An attorney representing a mother who allegedly drowned her three children says in court papers that releasing her psychological records to attorneys representing the children’s father in a civil suit will set back her mental health rehabilitation.
Lawyers for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, which represents the children’s mother, 36-year-old Liliana Carrillo, previously filed court papers with Pasadena Superior Court Judge Jared Moses stating that their client has not consented to the release of the records to attorneys for plaintiff Erik Denton, who is suing Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles.
In his suit filed in April 2022, Denton alleges that the Los Angeles Police Department was negligent and did not take seriously the indications that Carrillo’s mental health was declining and did not share information with county social workers.
On Friday, Deputy Public Defender Traci Glover, who still represents Carrillo and gives periodic reports to the court about her client’s progress, filed a sworn declaration stating that the medical reports were obtained by her office through a HIPPA release as part of Carrillo’s defense, and that they were for the eyes of her office only.
Carrillo is currently in a state mental hospital receiving ongoing treatment, according to Glover, who further says that as Carrillo’s attorney she is obligated to update her client on any efforts to obtain her psychological records. Carrillo holds the privilege when it comes to deciding whether her records should be produced to the plaintiff’s lawyers, according to Glover.
“Ms. Carrillo has not authorized the (Public Defender’s Office) to turn over any documents to Erik Denton and his agents,” Glover says, adding that she believes producing them would “severely impair Mr. Carrillo’s treatment and damage the progress she has made these last few years.”
In separate court papers, attorneys for the Public Defender’s Office state that Carrillo is a nonparty who has “tendered nothing here” and who has done nothing to open her records and (therefore) “retains the full mantle of privacy in them.”
Denton lawyer Christopher Keane has said in his court papers that he would limit what the plaintiff is seeking to the reports and interview recordings with Carrillo conducted by psychologists Nicole Vienna and Diana Lynn Barnes. Barnes is an internationally recognized expert on women’s reproductive mental health and a past president of Postpartum Support International.
Carrillo, then 33, was acquitted in October 2024 by virtue of the insanity finding by Judge Richard Kemalyan in the April 10, 2021, killings by Carrillo of her 6-month-old daughter Sierra, 3-year-old daughter Joanna and 2-year-old son Terry, at a Reseda apartment.
“Barnes’ report … was admitted into evidence in the criminal case against Ms. Carrillo and relied upon by the criminal case judge to find that, at the time she murdered her children, she was not sane,” according to Keane’s court papers.
Denton’s attorneys further note in their pleadings that prosecution expert and psychiatrist Dr. David Rad wrote in his report that Vienna opined that Carrillo has a mental disease “within the mood disorder spectrum complicated by symptoms of expansive moods … agitation, racing thoughts, delusions and disordered thinking and behavior that impairs her daily functioning.”
A hearing on Denton’s motion is scheduled for Monday.