A Travis County judge ordered a former UT graduate student to be taken to North Texas State Hospital in Vernon Wednesday after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity last week for the murder of a UT piano professor.
Doctors at the mental health facility in Wichita Falls will re-evaluate Jackson Ngai's mental state each year. District Judge Bob Perkins will have the option each year of ordering Ngai to stay in Vernon or allowing him to leave the facility.
Ngai confessed to the April 2004 murder of Danielle Martin. Ngai claimed Martin was a robot controlled by a computer chip in her head and that she wanted to harm him.
He was recently diagnosed with undifferentiated schizophrenia. Before the murder, Ngai was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, and therefore wrongly medicated, according to his defense attorney.
Ngai had not been on his medication for several months at the time of Martin's murder, according to various testimonies in the trial.
Ngai stopped taking his medication in January 2004 because the lithium carbonate he was taking made his hands shake, a difficult condition for an aspiring pianist, according to his father's testimony.
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