Politician's son blames bank robbery on delirium

The son of Gord Mackintosh, Conservation Minister in Manitoba, Canada, has pleaded not guilty to robbing a bank, arguing he was delirious after weaning himself off a prescribed anti-depressant. Gordon Elijah Muller Mackintosh, 24, is asking a judge find him not criminally responsible for robbing the Assiniboine Credit Union in April 2012. Justice officials are not opposing the move. "I can't provide any explanation other than a disease of the mind," special prosecutor William Burge told Justice Rick Saull at a sentencing hearing on Friday.

"If there was some other logical explanation, I would be pleased to present it to the court." According to an agreed statement of facts submitted to court, Mackintosh entered the bank wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a fake moustache. He approached a teller with a note demanding money and indicated he had a bomb in his briefcase. Mackintosh was given $100, approached another staff member for a phone number, then left the bank. Barbara Mackintosh, Gordon's mother, told court her son picked her up from work later that day and did not appear himself.



"Gordie wasn't really saying anything," she said. "He was pale ... almost ghost-like. His eyes were glazed." Barbara Mackintosh said she was reading a newspaper about a month later when she saw what she thought was her son's picture in a "most wanted" story. "I had the picture, I said 'Gordie, is that you?' He said 'It's not me, mom, it couldn't be.'" Barbara showed the picture to her husband and they confronted their son again. "He broke down, said 'It couldn't be me, I wouldn't do anything like that,'" Barbara said. The next day, Gordon turned himself in to police.

Gordon told the court he remembered putting on his disguise and going to the bank but had no recollection of robbing it. The court heard in the weeks prior to the bank robbery, Gordon - at his doctor's direction - had been weaning himself off Effexor, an anti-depressant. "This was delirium brought on by the reduction in Effexor," Gordon's lawyer Josh Weinstein said. "It is a documented side-effect." Gordon was reducing his drug dosage at the same time as he was preparing for university exams, possibly compounding the withdrawal symptoms, a psychiatrist wrote in a report submitted to court. Saull will render his decision on Feb. 24.