Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 24, 2006 7:23:16 GMT -5
Conner Schierman told police he awoke to carnage after drinking, but doesn't remember the murders
For those who know Conner Michael Schierman, the image investigators are developing of a drunken man who awoke in a zombie-like state inside his neighbors' home, bleeding amid their butchered bodies, is hard to imagine.
But defense attorneys and a noted forensic psychiatrist say
alcohol-induced blackouts are real - and they just might save the
24-year-old Schierman from execution or even life in prison.
Prosecutors on Monday intend to file charges of arson and four counts of aggravated 1st-degree murder against Schierman for the brutal stabbing deaths of Olga Milkin, her 2 sons, 5-year-old Justin and 3-year-old Andrew, and her sister Lyubov Botvina.
According to court documents, Schierman told police he awoke to the carnage in Milkin's house Monday morning after a night of heavy drinking. He said he set the house ablaze to destroy evidence of what had happened.
He must have blacked out, Schierman told police.
He doesn't remember anything about the murders.
Scott O'Toole, the lead prosecutor in the case, doubts Schierman's memory loss.
But if Schierman can convince a jury he has no memory of the murder, at least one top local defense attorney thinks it could make the requirement of proving intent quite difficult for prosecutors.
"If a person is intoxicated to the point that they can't form intent to kill, that's diminished capacity," said Seattle attorney John Henry Browne.
It's very difficult to sell to a jury, he said, but it has been known to work.
Browne said he twice convinced jurors to agree on reduced charges against defendants who had no recollection of violent crimes. In one case, a man charged with 1st-degree murder was found guilty of a reduced charge of 2nd-degree murder.
A similar scenario is currently playing out in King County Superior Court as another Kirkland man prepares to be sentenced next month for the death of a Microsoft manager.
Ronald Jacob Lakey, 36, admits he repeatedly stabbed David Barzilai and later cut off the man's left hand, but a jury in April found him guilty only of manslaughter - rather than his original charge of 1st-degree murder - which requires proof of both intent and premeditation.
The defense used the diminished-capacity defense, arguing that after injecting himself with "ice" methamphetamine, Lakey had no control over his actions and therefore could not have formed an intent to murder Barzilai.
Jurors simply could not agree that Lakey intended to murder Barzilai because Lakey had blacked out much of the violent attack.
The jury's verdict means Lakey likely will serve about 20 years in prison, instead of the rest of his life as prosecutors had sought.
If Schierman's statements to police are admitted as evidence in his trial, here are 2 possible defenses:
- not guilty by reason of insanity,
- or that he suffered from a diminished mental capacity at the time of the killings.
Insanity is difficult to prove in court. The rule used in Washington state dates back two and a half centuries to Daniel M'Naghten's 1843 assassination attempt on the British prime minister (he mistakenly killed the prime minister's secretary instead).
Simply stated, the M'Naghten Rule says that someone can't be held responsible if suffering from "a mental disease or defect" so serious that the person could not "perceive the nature and quality of the act" and was "unable to tell right from wrong."
In other words, did he know what he was doing? And did he know it was wrong?
That defense was used in the notorious 1989 Issaquah slayings of television personality Larry Sturholm and Debra Sweiger by Bill Pawlyk, who until that July day was a member of society's elite: chairman of the Tri-Cities Enterprise Association and being considered for promotion to admiral in the U.S. Navy Reserves.
That day Pawlyk taped knives to his socks, stabbed Sturholm a dozen times, showered, waited for Sweiger, fought with her for nearly 30 minutes, then slashed his own throat and wrists, filled a tub with warm water and crawled in, expecting to die.
He didn't, and the insanity defense didn't work. In the Washington State Penitentiary years later, Pawlyk said "I still don't understand it. ... I don't know why I did what I did.
"I don't know why I became a monster that day. I don't know why I'm alive when Larry and Debbie are dead."
The "diminished capacity" defense hinges on whether the person had the mental ability to form the intent to commit the crime.
Using alcohol as a defense varies from state to state. In Washington, there is no prohibition against attempting to use either alcoholism or an alcoholic blackout as a defense.
In a 1988 death penalty case in Texas involving a woman clubbed to death with a baseball bat, courts ruled that an alcoholic blackout could not be used as a defense, although it could have been used to mitigate the punishment.
Texas courts also have consistently ruled that alcoholism may not be the basis for an involuntary intoxication defense.
Getting jurors to believe alcohol washed out Schierman's memory of the murders would be just half the task facing his defense team. They'll also have to explain how this seemingly mild-natured man with no criminal record could undergo such a drastic metamorphosis while drunk.
Friends of Schierman said he has long struggled with alcoholism, but he recently completed a stint in rehab and seemed to be on his way to recovery.
Carl McGavran, Schierman's former manager at a Factoria pet store, said he used to go out drinking with Schierman on occasion, and Schierman was known to have blackouts from time to time. But he never became violent.
According to Dr. Park Dietz, a prominent forensic psychiatrist in Newport Beach, Calif., the effects of alcohol can be varied and often severe, causing people in the haze of a blackout to do things they never would do when they're sober.
"It is certainly possible for a person to do highly uncharacteristic acts while they're intoxicated," Dietz said, declining to comment directly about Schierman's case. "It's also possible for a person to have no recollection whatsoever of what they did.
"People are not uniformly consistent in their reaction to alcohol."
Dietz has served as an expert witness in high-profile murder trials such as Andrea Yates, Jeffrey Dahmer and, locally, in the trial of Ron Matthews.
Matthews was found guilty of first-degree murder in the June 2002 shooting of a police officer in Newcastle. Matthews lost his bid for insanity when he claimed crack cocaine left him in a drugged stupor at the time of the murder.
"In general, courts have for some time not fully excused behavior that is the result of voluntary intoxication," he said.
But in many cases the question is decided by jurors.
(source: King County Journal)
For those who know Conner Michael Schierman, the image investigators are developing of a drunken man who awoke in a zombie-like state inside his neighbors' home, bleeding amid their butchered bodies, is hard to imagine.
But defense attorneys and a noted forensic psychiatrist say
alcohol-induced blackouts are real - and they just might save the
24-year-old Schierman from execution or even life in prison.
Prosecutors on Monday intend to file charges of arson and four counts of aggravated 1st-degree murder against Schierman for the brutal stabbing deaths of Olga Milkin, her 2 sons, 5-year-old Justin and 3-year-old Andrew, and her sister Lyubov Botvina.
According to court documents, Schierman told police he awoke to the carnage in Milkin's house Monday morning after a night of heavy drinking. He said he set the house ablaze to destroy evidence of what had happened.
He must have blacked out, Schierman told police.
He doesn't remember anything about the murders.
Scott O'Toole, the lead prosecutor in the case, doubts Schierman's memory loss.
But if Schierman can convince a jury he has no memory of the murder, at least one top local defense attorney thinks it could make the requirement of proving intent quite difficult for prosecutors.
"If a person is intoxicated to the point that they can't form intent to kill, that's diminished capacity," said Seattle attorney John Henry Browne.
It's very difficult to sell to a jury, he said, but it has been known to work.
Browne said he twice convinced jurors to agree on reduced charges against defendants who had no recollection of violent crimes. In one case, a man charged with 1st-degree murder was found guilty of a reduced charge of 2nd-degree murder.
A similar scenario is currently playing out in King County Superior Court as another Kirkland man prepares to be sentenced next month for the death of a Microsoft manager.
Ronald Jacob Lakey, 36, admits he repeatedly stabbed David Barzilai and later cut off the man's left hand, but a jury in April found him guilty only of manslaughter - rather than his original charge of 1st-degree murder - which requires proof of both intent and premeditation.
The defense used the diminished-capacity defense, arguing that after injecting himself with "ice" methamphetamine, Lakey had no control over his actions and therefore could not have formed an intent to murder Barzilai.
Jurors simply could not agree that Lakey intended to murder Barzilai because Lakey had blacked out much of the violent attack.
The jury's verdict means Lakey likely will serve about 20 years in prison, instead of the rest of his life as prosecutors had sought.
If Schierman's statements to police are admitted as evidence in his trial, here are 2 possible defenses:
- not guilty by reason of insanity,
- or that he suffered from a diminished mental capacity at the time of the killings.
Insanity is difficult to prove in court. The rule used in Washington state dates back two and a half centuries to Daniel M'Naghten's 1843 assassination attempt on the British prime minister (he mistakenly killed the prime minister's secretary instead).
Simply stated, the M'Naghten Rule says that someone can't be held responsible if suffering from "a mental disease or defect" so serious that the person could not "perceive the nature and quality of the act" and was "unable to tell right from wrong."
In other words, did he know what he was doing? And did he know it was wrong?
That defense was used in the notorious 1989 Issaquah slayings of television personality Larry Sturholm and Debra Sweiger by Bill Pawlyk, who until that July day was a member of society's elite: chairman of the Tri-Cities Enterprise Association and being considered for promotion to admiral in the U.S. Navy Reserves.
That day Pawlyk taped knives to his socks, stabbed Sturholm a dozen times, showered, waited for Sweiger, fought with her for nearly 30 minutes, then slashed his own throat and wrists, filled a tub with warm water and crawled in, expecting to die.
He didn't, and the insanity defense didn't work. In the Washington State Penitentiary years later, Pawlyk said "I still don't understand it. ... I don't know why I did what I did.
"I don't know why I became a monster that day. I don't know why I'm alive when Larry and Debbie are dead."
The "diminished capacity" defense hinges on whether the person had the mental ability to form the intent to commit the crime.
Using alcohol as a defense varies from state to state. In Washington, there is no prohibition against attempting to use either alcoholism or an alcoholic blackout as a defense.
In a 1988 death penalty case in Texas involving a woman clubbed to death with a baseball bat, courts ruled that an alcoholic blackout could not be used as a defense, although it could have been used to mitigate the punishment.
Texas courts also have consistently ruled that alcoholism may not be the basis for an involuntary intoxication defense.
Getting jurors to believe alcohol washed out Schierman's memory of the murders would be just half the task facing his defense team. They'll also have to explain how this seemingly mild-natured man with no criminal record could undergo such a drastic metamorphosis while drunk.
Friends of Schierman said he has long struggled with alcoholism, but he recently completed a stint in rehab and seemed to be on his way to recovery.
Carl McGavran, Schierman's former manager at a Factoria pet store, said he used to go out drinking with Schierman on occasion, and Schierman was known to have blackouts from time to time. But he never became violent.
According to Dr. Park Dietz, a prominent forensic psychiatrist in Newport Beach, Calif., the effects of alcohol can be varied and often severe, causing people in the haze of a blackout to do things they never would do when they're sober.
"It is certainly possible for a person to do highly uncharacteristic acts while they're intoxicated," Dietz said, declining to comment directly about Schierman's case. "It's also possible for a person to have no recollection whatsoever of what they did.
"People are not uniformly consistent in their reaction to alcohol."
Dietz has served as an expert witness in high-profile murder trials such as Andrea Yates, Jeffrey Dahmer and, locally, in the trial of Ron Matthews.
Matthews was found guilty of first-degree murder in the June 2002 shooting of a police officer in Newcastle. Matthews lost his bid for insanity when he claimed crack cocaine left him in a drugged stupor at the time of the murder.
"In general, courts have for some time not fully excused behavior that is the result of voluntary intoxication," he said.
But in many cases the question is decided by jurors.
(source: King County Journal)