Plea Bargain to Give Ex-Postal Worker Life Term Without Parole in 2 Slayings

Mark Richard Hilbun, convicted of murdering two people during a two-day rampage at a Dana Point post office and elsewhere in Orange County, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole under a plea agreement approved Friday.

The 42-year-old former postal worker agreed to withdraw his attempts to be found insane and serve a sentence at a state mental hospital. In exchange, prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty for the slayings of his mother and his best friend.

A jury convicted Hilbun of double murder, seven counts of attempted murder and other felonies in the 1993 rampage. But the panel deadlocked last month about whether the San Juan Capistrano man was insane during his bloody crime rampage, which defense lawyers contend was driven by delusions of a coming apocalypse and a long history of manic depression and schizophrenia. Instead of seeking to retry Hilbun on the sanity issue, the defense proposed the agreement guaranteeing he would not be executed.

If jurors had found him insane, Hilbun would have been sent to a psychiatric hospital until he regained his sanity. Although he technically could have been eligible for release after at least six months, medical experts had testified they doubted Hilbun would ever regain his sanity.