By Reason of Insanity (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  Adrianos listened intently, nodding and mm-hmming at all the appropriate places.

  “Yes, yes, I quite agree,” he said. “Robyn said you were an honest prosecutor. Well, Robyn didn’t say that. She said you were dashing and experienced. But she said Jessica said you were honest. I can see that as well. Come back to my office and let’s discuss mental illness, shall we?”

  He took Brunelle by the elbow—much to the chagrin of Nurse Angry—and steered him into the bowels of Cascade Mental Hospital. The nurse huffed, and One-Eyed Eddie was moaning slightly, but Brunelle hardly noticed. His mind was filled with a different noise:

  ‘Robyn said you were dashing.’

  *

  Adrianos’ office was immense, of course. A wall of windows looked out onto an enclosed courtyard dotted with patients and staff. One nurse was pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Two other nurses were taking a cigarette break under a tree. Several patients were just walking around aimlessly. One patient was exposing himself to some flowers, and appeared pleased by their reaction.

  “So,” Adrianos practically shouted as he sat down behind his massive oaken desk. “Competency to stand trial. Quite the problematic mystery, eh, counselor?”

  Brunelle sat back in his leather guest chair opposite Adrianos. “Well, I’m not so sure it’s problematic or mysterious. In fact, it seems pretty straightforward to me. Does a person understand the charges against him and the nature of the court proceedings? Keesha sure seems to know she’s being prosecuted for murder.”

  “But she thinks it was justified,” Adrianos pointed out.

  “Which means she’s insane,” Brunelle replied, “not incompetent. In fact, I’d say the fact that she believes it was justified in her particular case shows that she knows, generally speaking, murder is wrong.”

  Adrianos shook his head and steepled his hands at the fingertips. “But don’t you see? It’s precisely that sort of fixed delusion that makes her incompetent.”

  Brunelle didn’t see. He said as much.

  “That’s because,” Adrianos continued, in a voice both pedagogic and patronizing, “you’ve forgotten about the other part of incompetency. A person is incompetent to stand trial if they suffer from a mental defect that prevents them from either understanding the charges and proceedings against them or from assisting their attorney in the presentation of their defense. Keesha’s fixed delusions of justification prevent her from assisting Jessica and Robyn.”

  “First of all,” Brunelle raised a finger, “Robyn’s not her lawyer. She just said she knew you.”

  He wasn’t sure why that bothered him, but it did.

  “Oh yes,” Adrianos practically hummed. “We know each other.”

  Yeah, it definitely bothered him.

  “Second,” Brunelle forged on, “that’s not really the test. There are plenty of gang-banger thugs in the jail who refuse to even talk to their ‘public pretender.’ The defense attorney has to try the case without any assistance from their client. That doesn’t make the defendant incompetent.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Adrianos challenged. “I would suggest that their anger and resentment at both society in general and their government-sponsored lawyer in particular would be symptomatic of a deep-seated personality disorder, likely caused by severe and/or repeated childhood trauma. I imagine most such defendants would present with Oppositional Defiant Disorder or perhaps even Antisocial Personality Disorder, both of which are psychological illnesses recognized in the DSM-IV.”

  Brunelle just stared at Adrianos, certain he must have misheard him.

  “The DSM-IV is the standard diagnostic manual for the fields of psychology and psychiatry,” Adrianos explained. “It stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition.”

  Brunelle regained himself. “I know what the DSM-IV is,” he assured. “I have a copy on my bookshelf.”

  Adrianos smiled and nodded. “Of course you do.”

  “Well, Keesha Sawyer doesn’t have Oppositional Defiance Disorder,” Brunelle forged on. “She’s having no trouble speaking with her attorney, or the doctors at Western State, or me, for that matter.”

  “Yes, but her delusions of justification,” Adrianos said slowly, as if that might help Brunelle understand, “make such conversations unhelpful. Therefore, she cannot assist her attorney. Therefore, she is incompetent.”

  Brunelle ran his hands through his hair. “But by your definition of incompetency, we’d never reach a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Everyone who’s legally insane would also be incompetent and therefore couldn’t be prosecuted.”

  Adrianos smiled. “Exactly.

  “But that’s crazy.”

  Adrianos dropped his steepled hands. “Did you really just say that?” he laughed. “Come now. Don’t be so upset. It really does make sense if you think about it.”

  “I don’t think it makes sense to render the insanity defense meaningless.”

  “Of course it does,” Adrianos replied evenly. “We render diagnoses irrelevant all the time as the field progresses. Why, did you know that homosexuality used to be a recognized mental disorder? It was in the DSM-II.”

  Brunelle did know that. Both sides always used that fact to discredit the DSM diagnoses of the other side’s psychologist.

  “Insanity is outdated,” Adrianos declared. “Tell me, what’s the seminal legal case on insanity?”

  “M’Naghten,” Brunelle replied. Everybody knew that. Well, every criminal trial lawyer. “It was a British case from 1840-something. It established the M’Naghten Rule: basically, a defendant can’t be found guilty of a crime if he didn’t understand the wrongfulness of his conduct.”

  “Correct,” Adrianos affirmed, much to Brunelle’s irritation. He didn’t need a psychologist to affirm his knowledge of the law. “But it’s almost two hundred years old. It’s from a bygone era when the English reduced the ‘mac’ and ‘mc’ from Scottish and Irish to just an ‘M’ and an apostrophe. No one does that anymore. And the notion of legal insanity is just as outdated. If someone is so mentally ill that they think it’s okay to murder their mother with a hatchet, there is no way they can truly understand the world around them and assist their attorney. Accordingly, they’re incompetent. We never reach the question of legal insanity. Such is the progression of the field since 1843.”

  Brunelle sighed and rested his forehead in a fist. He looked out at the courtyard again. The flower flasher had moved on to a nearby tree and seemed to be doing more than just exposing himself.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Brunelle?” Adrianos asked.

  Brunelle turned back and smiled weakly. “Sure. It’s just—Well, I think you’re totally wrong. I was hoping talking to you in person might help, but I guess not. It’s just a little disappointing is all.”

  Adrianos nodded sympathetically. “Yes, I understand. You have a very stressful job.”

  Brunelle shrugged. “I like my job.”

  “Of course you do,” the doctor replied. “And I hear you’re very good at it.”

  Brunelle smiled. “Yeah? Well, that’s nice to hear.”

  “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t stressful,” Adrianos continued. “Dealing with all those murders and rapes and assaults. Having victims and families depending on you to bring about justice. Only to have people like me get in your way.”

  Brunelle shook his head. “No, you’re just doing your job too.”

  Adrianos returned his steepled fingertips to his lips. “You know, police officers often seek counseling to help deal with all the horrible things they encounter every day. But I don’t see many prosecutors do that.”

  “I’m not a cop,” Brunelle was quick to point out. He helped them, he was part of their team, but he’d never lay claim to that kind of status. Cops were heroes; he was just a lawyer.

  “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t benefit from some counseling yourself.”

  Brunelle looked out the window again. Apparently the romanti
c liaison with the tree was over. The patient was being escorted away by the nurses who had finished their cigarette break.

  Brunelle looked back the psychologist. “I’m not crazy,” he insisted.

  Adrianos smiled broadly, his eyes flashing disturbingly. “Isn’t that exactly what Keesha Sawyer said?”

  Chapter 13

  Adrianos didn’t take long to draft his report, but it couldn’t have arrived at a worse time. Duncan had scheduled a nine o’clock meeting with Brunelle and Fargas and Fargas’ clients. Or rather, Fargas had demanded a meeting with Duncan and Brunelle. Brunelle had received the email scheduler a few days earlier and dutifully accepted it into his busy calendar. So when 8:58 rolled around that morning, Brunelle took a long, last drag of his coffee and trudged into Duncan’s office.

  “Behave yourself,” was all Duncan said when Brunelle walked in.

  Brunelle raised his right hand. “So help me God.”

  Three minutes later, the receptionist escorted Fargas and his clients into Duncan’s office. The introductions commenced and soon Brunelle learned that the couple’s names were Louise and Ron Langford. They all sat down around the conference table and Duncan started the meeting.

  “So, what can we do for you, Charles?”

  Fargas leaned back and grinned. He was far more comfortable being catered to than being challenged. Brunelle just sat quietly, arms crossed, and told himself, Shut up, Brunelle. Just shut up.

  “I’ve got some concerns, Matt,” Fargas started. He gestured toward Mr. and Mrs. Langford. “We have some concerns. About the way the criminal case is proceeding.”

  Duncan nodded and turned to Brunelle. “How is it proceeding?”

  “It isn’t,” Brunelle replied. “We’re in a holding pattern until the competency issue gets sorted out.”

  Duncan would understand that. Fargas, apparently, not so much.

  “That’s where our concerns lie, Matt,” he said. “This is off to a slow start and going nowhere fast. I wonder—We wonder, whether the case might need to be reassigned to someone who will be a little more aggressive.”

  Brunelle’s fists clenched. He didn’t get taken off cases. He got put on cases when other attorneys got taken off them. And he certainly didn’t get taken off cases because he didn’t suck up to some fat-ass civil attorney. The voice in his head that had told him to shut up, threw up its hands and said, Yeah, never mind. Say whatever you want.

  Luckily, Duncan jumped in first. “I appreciate your concerns, Charles, but these things take time. Mental health defenses are especially complicated and slow. We need to wait for the competency evaluation, then we can move forward.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” Fargas blustered. “We have the competency evaluation. The doctors said she’s competent, so I don’t understand—” He waved again at Mr. and Mrs. Langford. “We don’t understand why Keesha hasn’t been arraigned yet. At this rate, the case will never go to trial.”

  Duncan looked to Brunelle. “Dave?”

  “The defense is getting an independent eval.” Brunelle knew Duncan didn’t need any more explanation for the delay than that.

  “Really?” Duncan remarked. It wasn’t that common. Usually, they accepted the Western State evaluation.

  “Really,” Brunelle confirmed. “They have that right. It’s in the statute.”

  Duncan nodded and turned to Fargas. “He’s right.”

  Fargas narrowed his eyes and started to blotch red at the jowls. The guy obviously had a temper. Brunelle guessed he lost it a lot in trial. If he ever went to trial.

  “Well, how long is that going to take?” Fargas demanded.

  A knock came on Duncan’s door. All eyes turned to see Nicole opening the door, several sheets of paper in her hand. “This just came in by email,” she said to Brunelle. “I thought you’d want to see it.”

  Duncan seemed a bit irritated by the interruption, but Brunelle knew what it was—the only thing Nicole would have interrupted that particular meeting for. He stood up and took the report from her. “Thanks.”

  She smiled and offered a subtle wink. “Good luck,” she whispered.

  Brunelle closed the door as he scanned the top sheet. He nodded and looked at the others. “Yep. This is their report.”

  “What does it say?” Duncan asked.

  Brunelle flipped through it quickly. He knew what it was going to say, but he also knew he better confirm it before he said it out loud. Luckily, Adrianos wrote a much clearer report than the folks at Western State. Three pages, right to the point, with the conclusion in boldface at the end. “They say she’s incompetent.”

  Fargas threw his arms wide and made a loud noise like a tire going flat. “Well, now what?!”

  “Now we have a contested competency hearing,” Brunelle answered. “With dueling experts. Our doc says she’s competent. Theirs says she isn’t. And the judge decides.

  “What if the judge agrees with their expert, Mr. Brunelle?” Mrs. Langford asked. “What if the judge decides she’s incompetent.”

  Brunelle frowned. “Then the case will be dismissed.”

  Chapter 14

  Kat was in a side room off the examining area. She was sitting at a small table on which rested an open jar of cloudy green liquid, a human brain on a metal tray, and her sack lunch.

  She looked up as Brunelle darkened the doorway, a scalpel in one hand, the last bite of a B.L.T. in the other.

  “David!” She stuffed the food in her mouth and swallowed. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  “You’re eating lunch?” Brunelle was a bit shocked.

  Kat shrugged. “Busy day. I’m working through lunch.”

  Brunelle shook his head. “I didn’t mean working through lunch. I meant, how the hell can you eat with a dead brain on a plate in front of you?”

  Kat looked down at the half-dissected organ. “It’s a tray,” she pointed out.

  Brunelle laughed. “Oh, right. Of course. Forgive my ignorance.”

  Kat slid the brain away and set down her scalpel. “Okay, Mr. Squeamish, would you like to leave this room to discuss whatever it is you’ve come by to discuss?”

  Brunelle didn’t like the squeamish comment. “No, that’s fine. I probably should have called first anyway. I was just thinking about the Sawyer case. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking like a lawyer, so I thought I’d come by and pick a non-lawyer’s brain.”

  Kat picked up the scalpel again and pointed at the wrinkled, gray lump on her table. “He was a bus driver. Be my guest.”

  Brunelle groaned. “Is that medical examiner humor?”

  “You gotta have a sense of humor to do this job.”

  Brunelle shrugged. He supposed that was true.

  “I’d think you’d need one for your job too,” Kat said. “But you seem like you’ve lost yours today.”

  Brunelle waved it away. “Naw.” He made sure to smile. “I’m just contemplating what kind of woman my girlfriend is.”

  Kat smiled. “Girlfriend,” she repeated. “I do like it when you call me that. I guess that makes you my boyfriend.”

  Brunelle laughed. “Boyfriend, huh? Not too many boys have gray in their hair.”

  Kat shrugged. “Well, how many girls do you know with teenage daughters?”

  Brunelle considered the cases he’d seen over his career, defendants and victims alike. More than there ought to be, he thought.

  “Never mind.” Kat must have seen the expression on his face. “I don’t want to know. What can I do for you today, Mr. Mopey?”

  Brunelle felt stung. He wasn’t mopey. Just preoccupied, serious. And no one likes to be called names. But he decided to ignore it.

  “I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around the defense argument,” he explained. “And if I can’t do that, I can’t rebut it properly. I met with their doc and he says she’s incompetent because she’s so sure what she did was justified that she can’t assist her attorney.”

  Kat protruded a t
houghtful lip. “I guess that makes sense.”

  Brunelle shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. See, thinking something unjustified is justified makes you insane, not incompetent. But not guilty by reason of insanity is a verdict at the end of a trial. You never get there if the case is dismissed at the beginning because the defendant is incompetent.”

  “Okay.” Kat shrugged.

  Brunelle frowned. “I’m wondering if maybe I should call you at the competency hearing. You could explain just how intentional the killing was.”

  Kat raised her palms. “Whoa, big fella. I’ve never testified at a competency hearing before. That’s for head-shrinkers, not head-carvers.”

  Brunelle cross his arms and tapped his lips. She had a point. He was grasping at straws. Adrianos had him flustered. Damn it.

  “So is that the only reason you came by?” Kat asked. “It seems like you could have asked me that over the phone.”

  “Oh.” Brunelle shook himself out of his thoughts about the case. “Yeah, right. Well, I guess I wanted to see you too.”

  “I guess, he says.” Kat laughed. “What a boyfriend. Well, I guess I like seeing you too.”

  Brunelle smiled. But he felt like he was being teased. He didn’t like it.

  “And another thing,” Kat pressed good-naturedly. “You’re always talking about your work. We never talk about us anymore.”

  “Us?” Brunelle repeated. “I think I’m still getting used to there being an ‘us.’”

  Kat smiled—that deep luscious smile that made her eyes smolder. “Get used to it, boyfriend.”

  Brunelle liked that look. “So what should we talk about us?”

  Kat’s smile twisted at one corner. “How about us at a museum?”

  “Museum?” Brunelle wasn’t thinking about anything even close to a museum. “What museum?”

  “S.A.M. The Seattle Art Museum. They’re having a Rauschenburg exhibit.”

  “Sounds contagious,” Brunelle quipped.

  “Tsk, tsk, David,” Kat admonished. “Don’t sound so pedestrian. You can be it, just don’t sound it. He’s Lizzy’s favorite painter. We’re going next Saturday. I want you to come.”