Ohio Gunman Drops Insanity Plea

The defendant in a series of highway shootings that terrorized central Ohio and left a woman dead has agreed to drop his insanity defense and plead guilty, a judge said Monday.

Charles McCoy Jr.'s agreed-upon plea would avoid a second trial. Jurors could not decide earlier this year whether McCoy was insane during the shootings, which happened over five months in 2003 and 2004.

Barring a last-minute change of heart by McCoy or prosecutors, McCoy will enter the plea Tuesday afternoon, Judge Charles Schneider said after meeting with McCoy's attorney Monday.

The judge says either side can back out of the deal up to when the plea is entered in court. The judge says he's not sure which charges McCoy will plead guilty to.

The judge says McCoy will likely get a sentence of several decades.

A hung jury was declared May 8 after four days of deliberations. The defense had acknowledged McCoy was the shooter but argued he was innocent by reason of insanity.

In his last trial, County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien vowed to retry McCoy, who could have faced the death penalty if convicted of the most serious charge of aggravated murder for the November 2003 death of Gail Knisley, the only person killed in the shootings.

"We are extremely disappointed in the outcome," said Knisley's son Brent, reading a brief prepared statement by phone. "If there's another trial and another trial and another trial, we will still be there."

"I'm always disappointed because believe it or not I truly, honestly, and with every fiber in my body believe that the right verdict of this was not guilty by reason of insanity," defense attorney Michael Miller said.

The defense admitted McCoy was behind the Columbus-area shootings, plus about 200 acts of vandalism involving dropping lumber and bags of concrete mix off of overpasses. But his attorneys insisted he did not understand his actions were wrong because of delusions from his untreated paranoid schizophrenia.

The defense psychiatrist said McCoy was desperate to rid himself of humiliating voices in his head that called him a "wimp" for not standing up to mocking from television programs and commercials. He also said McCoy believed others could read his thoughts.