Niall Clarke, an award-winning Trinity College computer science graduate, has been sentenced to almost 10 years in prison for a 2006 armed bank robbery in Maine but the judge has recommended that he serve part of his sentence in Ireland.
Clarke (27), from Kilrush, Co Clare, appeared calm as Judge John Woodcock passed sentence at the end of a four-hour hearing at Bangor's federal court. The sentence was the most lenient possible and included a statutory seven-year term for using a gun during a robbery.
The judge said he had taken into account evidence Clarke was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and his mental illness had helped to transform him from a gifted student and budding entrepreneur into the author of "a particularly heinous crime".
Clarke's father, Michael, told the court he had sought unsuccessfully to have his son committed to a psychiatric hospital in Ireland after a serious psychotic episode in 2003. "I felt so let down that the Irish healthcare system let me down and more importantly, let my son down. We probably wouldn't be here today listening to the victims of Niall's crime if that problem had been addressed then," he said.
At Trinity, Clarke was one of the most gifted computer science students his lecturers had ever encountered and, when he graduated in 2002, he set up his own software company. During his final year at college, however, Clarke was showing signs of stress which his family initially put down to exam pressure.
Clarke abandoned his business plans and travelled to Thailand and India, calling home with angry diatribes against his father, with whom he had previously enjoyed a close relationship.
When he returned to Co Clare, he was "skeletal", weighing only 40kg (90lbs) although he is 1.9m (6ft 3in). Mr Clarke snr told the court in Bangor that, as he watched his son become more withdrawn and his bouts of anger more regular, he recognised the mental pattern unfolding.
"My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic," Mr Clarke snr told the court. "I remember watching a police car coming to take her to hospital . . . The hardest thing in my life was to sign a committal form to send Niall to hospital."
After Irish health authorities refused to commit Clarke, he left for South America and the US, losing contact with his family until after his arrest in October 2006. Working at odd jobs, Clarke was drinking heavily - up to 18 pints of Guinness a day, according to a psychiatrist's report.
He was $30,000 (€20,500) in debt and behind on his rent when he bought a gun and ammunition and a day later, donned a ski mask, camouflage trousers and a black sweater and walked into the Bangor Bank of America.
Pointing the gun at a bank teller, he handed her a bag and ordered her to fill it with cash.Clarke left the bank with $11,125 but a bank worker noted his car licence plate and he was arrested.
The judge recommended that Clarke serve his sentence at a prison that would give him access to psychiatric treatment and he urged Clarke to accept it.
Speaking on behalf of the Clarke family, solicitor Eugene O'Kelly said that they were relieved at the relative leniency of the sentence and expressed the hope Clarke could be returned to Ireland "within a year or two" to serve out his sentence.
"What makes this case particularly sad is the fact that it could have been prevented. Michael took the hardest decision of his life when he signed the committal papers to have his son transferred in Ireland to a mental institution," said Mr O'Kelly.
"Unfortunately, the services let him down and Niall was free to go without any medical intervention. That led eventually to a bank in Bangor and Niall's transformation from genius to jail was complete."