Double Killer Registers and Votes from Mental Hospital

A double killer who was judged mentally insane at his trial has registered and voted from the mental hospital where he is confined.

The voting activity of Wendell Justin Williamson, a patient at Central Regional Hospital in Butner, N.C., resulted from increased voter registration efforts at state mental hospitals for the developmentally disabled, Carolina Journal reports.

Williamson was registered on Sept. 13 at Central Regional as an unaffiliated voter. He cast an absentee ballot that was accepted Oct. 15 by the Granville County Board of Elections, Carolina Journal reports.

In January 1995, Williamson, a law student, killed two strangers with an M-1 rifle in a street shootout near the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Journal says.

He was judged not guilty by reason of insanity.

Just this week, Williamson was granted unsupervised off-campus privileges by a judge, Carolina Journal reports.

Efforts to register mental patients and residents of centers for the developmentally disabled have occurred in several locations around the state in recent months, Carolina Journal reports.