What cases are you working on now?
There are 3 cases that I’ll be doing this summer. CA is the first one. CA was the young lady who drove onto the tarmac at Sky Harbor airport about a year and a half ago. She was on the news all over the place. And they thought that she was impaired, under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. They’ve done 3 tests on her, all 3 tests have been negative. They’ve still charged her with child abuse and we’re in the process of evaluating her defense with a mental health expert.
Any charges regarded to safety or the breaching of security at the airport?
Those are part of the endangerment charges.
The abuse charges are because there was a child in the car with her?
There was a child in the car with her. So that case will go this summer.
My second case this summer will be RC. She’s the individual who was driving up and down Scottsdale Road with a bunch of police officers chasing her, and she was in a state of psychosis. So that’s the second case.
And then DB is a third one. But all 3 cases have the likelihood of going to trial. The interesting thing about mental health cases- less than 1% of cases that go to trial have an insanity defense. So much less than what people generally think — they think the insanity defense is used all the time. Less than 1% of cases with an insanity defense go to trial, and even less of those are successful. So getting someone who needs mental health care to the state hospital (instead of jail) is not an easy thing. We had 2 people go to the state hospital last year. One for an aggravated assault on a police officer with a vehicle and another one for felony flight with a vehicle. They were both in psychosis and therefore were found to be eligible.
How long did it take for those 2 cases to make it through to resolution?
About 3 years each. 2-3 years, depending on the case. So these are long, drawn out cases. They require the use of experts. There’s usually a battle of the experts involved in the case. They are not your usual case. So they shouldn’t be handled by people who aren’t familiar with those areas.
