1961, Sergeant Willis Boshears confessed to strangling a local woman named Jean Constable in the early hours on New Years Day 1961, but claimed that he was asleep and only woke to realize what he had done. He pled not guilty on the basis of being asleep at the time he committed the offence and was acquitted. In 1981, Steven Steinberg of Scottsdale, Arizona was accused of killing his wife and acquitted on the grounds of temporary insanity. 1991, R v Burgess: Burgess was accused of hitting his girlfriend on the head with a wine bottle and then a video tape recorder. He was found not guilty at Bristol Crown Court, by reason of insane automatism. 1992, R. v. Parks: Parks was accused of killing his mother-in-law and attempting to kill his father-in-law. He was acquitted by the Supreme Court of Canada. 1994, Pennsylvania v. Ricksgers: Ricksgers was accused of killing his wife. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. 1999, Arizona v. Falater: Scott Falater, of Phoenix, Arizona, was accused of killing his wife. The court concluded that the murder was too complex to be committed while sleepwalking. Falater was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with no possibility of parole. 2001, California v. Reitz: Stephen Reitz killed his lover, Eva Weinfurtner. He told police he had no recollection of the attack but he had "flashbacks" of believing he was in a scuffle with a male intruder. His parents testified in court that he had been a sleepwalker from childhood.
Sleepwalkers should aim to have their bedrooms on the ground floor of a home, apartment, dorm, hotel, etc. Sleepwalkers should not have easily accessible weapons (loaded guns, knives) in the bedroom or any room of the house for that matter. If there are weapons, they should be locked away with keys secluded from the sleepwalker.For partners of sleepwalkers who are violent or disturb their sleep, sleeping in another room may lead to better sleep quality and quantity. Epidemiology
The lifetime prevalence of sleepwalking is estimated to be 4.6%–10.3%. A meta-analysis of 51 studies, that included more than 100,000 children and adults, found that sleepwalking is more common in children with an estimated 5%, compared with 1.5% of adults, sleepwalking at least once in the previous 12 months. The rate of sleepwalking has not been found to vary across ages during childhood. History
Sleepwalking has attracted a sense of mystery, but was not seriously investigated and diagnosed until the 19th century. The German chemist and parapsychologist Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach (1788–1869) made extensive studies of sleepwalkers and used his discoveries to formulate his theory of the Odic force.Sleepwalking was initially thought to be a dreamer acting out a dream. For example, in one study published by the Society for Science & the Public in 1954, this was the conclusion: "Repression of hostile feelings against the father caused the patients to react by acting out in a dream world with sleepwalking, the distorted fantasies they had about all authoritarian figures, such as fathers, officers and stern superiors."