Week 8: Not guilty by reason of insanity
Zaid R -
Hey everyone and welcome back to my blog!
This week was a pretty chill week in the 175th as there was no trial, but there was a sentencing for a muder trial that happened back in February. This was an interesting sentencing because this murder was handled by the family violence prosecutors because this was a murder between family members.
The facts of the case are as follows..
The defendant in the case had murdered her grandmother. She suffered from mental problems like paranoia and schizophrenia. When she was young, her and her sister were victims of abuse and sexual assault at the hands of her the grandma’s husbands (yes plural). During the day of the murder, the defendant was paranoid that her grandmother was going to muder her, so in her mind, the only way to protect herself was to take her grandmother’s life first. What added onto her paranoia was that she called her stepfather who encouraged her to take part in this crime for his own reasons.
Her paranoia was unwarranted and her mental illness had gone unmedicated. It got so bad to the point that it made her murder her own family member, and according to her, she really loved her grandmother.
To kill her, she took a hammer to her grandmother’s head, bit her, and stabbed her. During the trial, she was found guilty. When I talked to the judge, she said that she almost found her not guilty by reason of insanity because of all the underlying issues she had, but to her, there was a motive, there was the choice to seek help, the choice to simply not do it, and a criminal history of drug abuse, so she found her guilty.
The defense tried to argue for manslaughter, but the facts of the case simply showed otherwise. This was my first time seeing a sentence for a murder, and it was very interesting to see how this case lined up.Thank you for tuning into my blog. Next week begins the muder trial in 175th of a defendant who allegedly took the life of two people that were his neighbors. From what I’ve heard, the story is extremely complex, so tune in next week to see what the beginning of the trial looks like!