By Reason of Insanity Read online

  She scared me just a little, but I had to avoid that fear. "I will leave you if you're not straight with me,” I said.

  Now her voice was tiny, fleeting. She seemed to shrink down in her seat, becoming smaller and smaller. It was like Alice after she drank the potion that made her tiny. "Please. Please, I'll do anything. Don't leave me. I'll be good. I promise. I'm so sorry. Please don't leave me."

  I looked over at Sabrina, who was watching the entire scene unfold with a small smile on her face.

  "I wouldn’t let her manipulate you if I were you,” Sabrina said with a sneer on her face. “That's the best way to get sucked into her games. And that's what they are. Games. Nothing more than that."

  Just then, I heard on the other side of the glass that the judge was calling Marina's case. I entered my appearance, and asked for a bond reduction. At the moment, the bond was set at $10 million, and Marina had indicated to me that she only had $8 million in the bank. If the bond was not lowered, obviously Marina would not be able to get out.

  I was lucky that the prosecutor, Jenna Powell , didn’t have any objections to my request, and, before I knew it, the judge was setting the case for a case management date, and lowering the bond to $5 million.

  “Your honor,” I said. “I would like to defer the formal arraignment for another time. I would like some time with this case so that I can determine if I would like to plea my client not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity.”

  The judge nodded. “Ms. Powell, any objections to that?” she asked.

  “No, your honor,” Jenna said.

  “Okay, then, Mr. Collins, I’ll continue the formal arraignment for two weeks from today,” the judge said.

  “Actually, I would also like to schedule this case for a hearing on whether or not my client is competent to stand trial,” I said. “I would like to get this determination before we proceed to a formal arraignment.”

  Judge Watts nodded her head. “Very well, I’ll schedule the competency hearing for two weeks from today.” Then she looked over at her assistant, who gave Jenna and me dates for our next hearing.

  "Thank you," Marina said humbly, bowing her head. It seemed that it was the other Marina that I had managed to meet that day, the shy one that shrunk down in her chair and tried to become invisible. “I don't know how to thank you for getting me out of this place."

  "I'm only doing my job."

  "And so you are. Well, I guess I can be taken back to the jail, and I'll be out soon. I’ll be walking out of the jail with just the clothes on my back. I was wondering if you could go ahead and give me a ride to my home in La Jolla?"

  I wanted to protest. I had things to do that night. I really didn’t want to have to drive her from the jail to her house in La Jolla. Yet, just the way that she looked at me, I knew that I was going to be doing it.

  "Of course. I'll do that."

  But I wondered one thing after I made the commitment to drive her home.

  Which Marina was going to be talking to me that night?

  Chapter 9

  That Monday, I received the interrogation reel from the prosecutor’s office. I had requested it, because I wanted to see how Marina acted when she was questioned.

  It was disturbing, to say the least.

  “Ms. Vasiliev,” Officer Ryan said to her on the grainy footage. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  She nodded her head. “Yes. I was bad.”

  “Tell me about that. Why do you say that you were bad?”

  “I ate a cookie when my mother told me not to. She told me that it would spoil my dinner, but I didn’t care. I wanted that cookie, so I ate it.”

  Officer Ryan shook his head. “Ms. Vasiliev, you were at your house just now when we found your husband. You were in a chair in the living room while your husband was shot dead in the foyer. What happened to your husband?”

  “My mother is mad at me. She’s going to ground me for that cookie. It’s unfair. She told me that it was the principal, not the act. I have to follow her rules or pay the price. But it was only a cookie. Nobody else gets grounded for eating cookies.”

  I could see Officer Ryan visibly getting agitated. “Ms. Vasiliev, do you know how your husband ended up dead?”

  “The tin man did it,” she said, nodding her head. “He needed a heart. Yet he got sad when he thought he was losing his friends. He had a heart. And the scarecrow needed a brain, but he was always the one coming up with the good ideas. He didn’t need a brain, he had one.”

  And so it went. Officer Ryan kept asking her questions, and she kept answering in non-sequiturs. This went on for several hours. Different officers kept coming in and out, asking her questions, and she kept answering these questions in a bizarre way.

  Either she was really dissociating, or she’s a damned good actress.

  The problem was, I didn’t know which one of those scenarios were true.

  Chapter 10

  Since I wasn’t sure if I was going to go with NGRI or plead Marina just straight not guilty, I was going to have to get more information about her mental illness. So, I made an appointment with her treating doctor.

  The doctor had been treating her for the past several years was named Dr. Alan. He was a fiftyish man with gray hair, a goatee, and a slight build - about 5’6”, a buck forty, more or less. He had been practicing in the field of psychotherapy for the past 30 years, and he had been treating her for the past 10. I made an appointment to see him, and I made sure that I went over to Marina's house and got a waiver signed so I could speak with him.

  That was an interesting experience, to say the very least.

  I called her on the phone, and told her what I needed. She invited me to come over to her house, and so I did. When I got there, she was dressed in a tiny see-through négligée. I could see every bit of her skin underneath it. She was wearing some kind of perfume. I couldn’t really describe it, except that it smelled of flowers and woods and spices. All kinds of spices. She was wearing full make up, with her blue eyes brighter than usual. Her full lips were dressed in red lipstick.

  Her house was in La Jolla, a tony city just north of San Diego, and it was one of those enormous 5,000 square-foot mansions, all Spanish architecture with porticos, arches, a large swimming pool out back and a roof made out of Spanish-style clay pots.

  The lawn was perfectly manicured, and there was a guesthouse in the back. The interior of the house sported high ceilings, hardwood floors, stained glass, and chandeliers. She led me over to a room where there was an enormous fireplace, and a fire blazing, even though it was June, and there was no need for a fire to be blazing at all. The room also had floor-to-ceiling windows, and was framed by an enormous arch.

  "Now, you were telling me on the phone that you want me to sign some kind of a paper?" she asked me.

  "Yeah. I need you to sign a waiver so I can speak with your psychotherapist, Dr. Alan."

  “Why do you need to speak with Dr. Alan?" she asked.

  “Well, as I said, I was going to try to plead you not guilty by reason of insanity,” I said.

  I was going to have to decide quickly if I wanted to go down the insanity route. The judge gave me two weeks to make my decision.

  My research on the matter of whether or not Marina was fit for trial was mixed on the issue of amnesia and whether or not that made a person unfit for trial. Some of the case law stated that amnesia about the crime in question meant that the accused couldn’t help counsel and couldn’t assist in her own defense. According to the Constitution, the accused must be able to consult with her lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding of what she’s accused of doing. According to what Marina said to me, she didn't really have that kind of capacity, because she had no real knowledge of how her husband died.

  Granted, there was also case law on the other side of the question, as many courts stated that amnesia was not a reason that a person can be declared to be incompetent to stand trial. Even so, I knew that there was a chance t
hat Marina could be declared incompetent to be tried, and, if she could be, I had to try for that.

  So, the judge scheduled a hearing to determine if Marina was fit to stand trial. And then, once that was ruled upon, the judge scheduled another arraignment for her, where I could plead her not guilty by reason of insanity. That was the way that the judge decided, when I explained what was happening.

  So the first thing I needed to do was talk to Marina’s psychotherapist. And I explained all this to her.

  "Well, the reason why I need to talk with him is because I need to ask him about your dissociative states. I'm doing some research on this entire issue of not guilty by reason of insanity. In California the standard they follow is called the M'Naghten rule. Do you know what that is?"

  "Of course, darling." She batted her eyes at me. I thought that she was acting very strange, because her behavior was so different from the way that she acted the first time around. "The rule is that if the person doesn’t understand what she did, she’s legally insane. Or she does know that what she did, but she didn’t know that it was wrong. I would imagine that what you're going to try to do is tell the jury that I didn't know what I did. Because I know that murder is wrong. I'm not that crazy."

  “That's right,” I said. I was impressed that Marina knew as much about the M’Naghten rule as she did. “Obviously, in this case, I'm going to try to tell the jury that you had no idea what you were doing when you killed him."

  She shook her head. "Listen, I thought we went through this. I know that we talked about this. Just the other day."

  Right before my eyes, her face changed. When I first arrived at her house to talk with her, she had an almost innocent look on her face. Her eyes were wide, her face was open. She looked almost like a child who was wanting to please her parents.

  When I talked about the insanity plea, she changed. She narrowed her eyes and her face became like a stone. Hard, cold, unforgiving. The way her expression and facial features changed in an instance gave me chills, and not the good kind.

  "Aidan, I know that you don't want to lose your license to practice law. But I have to tell you that that’s going to happen to you if you don't do everything I'm asking to do. I have a way of, shall I say, getting what I want."

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it didn't sound good.

  "What are you talking about? I'm not going to lose my license to practice law just because I’m going against my client’s wishes. And, if you don't follow what I want to do with this case, how I want to try it, then it’s really just a matter of me withdrawing from your case. I'm telling you, I don't need this headache."

  She cocked her head a little bit. Then she licked her lips. "Would you like a glass of wine?" she asked.

  "I'm sorry. I'm on the job, and I really don't want to mess things up." Truth be told, I was feeling uncomfortable there in her house. It was the way she was dressed, the way that she was looking at me. It was like she was wanting to seduce me. Having a glass of wine with her would only encourage her, and that was the last thing that I wanted to do.

  “One glass. It's a bottle I got up in Temecula at a winery up there. Have you been up there?"

  "No, I can't say I've been up to Temecula."

  That was a lie, of course. I lived in San Diego. Of course I’d been up to Temecula. That was where the wineries were, because grapes grew well in its fertile soil. I’d been up there with buddies and dates, and it was always a fun time. But I wanted to cut off casual conversation with Marina, which was why I decided to lie and tell her that I had never been up there.

  “Well, then, you’re in for a treat,” she said, her face soft again. It was as if she were trying everything, all her bags of tricks, to manipulate me. Start out being warm, move on to threats, and, when all else fails, get me drunk and try to seduce me. I was determined that all her games weren’t going to work. Just stop. You aren’t going to get me off my strategy here.

  "Listen, as I said, we at least have to get the ball rolling on the insanity defense,” I said, ignoring her entreaties about the wine. “Granted, if new evidence comes up at a later date where we can show that you didn't actually do it, then I can talk to the judge about changing your plea to not guilty. As opposed to not guilty by reason of insanity. I spoke with some other attorneys about this very situation, and that's what they advised. But I have to preserve your plea of not guilty by reason of insanity by the next arraignment. And this is assuming that the judge finds that you are competent to stand trial. So, I have to talk to your psychotherapist and get all the information about your mental illness.”

  Marina took a deep breath, and it looked like she wasn’t going to try any more tricks for the time being. I wondered if I was reading her right.

  “Okay. Listen, tell me again about what my amnesia means for this case?" she asked.

  "Well we have to show that you did not have the mens rea for a crime. Mens rea means that you have the mental intention to commit the crime. According to the research on the insanity defense and amnesia, if you had dissociation at the time of the crime and your dissociation was because of a recognized mental defect, we can probably go ahead and plead insanity. There’s no guarantee that the judge would even accept an insanity plea unless I can show that. So it's very important that I get the records, and talk to your shrink, so that he can tell me about your dissociations, and all about the reasons why you have these dissociative episodes.”

  She nodded her head. "Okay. I’ll sign this piece of paper, so you can talk to my doctor."

  I was still suspicious of her, even after she signed the paper. We went to a law office to grab one of their notaries so that the waiver was official, and, the whole time I was with her, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was waiting for Marina to show me one of her many other faces, but she didn’t.

  After she signed the waiver, I headed downtown to see her shrink, Dr. Alan.

  Chapter 11

  When I got to Dr. Alan’s office suite, his secretary led me into his office, and I sat down on the leather couch that was right in front of his desk. Dr. Alan’s office was the kind of office that I would like to be in if my head was being shrunk. The floors were hardwood, with colorful throw rugs all around. His furniture was modern, with a glass desk, modern art on the walls and big leather chairs and sofas. He had an alcove in between two enormous book shelves that were filled with books about psychiatry and psychology, and the alcove had an exposed stone backsplash that I really thought was eye-catching. What I really liked, however, was how much light was pouring in through the room through the floor-to-ceiling low-e glass windows.

  Dr. Alan was staring at some fish in his tank when I walked in the door. “Aidan Collins, I presume?" he asked me without even looking up.

  "Yes, that's me. I called you on the phone earlier and made an arrangement to meet with you about a patient?"

  He nodded his head. "Yes. I know you want to talk to me about Marina Vasiliev. It's a sad thing, what happened with her. That she's accused of murdering her husband. It’s a tragic thing."

  "Yes, it is,” I agreed. “I need to talk with you about her background. As you probably know, there are two hurdles I have to clear with the court. One is that I need a determination if she’s competent to stand trial. Because, as you know, she doesn’t remember the night her husband died, so she doesn’t know if she killed him or if she didn’t, so she's not really able to assist me with her own defense. I’m sure that you’re aware that in the state of California, simply not remembering a crime doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t stand trial for it, but I need to at least make that argument.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Dr. Alan said, nodding his head. He had finally turned away from his fish feeding duties and he was sitting behind his desk, staring at his clasped hands.

  I went on. “The other argument is that even if she does stand trial, I need to possibly plead her not guilty by reason of insanity. So, that's where you come in. According to my resea
rch, if a person dissociates, and the dissociation occurred at the time of the crime and was part of a long-standing mental disease, I could plead her not guilty by reason of insanity. So I need to find out more about her personality disorder and about her dissociative states."

  He nodded his head again, and then stood up and sat down on top of the desk. Which was odd, but, at the same time, it was weirdly comforting that he could be so casual.

  "Okay,” he began. “Marina is fractured. That's the best way to describe what she is going through. She has all the classic signs of an individual with Borderline Personality Disorder. She's terrified of being abandoned. When she cares about somebody, if she thinks that that person is going to leave her, she gets frantic, even paranoid. She has an intense fear of that. At the same time, she sometimes try to pretend that she doesn't need anybody."

  “Did you think that maybe Lawrence was going to leave her?" That was one possibility, I had to admit. Maybe Lawrence wanted to leave and Marina got so frantic that she killed him.

  He shook his head. "No. I don't think that he was going to leave her. Marina and Lawrence, they had a complicated relationship, but I really kind of got the impression from speaking with her that the relationship with her husband wasn’t close. She didn't attach to him the way you might think that a person with Borderline Personality Disorder would attach to her husband. She thought of him as an object. A means to an end. I hope that makes sense."

  I thought about what she told me about Lawrence, and about how he essentially paid her to be married to him. Which I still thought was odd.

  "So do you think it was more like a business arrangement between her and Lawrence, then?" I asked Dr. Alan.

  "Yes. That's exactly what I thought about her relationship with him. So, as far as I know, she didn't have any real attachments. But I did note that there was a friend of hers, her name was Celia, and I guess that Celia and she grew up together. As you know, Marina has only been in this country since the age of seven. Before she was seven, she was in an orphanage in Russia, and she experienced terrible things there. So when she came to this country, she was adopted by a family, Celeste and Tommy Williams. They gave her anything that she could ask for, including love, and Celeste even stayed home with her. But, unfortunately, because Marina spent her formative years in an orphanage being sexually abused, neglected, starved, beaten and tied to a bed half the time, and not getting the kind of attachments that she needed with another adult, she felt that the world was unsafe. Her personality disorder is deeply rooted and was developed at a very young age. There wasn't really much that her parents could do for her."