UPDATE: Cleveland Serial Killer Enters Insanity Plea

Cleveland, Ohio registered sex offender Anthony Sowell pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of killing 11 women via video from his jail. In order for an insanity defense to hold up, the court must find that Sowell “suffers from severe mental illness and cannot distinguish between right and wrong,” AP reports.

On Tuesday December 1, Sowell was indicted on murder, rape, assault and corpse abuse charges that accused him of assaulting three women and killing 11 others. If he is convicted of any of the murders, he could receive the death penalty.

According to AP, Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s Assistant Prosecutor Richard Bombik said Sowell’s insanity plea doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

“There seems to be a distinct pattern that he engages in and if he wants to call it madness, there’s a distinct method to that madness. I don’t see anything in his background to suggest that he has a mental illness. It’s just a, quite frankly, a psychopath,” Bombik said.

“Based on some of the victims and some of the things he’s done, he knew what he was doing was wrong at the time he was doing it,” Bombik’s boss, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said.

GET BACKGROUND ON THE ANTHONY SOWELL CASE.