Lawsuit over fatal car crash raises questions of mental health and criminal liability

ATLANTA – No one disputes that Michelle Wierson crashed her SUV into a car stopped at a traffic light, causing the death of a young boy.

But while prosecutors say she needs to be held accountable for her actions, her lawyers say her mental state at the time exempts her from criminal liability. When Wierson sped through the streets of a DeKalb County, Georgia, neighborhood in her Volkswagen Tiguan in September 2018, she believed she was on a God-appointed mission to save her daughter from being killed.

On her way to her daughter’s school, she was traveling at full speed when she hit a Toyota Corolla stopped at a traffic light, forcing it into the intersection, where it collided with another car. Five-year-old Miles Jenness, who was driving the Toyota, suffered a traumatic brain injury and a severed spine and died days later.

An Atlanta-area psychologist with a years-long history of bipolar disorder, Wierson has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges including vehicular homicide and reckless driving.

Prosecutors want a judge to bar Wierson from using an insanity defense. But if that defense is allowed, they want to present evidence they say shows she wasn’t taking all her medications. Defense attorneys argue that if the state succeeds, the insanity defense would be completely destroyed in this case and others.

A three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday heard arguments in the case. Now the judges must decide whether Wierson’s lawyers can use the insanity defense at trial and, if so, whether the state can try to prove she was not taking her medication. They did not indicate how or when they could govern. But they may not have the last word – either side could appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Court records describe Wierson as irate at the scene of the accident, where she was arrested after throwing things at first responders and the street. Witnesses said they thought Wierson was “under the influence of some type of intoxicant.” Her lawyers claim she was suffering a psychotic break that left her legally insane.

Robert Rubin, Wierson’s lawyer, called the entire situation “a horrible tragedy.” Her client, he said, is “haunted by the tragic consequences of her psychotic behavior, but it was completely without any intention and moral culpability, as she was mentally ill at the time.”

Bruce Hagen, an attorney representing the Jenness family in a separate civil case pending against Wierson, said his clients have been “patiently waiting for justice.”

“The Jennesses are really interested in seeing Ms. Wierson held fully criminally responsible for Miles’ death,” Hagen said. “If the issue is that she deliberately stopped taking her medication, their position is that she should not benefit from the plea of ​​temporary insanity brought about by the very predictable outcome of not taking her medication.”

There are two insanity tests under Georgia law, both of which relate to the person’s mental state “at the time” of the alleged crime. The first says that a person will not be found guilty of a crime if they “do not have the mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong” in connection with the act. The second says that a person will not be found guilty of a crime if he acted because of “a delusional compulsion” that “dominated” his will.

Two experts – one hired by the defense and one hired by the court – concluded that Wierson met both criteria.

But prosecutors argue that it doesn’t matter whether she can tell right from wrong. All that matters for a traffic violation is that Wierson drove in a way that violated the law and that caused the boy’s death, they say.

The delusional compulsion defense only applies if the person would have been justified in their actions if the delusion were true, said prosecutor Thomas Williams. But “no one is ever justified in driving recklessly.”

Therefore, his mental state is not relevant and his lawyers are simply trying to “evoke an emotional response and confuse the jury,” prosecutors argue.

Wierson’s attorneys assert that the state’s arguments are inconsistent with Georgia case law, arguing in a brief that the state “must still prove that the driver’s actions were of her own volition and not an outside factor that forced her into a choice and dominated his will. ” Every action Wierson took that day “was the result of his delusional compulsion and his inability to distinguish right from wrong,” his lawyers argue.

If Wierson is allowed to use an insanity defense, prosecutors say they should be allowed to produce evidence showing that she had intentionally stopped taking her medication, making her psychotic break “a reasonable and foreseeable consequence of her own actions.”

Wierson was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2005 and was taking several medications, including lithium, according to court documents. Urine and blood tests from the day of the accident suggested that she was not taking lithium as prescribed, and her brother said she had stopped taking it weeks before the accident, prosecutors wrote.

Evidence of Wierson’s medication levels will be critical to the jury’s assessment of his state of mind and the crux of his insanity defense, prosecutors argue.

Wierson’s lawyers insist she was taking her medication correctly. The fact that lithium was not detected is evidence that her dosage was too low, not necessarily that she did not take it as directed, they wrote. But even if she hadn’t taken the medication, “the law is clear that there is no exception to the insanity defense for medication or noncompliance.”

Allowing evidence of medication adherence will “confuse the issues” and cause the jury to judge Wierson based on his “conduct as a patient rather than his mental state at the time of the offense.”