conclusion regarding his lack of mental fitness to stand trial.
Lynch, who was 17 at the time of the slaying, was originally set to tried as an adult before Friday’s ruling.
Rulings declaring accused killers mentally unfit to stand trial are exceedingly rare in New York and typically reserved for cases involving severe psychiatric illness so debilitating that the accused can’t even grasp or understand the charges or help their own lawyer.
The bar is so high for such a ruling that it typically requires multiple psychiatric evaluations from various professionals and close judicial scrutiny.
But many suspects who get the initial determination are then later restored to competency after treatment, according to New York state data.
On a national level, only between 20% to 30% of defendants sent for psychiatric evaluations are ultimately found incompetent to stand trial, according to research published in Psychiatric Times.
Friday’s decision does not toss the charges against Lynch. But it does place the case on ice while he is locked in a secure mental health facility, where doctors will attempt to restore his competency before a judge decides whether prosecutors can move forward or if he’ll spend the rest of his life in a mental-health-facility prison.
William Wexler, Lynch’s lawyer, declined to comment after court
Finn’s family and Assistant District Attorneys Dena Rizopoulous and Keri Wasson, who are prosecuting the case, also declined to comment.
