St. Louis Park Teen to Use Insanity Defense in Iowa Killings

The St. Louis Park teenager in November plans to use the insanity defense, according to the Des Moines Register.

Michael Richard Swanson, 17, is charged as an adult with murder and robbery in both Kossuth and Humboldt counties. The newspaper reports that Swanson's attorney, Charles Kenville, filed the court documents for the insanity defense in Kossuth County.

Kenville recently asked a Kossuth County judge to combine the two cases, according to court records. Swanson is set to stand trial this summer. The attorney also withdrew a request to have the Kossuth County case transferred to juvenile court after a Humboldt County judge denied a similar request earlier this month.

Investigators allege that Swanson shot the two clerks — Vicky Bowman-Hall, 47, and Sheila Myers, 61 — in separate armed robberies Nov. 15 after fleeing from his St. Louis Park home in his mother's vehicle. Police believe that both clerks complied with his demands for cash and cigarettes, but he shot them anyway to keep the clerks from calling the police.

Swanson had enrolled at St. Louis Park High School on Nov. 8,  just five days after being released from the Hennepin County Home School, a residential treatment center for adolescent offenders. He had been sentenced there in the summer for stealing a vehicle in St. Louis Park and then crashing it while drunk.

According to city records, police had visited the Swanson family home 10 times since 2005, including five times during 2010. Those calls involved reports of theft, assault, a missing person, vehicle theft, a weapons violation and shots fired.