Court case over fatal car crash raises issues of mental health and criminal liability

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “If the issue is that she willfully stopped taking her medication, their position is she should not then benefit from claiming temporary insanity brought on by the very predictable result of not taking her medication.” There are two tests for insanity under Georgia law, both having to do with the person's mental state “at the time of” the alleged crime. Wierson's lawyers wrote in a brief that the state's arguments are inconsistent with Georgia case law, arguing that the state “must still prove that the driver's actions were of her own accord and not an external factor that forced her into a choice and overpowered her will.” Every action Wierson took that day “was a result of her delusional compulsion and her inability to distinguish right from wrong,” her lawyers wrote. If Wierson is allowed to use an insanity defense, prosecutors argue that they should be allowed to produce evidence showing she had intentionally stopped taking her medication, making her psychotic break “a reasonable and foreseeable consequence of her own actions.” Wierson had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2005 and had been using several medications, including lithium, according to court filings. But even if she hadn't taken her medication, “the law is clear that there is no exception to the insanity defense for medication or therapeutic noncompliance.” Allowing medication-compliance evidence will “confuse the issues" and improperly cause the jury to judge Wierson based on her “conduct as a patient and not on her mental state at the time of the offense.”