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State v. Flake8/5/2003
es to the crimes and no evidence regarding the defendant's mental state during the shootings. Only a single witness, Michael Musso, testified about the defendant's behavior and mental state on the day of April 5, 1997. Musso, the defendant's co-worker, stated that the defendant's behavior was extremely unusual and that his work performance that day was "really bad." Moreover, the testimony of James Flake vividly illustrated that the defendant's purchase of the handgun occurred in the midst of the defendant's continued mental deterioration, bizarre conduct, delusional thinking, and apparent failure to take his prescribed medication.
The majority also observes that the jury may have found that the defendant's motive for shooting the victims was in someway related to the defendant's alleged fear of homosexuals. Although the prosecution's cross-examination of several of the mental health professionals alluded to this point, each expert witness consistently reiterated that the defendant's schizophrenia was characterized in part by delusional thinking. The defendant believed, for instance, that the victims were terrorists who were responsible for bombings in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center in the early and mid-1990s. The defendant also believed that he was a government agent, that he was morally justified in killing the victims, and that he was protecting himself, his family, and society in killing the victims. In this context, it is difficult to fathom how the defendant's delusional belief that the victims were homosexuals created a reasonable inference that the defendant's actions were the product of a rational or "sane" mind. In short, the evidence of what the majority has described as an "alternative explanation" for the commission of the crimes was speculative at best and failed to reasonably rebut the evidence of the defendant's mental illness and his inability to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions.
The majority argues that the State's cross-examination of the defense experts suggested that the defendant was faking a mental illness because he never complained of auditory hallucinations until after these offenses were committed and because he indicated to one expert that he did not want to be "caught" committing the offenses. The malingering theory, however, was thoroughly refuted by the evidence. Both the lay and expert testimony revealed that the defendant's history of mental illness, including his three prior hospitalizations and extensive mental health intervention, spanned a period of over ten years before the offenses were committed. Moreover, the expert testimony revealed that the defendant was examined, evaluated, tested, and interviewed by no fewer than six psychologists and psychiatrists for over two years after the offenses on April 5, 1997. Every single mental health professional who evaluated the defendant concluded that he suffered from a serious mental illness and was not malingering.
Despite this overwhelming evidence, the majority emphasizes Dr. Craddock's statement that he was "not going to rule out the possibility at any time, that he might be malingering." The context of this testimony, however, was as follows:
t times, it certainly came to my mind that he might be malingering. Just because I have test scores that say one thing. His parents provided input. And I'm not going to rule out the possibility, at any time, that he might be malingering. But, once I decided that I was looking at genuine symptoms, he expressed a number of delusional beliefs, false beliefs, ideas that had no basis in reality that things were going on that are consistent with somebody that has schizophrenia and particularly paranoid thinking.
In my
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