A man once convicted of murder for beheading his girlfriend and dumping her body on a busy street two years ago in Shakopee has now been found not guilty by reason of mental illness.
The ruling Monday by Scott County District Judge Caroline Lennon clears the way for Alexis Saborit, 44, of Shakopee, to be moved from jail and civilly committed indefinitely to a secure hospital run by the state Department of Human Services (DHS).
Before horrified onlookers on July 28, 2021, Saborit first struck America M. Thayer, 56, with an 8-pound dumbbell and then decapitated her with a machete at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Spencer Street.
Had Lennon rejected Saborit's claim of mental illness, the first-degree murder conviction from May would have stood and he would have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Saborit now has an outside chance at freedom, should he someday be deemed by the DHS to no longer be mentally ill. He is likely on his way to the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter, which treats the state's most psychiatrically complex and dangerous patients.
A message was left Tuesday afternoon with the County Attorney's Office for its reaction to the ruling, which was previously on record as rejecting the contention that Saborit was mentally ill when he killed Thayer.
Lennon based her ruling Monday on the findings of two doctors who interviewed Saborit, and who reviewed his psychological history and police records associated with the killing.
Saborit has experienced "intermittent episodes of severe psychosis and some mania since at least 2018," the judge wrote in her order. "Defendant's psychotic episodes have been characterized by agitation, pressured speech, insomnia, disorganized thinking, auditory hallucinations, and entrenched paranoid, somatic and/or bizarre delusions."