By Reason of Insanity Read online

  I felt badly for Marina, to say the very least. But I had a job to do, and I couldn’t bring my emotions into it. “Okay,” I said, “what can you tell me about Celia?"

  "Well, when Marina was 19, she moved in with Celia. Celia and she were friends from the age of seven, best friends. I started treating her because of her issues with Celia. At that time, Celia was engaged and was going through the process of what happens when you find someone to marry and your interpersonal dynamics start to drastically change. You know, when two women are single and living together, you have a certain lifestyle, a certain dynamic. You’re hanging out watching movies together, you’re going to bars and restaurants together, you’re staying up late nights, talking and bonding.

  Then, when one of the parties finds a relationship with the opposite sex, things change. You don’t see your friend as much as you did before. You’re not there when your friend wants to stay up late on a Friday night, drinking wine, eating chicken wings and binge-watching Netflix shows. One of the women is still making a standing Friday night date in front of the television, but the other woman is entertaining an actual date that night. So, it’s a time for change, and, for some, it’s a time of profound loss. That is particularly true when the party who is being left behind has a mental disorder.”

  I took notes while he spoke. I knew that what he was saying was true - I knew enough women in my life to know how important their friends were, and how things change when one of them gets romantically involved with somebody.

  “Things changed when Celia found a man to marry named Frank Cerelli. She wasn’t around as much, and then she told Marina that she was going to move in with him. When Celia started to stay away from the apartment at first, sometimes for days at a time, Marina came to see me. She was very distressed. She expressed dark fantasies about what she wanted to do to Celia and to Frank.”

  “What kind of dark fantasies?” I asked.

  “At first, it was simply that Marina wanted to end up in the hospital so that Celia would come back to her. She fantasized that she could get into a car accident that was serious enough that she would have to stay in the hospital for days or weeks, but not so serious that it would kill her. She explained that she thought that Celia would come to her bedside and stay around her again. They would watch movies on the hospital TV and play board games, and it would be just like old times.”

  That sounded innocent enough, I thought. I mean, it would obviously be twisted if somebody actually did something like that, but to think about it and fantasize about it? No, that didn’t seem weird at all.

  “What other kind of dark fantasies did she have?”

  “That was it at first. That was the only dark fantasy that she had expressed to me at that time. But she started to take other actions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Stalking behavior. She would go by Frank’s apartment every single day, just pop in unannounced, which was annoying for Celia, but harmless, I would imagine. But she also would sit in front of Frank’s apartment and just watch for them to come out. She would break into Frank’s home when he and Celia were out, and would go through his personal things. She was looking for something that would make Celia want to dump Frank. She wanted to find any kind of incriminating evidence that maybe he was having an affair or was otherwise not loyal to Celia.”

  Dr. Alan hesitated and I thought that something worse was coming. Much, much worse.

  He continued on. “Eventually, she came around so much that Celia had to ask her to not come around anymore. Frank was getting annoyed, and it was causing a strain on Celia’s relationship with him. Marina told me that she didn’t take that well. She broke down crying and screaming and threatening Frank and Celia, and they got a restraining order against her.”

  Uh oh. Receiving a restraining order was hard for a normal person. I would imagine that somebody like Marina, who was mentally ill, would really have a hard time with that.

  “Did Celia and Frank end up getting married?”

  "No. Actually not. Frank was in a car accident. Celia thought that Marina had something to do with it, so she moved away to the East Coast, and Marina was never able to contact her. She disappeared, off the grid, no social pages, apparently changed her name.”

  "Why did Celia blame Marina for the accident?"

  “She blamed Marina because, quite frankly, she was responsible for it. Nobody could ever prove anything, but the carpet on the driver side floorboard got stuck on top of Frank's gas pedal. It was never like that before. At least, that was what I understood from the police reports.” He took a deep breath. “I’m telling you this because Marina expressly gave me permission to tell you. Otherwise, this would be confidential. But she came to see me yesterday and she gave me explicit permission to discuss what she did to Frank.”

  “And did she actually do that to Frank?”

  “She did, and Celia knew that she did. Celia apparently saw Marina do it. Or, rather, she saw Marina get into Frank’s car, and leave immediately. Marina did tamper with Frank’s car, and then she deliberately planted sexy text messages on Frank's phone. She knew that Frank didn’t check his text messages that often - he was a busy guy, and days would go by before he would even check them. Marina managed to get a friend of hers to sext him, and then she knew that Celia would find the the sext. And she did, and that caused a fight, and Frank left in a hurry. He apparently didn’t notice the carpet issue, because he stormed out of the house after being accused of something he didn’t do. He ended up on the highway with his gas pedal stuck, so he started going 100 mph before he turned his car over in a ravine. He was killed instantly.”

  So, Dr. Alan was pretty much telling me that Marina was responsible for someone else's death. Lovely.

  “So, she caused Frank’s death, then?”

  “She did.” Dr. Alan nodded. “Again, she gave me explicit permission to tell you this. Because she gave this permission, I explained to her that confidentiality would be breached, which would mean that she would potentially be held liable for Frank’s death. But she was fine with this. She wanted you to know about this.”

  I was going to have to figure out what my responsibility was with this information. As her attorney, however, I knew that I couldn’t tell law enforcement about what she did. I had to have loyalty to my client.

  "Okay, so what else can you tell me about her emotional issues?"

  "Well, I can tell you that Marina is really two different people. I mean, I have not diagnosed her with Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is commonly known as multiple personality disorder. With Dissociative Identity Disorder, there are usually distinct personalities, and the classical way of thinking about it is that each personality has a different name, different behaviors, different tastes, different characteristics and each personality is separate and distinct. Marina does not have multiple personalities, at least not that I have been able to tell. But she has told me that she has this part of her that is her shadow self. She calls her shadow self either Sarah or Malphas, which is the name of a demon in Christian theology. Whether the shadow self is referred to as Sarah or Malphas depends on the day. She wants her shadow to be Sarah. Because Sarah, in Marina's mind, is a good, kind, healthy person. But, Marina thinks of her shadow self is more like Malphas.”

  ”I don't understand. Why is her shadow self called Malphas?”

  “Because Malphas is the name of a Christian demon. According to Christian theology, Malphas is second in command to Satan, and is known for his destruction of his enemies. Marina has told me that she sometimes felt like a demon, one that only wants to destroy whatever is in its path.”

  "So her demon is –"

  “Her shadow self. See, one of the classic signs of Borderline Personality Disorder is that you don't have a stable sense of self. Sometimes you look in the mirror and you feel that the person looking back at you is somebody who you really like, even love. You think that the person in the mirror is a good, moral person. Other times, you look in the mirr
or, and you see yourself as being horrible, evil. A devil. A demon. And it's that shadow self, the person who the borderline sees as being evil, who engages in the destructive behaviors. There are also emotional mood swings, from depression to being happy, to being despondent to being manic. Mood swings are things that flare up out of nowhere, but then they're gone. They can last a few minutes or a few hours."

  I thought about what I saw back at Marina's house. How she went from happy and smiling, to hard and cold, to flirtatious, and then back to happy and smiling, all in just a matter of minutes.

  The doctor went on. “Marina also is typical of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder in that she has explosive anger that she cannot control. And she does have suicidal ideation. At least, that's what she tells me. She feels empty inside. Like there's nothing there. Void. She tells me that she often believes that she doesn’t have a soul.”

  All this wasn’t sounding good. In fact, it was sounding as if there was a strong probability that Marina killed her husband. The more I spoke with Dr. Alan, the more I started to believe that an insanity plea was the way to go.

  "Now tell me about the dissociation."

  "Yes. Marina has told me that there have been times when she loses hours, even days. She doesn't really know why that is. But she has told me that, for instance, it'll be a Friday afternoon, and the last thing she remembered was going shopping at the mall the previous Monday. She would tell me that she would remember going to Bloomingdale's, and the next thing she knows it's four days later and she's in her bed at home. She doesn't really know why that happens. As I said, I would suspect that she has Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I don't see any evidence of that. And, dissociation is a fairly common symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder. As with many patients with BPD, Marina’s dissociation occurs when she's under a lot of stress. Because she’s not always in touch with reality, she also feels suspicious of people and paranoid. She doesn't think that people have the best motives for her. So, you're going have a challenge with her as a client.”

  "Do you believe her? Do you believe that she can't remember what happened when her husband was killed?"

  "Yes. I do believe her. I know that she was experiencing a great deal of stress at the time that her husband was murdered. She's very open with me about things that are happening with her life. But, for some odd reason, she would not tell me what this particular stressor was. I tried to pry it out of her. I mean I could not understand why she wouldn't tell me about it. After all, she told me about everything, including how she tampered with Frank’s car, causing his death. But, in this case, she told me that she could not explain exactly what was going on in her life. All I know is that, in the weeks leading up to her husband's death, she was frightened. She was also very angry."

  Frightened, angry. And the weird thing was that Marina was not telling her shrink about exactly why she was frightened and angry. That was the strangest thing.

  “So, do you think that she killed her husband?" I asked.

  "It's impossible to say. I do believe that she told the truth when she says she doesn’t remember that night. If that says anything at all."

  I spoke with Dr. Alan for several more hours, and, after I talked with him, I knew what I had to do.

  Chapter 12

  The hearing on whether or not Marina was competent to stand trial was held that following Monday. That was after I spoke with her psychotherapist, and I had my research all together. I got the response to my motion I filed asking the court to find my client not competent to stand trial, and I knew that the prosecutor was going to argue that my client’s amnesia from the night her husband died didn’t preclude her standing trial for his murder. Jenna Powell was representing the state of California in this case. She was a long-time prosecutor with plenty of trial experience, and I knew that she was anxious to eat me alive.

  This hearing was going to give her her first shot at me, so I knew that I had to bring my A game.

  I had my case law all together and I knew that whether or not the judge was going to order Marina to stand trial was dependent on many factors. I was going to argue that, because Marina had no idea what happened the night her husband died, she couldn’t assist me and she couldn’t testify on her own behalf about what happened that night. But, another factor was whether or not the evidence could be extrinsically reconstructed, which meant that I could still defend her by showing extrinsic evidence that she didn’t do it.

  That was really the rub. Truth be told, even though I made a motion about the competency issue, I also secretly wanted to lose this particular hearing. That was because I could try to reconstruct the evidence in this case. If there was any possibility that Marina had nothing to do with her husband’s murder, I wanted to find that out. If she was deemed not competent to stand trial, she would possibly be committed to a mental institution for the rest of her life. That wouldn’t be right if she didn’t actually do it.

  Yet, I also knew that if she did do it, it would be best if she didn’t stand trial.

  I made my arguments about the fact that Marina couldn’t assist in her own defense, and Jenna made her arguments. She stated that, while there wasn’t much case law in California about whether amnesia about a criminal act precluded the defendant being tried, she did cite one case, People v. Amador, a California Supreme Court case that stated that amnesia regarding a crime, in and of itself, did not automatically mean incompetence to stand trial.

  “One of the reasons why the California Supreme Court found that amnesia is not necessarily a reason that a court might find a defendant incompetent is that amnesia is easy to fake,” Jenna told the court.

  “But my client wasn’t faking,” I said. “She’s been diagnosed with dissociation. I watched the interrogation between my client and the cops who brought her in, and she was acting very different. Her face was blank, her words were rote and didn’t have emotions, and she wasn’t answering the questions right. Her answers to the cops’ questions were nonsensical. I could show your honor this interrogation record if that would help.”

  The judge took a deep breath. “That might be necessary, but let me listen to the rest of the arguments first.”

  “Another argument that the California Supreme Court made in People v. Amador was that a person with amnesia brought on by mental illness or trauma is no worse off than somebody who can’t remember committing a crime because of excessive drinking or drug use, and sometimes people commit crimes while they’re asleep and under the influence of Ambien or another powerful sedative. It’s against public policy to negate criminal responsibility because an individual was too drunk or drugged up to remember committing a crime, and, likewise, it is just as against public policy to negate criminal responsibility because an individual has amnesia,” Jenna argued. “To negate criminal responsibility and allow defendants to avoid trial because they can’t remember a crime would jeopardize the safety and security of law-abiding citizens.”

  “Your honor, I think that we can all agree that amnesia brought on by mental illness is different than amnesia brought on by excessive drinking or drug-taking,” I said. “My client’s memory loss was through no fault of her own. And, even in the case of People v. Amador, the court stated that whether the circumstances surrounding the amnesiac incident would result in the defendant being declared incompetent to stand trial would be evaluated on a case by case basis. In this case, my client has been suffering from a long-standing mental illness and has had many dissociative states in the past, much like the state that she was in at the time of the murder.”

  Judge Watts listened to both of our arguments and then nodded her head.

  "Okay," she said after both of us presented our arguments. “I’ve read my own case law on this matter, and it seems like the balance of the case law states that public policy would not be served if we decided to declare that amnesia was a catch-all reason for a finding of incompetency to stand trial. And, quite frankly, Mr. Collins, I don't know what I could even do wit
h your client if I decided to declare her incompetent to stand trial. The problem is that people who are incompetent to stand trial are usually remanded to a mental institution, where they receive treatment, and, hopefully, they’ll be declared competent to stand trial after this treatment.

  In this case, because the incompetency stems from the fact that the client could not remember the crime in question, it would be impossible to ever bring her to the state where she's competent to stand trial. So it would be against public policy to state that she would never be able to stand trial for what the prosecutor alleged that she did. So, because of that, I will go ahead and state that your client is competent to stand trial. I am not going to have her evaluated by a psychotherapist for the competency issue. Now, I would like to go ahead and give a date for the formal arraignment for your client. If you would like to plead your client not guilty by reason of insanity, then you can make this pleading then. I'm going to set that arraignment for Monday, July 5, three weeks from today."

  I felt nervous. In three weeks I was going to have to decide whether or not I was going to try for the insanity defense. Granted, I knew that I could always withdraw that plea at some point in the future, if I found out that, in fact, Marina did not actually kill her husband.