A trucker said he was following God’s command as he fatally beat and stabbed his co-worker in the cab of their tractor-trailer as they barreled down the Thruway in Hamburg earlier this year.

The first psychiatrist who examined Rudy A. Arnette said he suffered from a major mental illness.

Another psychiatrist, hired by prosecutors, said he was under the influence of paranoid delusions.

As a result, State Supreme Court Justice Russell P. Buscaglia on Tuesday found Arnette not responsible for fellow trucker Robert Hardy’s death by reason of mental disease or defect.

The verdict is a rare one in Erie County, but prosecutors had little choice but to go along with the verdict after their own forensic psychiatrist agreed with the defense psychiatrist.

“Both [psychiatrists] said he was psychotic,” Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said. “If both experts agree, where are you going to go as a prosecutor? He’s legally insane. He’s a ward of the court now.”

Arnette, 47, of West Carrollton City, Ohio, was charged with second- degree murder for beating and stabbing Hardy to death as Hardy was driving their rig. During the attack, Hardy lost control of the truck and crashed into trees. An autopsy on Hardy, 43, of Miamisburg, Ohio, determined he died from blunt trauma to the head and stab wounds. The impact of the crash was not a factor in his death.

“Taking action while the victim was driving at high speed on an interstate highway adds to the conclusion that he was indeed substantially impaired in his capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions,” Dr. Gary Horwitz, the prosecution’s psychiatrist, wrote in his report after twice interviewing Arnette.

Dr. Brian S. Joseph, the defense psychiatrist, also concluded that Arnette could not know or appreciate the nature of his actions. “He felt that he had to kill the other man, as he was being threatened and was about to be killed himself, and was doing so at the direction of God,” Joseph wrote in his report. “God’s commandments were such that he could not resist.”

Arnette, wearing a gray suit, said little during the half-hour hearing in Erie County Court, simply responding to the judge’s questions with simple “Yes, it is” and “Yes, I do” answers.

No one from Arnette’s or Hardy’s families showed up for the hearing.

The two men were hired in mid-November by Falcon Transport Co. of Youngstown, Ohio. By the middle of December, they had been assigned to work together, taking shifts behind the wheel of the rig on long hauls. The co-drivers were heading back to Ohio from Vermont with a load of auto parts when Arnette attacked Hardy, police said.

Homicide prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable said Arnette stabbed Hardy with a small pocket knife and beat him with a small sledge hammer.

State police found Arnette walking in the area shortly after the crash, bleeding from the face and wearing blood-stained clothes.

Arnette told state police that he had fought Hardy, who was still in the truck.

A trooper went to the cab and found the body, wedged between the back of the driver’s seat and the sleeper mattress in the back of the truck’s cab.

John K. Jordan, Arnette’s lawyer, said he had no other viable defense. “When I initially met him, I could tell he was suffering from some type of mental disease or defect,” Jordan said of Arnette, under questioning from Buscaglia.

Arnette has been on medication since being locked up in the Erie County Holding Center, and the hallucinations have stopped, Jordan said.

Arnette will undergo further psychiatric testing by the state to determine if he has a dangerous mental disorder, or if he’s mentally ill but not dangerous.

The state is expected to send results of the tests to the court within 30 days, at which time the court will decide the type of facility Arnette to which will be sent.

Until then, Arnette will remain locked up in the Holding Center without bail.

plakamp@buffnews.comnull