ATLANTA — In the prosecution of a Georgia woman who caused a fatal car crash while suffering a psychotic break, the state cannot use evidence that she had stopped taking some of her psychiatric medications to counter her insanity defense, the state's highest court ruled Wednesday.
Michelle Wierson was driving her Volkswagen Tiguan at high speed through the streets of DeKalb County, in Atlanta's suburbs, when she hit a Toyota Corolla stopped at a traffic light. The impact pushed the car into the intersection, where it collided with another car. Miles Jenness, a 5-year-old passenger in the Toyota, suffered a traumatic brain injury and a severed spine and died days later.
Everyone agrees that Wierson caused the September 2018 wreck. Her defense attorneys filed notice that she intended to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, saying that at the time of the wreck she was suffering from a ''delusional compulsion'' caused by mental illness that absolves her of criminal liability. The DeKalb County district attorney's office wanted to present evidence that Wierson had stopped taking some medication prescribed to treat bipolar disorder, arguing that the jury should be allowed to consider that she voluntarily contributed to her mental state.
The trial court said the state could use that evidence, but the state Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in a pretrial appeal. The state then appealed to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the intermediate appeals court's ruling.
An Atlanta-area psychologist with a yearslong history of bipolar disorder, Wierson believed at the time of the crash that she was on a mission from God to save her daughter from being killed, her lawyers have said.
Georgia law outlines two tests for someone seeking to use an insanity defense at trial. Both have to do with the person's mental state ''at the time of'' the alleged crime. The first says a person shall not be found guilty of a crime if they ''did not have mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong'' related to the act. The second says a person shall not be found guilty of a crime if the person acted because of ''a delusional compulsion'' that ''overmastered'' their will.
An expert hired by the defense and another engaged by the court found that Wierson met both of those criteria. Justice Andrew Pinson wrote in Wednesday's majority opinion that the law says nothing about the cause of the person's mental state at the time of the crime.
''Put simply, the plain language of the insanity-defense statutes gives not even a hint that these defenses would not be available to a person who has ‘brought about' the relevant mental state voluntarily, whether by not taking medication or otherwise,'' he wrote.
