In decapitation case, little chance of successful insanity defense

Some of the circumstances make Rachael Hilyard sound crazy.

The 35-year-old Wichita woman begged on social media not to have her head cut off “anymore,” mentioned training for “Psychopathic Serial Killers,” and complained of feeling insane. She sought an exorcism for “evil spirits” in her house – partly because she saw the Grim Reaper in a smoky haze.

All that days before police found Micki Davis’ severed head in Hilyard’s kitchen sink. God told her to do it, Hilyard said.

But even if Hilyard is shown to have mental illness, there is a key legal hurdle to using that as a successful defense against her charge of first-degree murder in the April 9 killing.

While most states allow insanity as a defense, Kansas has one of the nation’s most restrictive laws for citing mental illness as a defense, experts say.

It’s still early in the legal process for Hilyard’s case: Her defense attorneys are just beginning to gather information about her, let alone map a strategy. Same for the prosecutors.

The key question under Kansas law is whether Hilyard had the “culpable mental state” – the premeditated intent to kill. That’s what a jury would have to decide.

Police said that on the day of the killing, Hilyard called Davis, the mother of Hilyard’s ex-boyfriend. Hilyard told Davis to retrieve her son’s property or it would be put at the curb. After Davis and her 9-year-old grandson went to Hilyard’s house on West Rita to get his father’s property, Hilyard attacked Davis with a knife in the garage and put the 63-year-old woman’s severed head in the kitchen sink, police said. The boy ran from the house and called 911 without seeing the actual death, police said. Still, he saw Hilyard knock his grandmother down and beat her, a police affidavit said.

Kansas in minority

About 45 states have some form of traditional insanity-defense law, but Kansas isn’t one of them, said Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt University law professor.

The idea that someone shouldn’t be held responsible for a crime if they were insane at the time has been in various laws for hundreds of years.

The Kansas law (K.S.A. 21-5209) reads: “It shall be a defense to a prosecution under any statute that the defendant, as a result of mental disease or defect, lacked the culpable mental state required as an element of the crime charged. Mental disease or defect is not otherwise a defense.”

It’s harder to meet than the more common insanity defense laws around the nation, Slobogin said.

He argues that the typical insanity defense law is already difficult to meet. Having an even tougher law like the one in Kansas is unnecessary, Slobogin said.

In Kansas, “It’s going to mean the vast majority of people don’t have a mental defense at trial,” said Jeffrey Janofsky, medical director of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Intent is key

Under the Kansas law, someone can be found guilty regardless of whether they are mentally ill as long as it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they intended to do the crime, said Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett. His office filed the murder charge against Hilyard.

Bennett, who said he couldn’t discuss the Hilyard case, could recall only a couple of times in the past 25 years in which someone had successfully argued a “mental disease or defect” defense.

Bennett recalled a particularly tragic case from the late 1990s: a woman who was dancing while holding a small child against her. The child died from being smothered. But the evidence demonstrated that she didn’t intentionally kill the child. The evidence showed that she thought she was dancing to angels’ music, Bennett said. She was committed to a state institution and remains under state custody, he said.

A successful defense

Laura Shaneyfelt is one of the few local defense attorneys who have won a not-guilty verdict for a defendant using the Kansas law on mental disease or defect.

In 2011, a Sedgwick County jury found her client, Catie Collins, “not guilty as a result of the defense of lack of mental state, under 21-5209,” Shaneyfelt wrote in an e-mail. “Kansas abolished the insanity defense in 1995 and so now in criminal cases, mental illness is only a defense if it results in the defendant not forming the required intent (here, intent to kill),” Shaneyfelt explained.

In her opening statement at the trial, Shaneyfelt told jurors that Collins had a history of mental disorders and had suffered violent abuse. Shaneyfelt contended that that history caused Collins to act the way she did when Boston Sicard choked her, according to an Eagle article about the trial. Collins was intending to protect herself, not kill Sicard, when she stabbed him, Shaneyfelt argued at the time.

This week, Shaneyfelt also noted that an expert witness testified “about the significant impact Catie’s long history of abuse and trauma had on her mental health, her perception, and how she understood and processed events. She explained to the jury that when Catie felt threatened by Mr. Sicard, she reacted instinctively – based on her perception of the events.”

After being found not guilty because she didn’t show intent to kill, Collins was sent to a state security hospital in December 2011 to be evaluated for whether she “was currently a mentally ill person,” Shaneyfelt said.

Hospital experts who evaluated Collins told the court that she “was not likely to cause harm to herself or to others,” and Collins was released from the hospital in May 2012, Shaneyfelt said. Shaneyfelt is now an attorney for the federal defenders office; in the Collins case she was working in a private practice.

Stigma for some

Richard Ney, another long-time Wichita defense attorney, said the idea of citing mental illness to defend a client often carries a stigma with the public.

It’s the thought that someone is “trying to play the system to get off” the charge, Ney said.

Meanwhile, the intersection of crime and mental illness is a growing problem, Ney said.

“We have a lot of mentally ill people on the street. Hospitals don’t help them anymore.”

And as a result, he said, the criminal court system has become “the dumping ground” for the mental health system.

Hilyard has had other issues that might tie in with her mental state:

She said she had a “traumatic brain injury” in a 2003 car accident. She told people she had been left in a coma. She said in a court document that she received disability money.

She has drug convictions, and police said she was a known heroin and methamphetamine user.

This story was originally published May 6, 2017 at 7:50 PM with the headline "In decapitation case, little chance of successful insanity defense."