Gee, I've been playing violent video games since Wolfenstein 3D (still have a copy on my machine) have been known to play for 9+ hours at a time (when Half-Life came out) and I have a safe full of guns.  I must be a ticking timebomb.

[V]

[url]http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/local/5966240.htm[/url]

Lawyer aims to take over murder case
He would focus on violent video games as factor

By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer

A Florida lawyer and self-styled expert on the influence of violent video games on youths said Wednesday that he will apply to defend a Medina County teen accused of murder.

Jack Thompson of the Miami suburb of Coral Gables said he will ask Medina County Common Pleas Court today for permission to defend Dustin Lynch, now 16, in the November slaying of JoLynn Mishne.

Thompson, in communications over the last seven months with the families of Lynch and Mishne and with the courts and lawyers, has continually raised the possibility that Lynch was driven to kill by his excessive playing of aggressive games. Thompson has urged Lynch's current lawyer, V. Lee Winchell of Rittman, and a previous one, John Dolatowski of Medina, to consider video games in Lynch's defense, but neither did so.

Winchell declined to comment Wednesday on Thompson's offer to replace him as defense counsel.

But Winchell pointed out that he had been appointed by the court to defend the teen at the state's expense. ``If his family has a private attorney, I don't know that the court would continue to have me on the case,'' Winchell said.

Thompson said he would defend Lynch for free and that he would get local counsel, possibly the Ohio Public Defender's Office, to help him if the court grants his request.

``Whatever happened (in JoLynn's death), it was not murder,'' Thompson wrote in a news release. ``The American video industry must share the blame.''

Lynch's mother, Jerrilyn Thomas, said she was ecstatic at the prospect of Thompson defending her son. ``Finally, someone who will listen,'' she said.

JoLynn, who was 17, was found by her father, Merle ``Mickey'' Mishne, in her second-floor bedroom of their Montville Township home, her skull crushed and her body stabbed numerous times.

Lynch, a houseguest at the time, was found hours later in JoLynn's stolen car.

Mickey Mishne said his daughter had invited Lynch to stay at their home because she felt sorry for him.

Mickey Mishne said he supports Thompson's quest to defend the person charged with killing his daughter. He also said he, too, wants the case to be moved from common pleas court back to Juvenile Court.

The maximum sentence in juvenile court would be a little more than four years. In adult court, Lynch would face as long as a life term with no chance of parole for 30 years.

``I have confidence that Jack will present all aspects of the case,'' Mickey Mishne said. ``I have no objection to him taking over the case.''

He has said he wants Lynch to be tried as a juvenile and that he believes the teen can be rehabilitated.

``It has been our desire and our intent to assist in Lynch's defense as witnesses to his nonviolent nature while he was a guest in our home as well as to his obsessive video game behavior,'' Mishne wrote to Medina County Common Pleas Judge Christopher Collier on Wednesday.

Thompson said that if approved as Lynch's lawyer, his first step would be to try to get Lynch's case moved back to juvenile court.