Three psychological experts will testify that a Garden Grove mother was legally insane when she attacked her 3- and 5-year-old daughters with a knife, a defense attorney told jurors Wednesday, while a prosecutor countered that the woman was enraged at the children’s father and bent on revenge.
Thuy Thi Le, 43, was convicted of attempted murder and child abuse, but entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, so jurors must decide whether she meets the legal standard. If the jury decides she was insane at the time of the non-fatal attack, she will be sent to a state mental institution indefinitely. If not, she faces prison time.
The legal standard for insanity is met when a defendant is deemed to have a mental disease or defect, doesn’t understand what he or she was doing or knew it was legally or morally wrong. Also, jurors must decide the issue based on the standard that it was “more likely than not” true, as opposed to “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the level applied in criminal cases.
“The defendant was functioning normally, but was highly stressed,” Deputy District Attorney John Christl told jurors. “The evidence is going to show you that she knew the difference between right and wrong … The evidence is also going to show you she was seeking revenge and attention.”
Adam Vining of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office said his client was not sane at the time of the Sept. 16, 2009, attack.
The defense picked one of the experts who analyzed Le and the prosecution picked another, Vining said. A third expert will also testify in the case, Vining said.
“The expert selected by the people say Ms. Le was insane,” he said. “The expert selected by the defense says Ms. Le was insane. You’re going to get a third opinion that she was insane.”
Le had been living with her boyfriend of 10 years, who fathered her daughters. But the relationship was suffering because she felt he was not responsive to her stress from a short-sale on a home and the recent death of her grandmother, Christl told jurors during the guilt phase of the trial, calling it “a case about a woman who took extreme measures to get the attention of her boyfriend.”
A week before Le stabbed daughters Rhiana, then 5, and Jobeth, then 3, then inflicted “superficial” wounds on herself, she went to a hospital complaining of nausea brought on by disagreements with her longtime boyfriend, Robert Greer, Christl said.
“She pleaded with him, begged him” to listen to her problems, the prosecutor said. “She even went as far as to say the children will pay.”
Greer was driving a taxi when Le took their daughters to a family member’s Westminster home to stay the night. When she awoke the morning of Sept. 16, 2009, at her cousin’s home at 14372 Starsia St., the defendant “grabbed a knife and stabbed Rhiana, while she was sleeping, in the heart,” and then stabbed her other daughter in the chest, Christl said. Le then tried to stab herself, but she only sustained “superficial wounds,” the prosecutor said.
Rhiana’s heart was nicked and she required surgery, Christl said. The younger daughter was not as seriously injured, he said.
Le called 911 and reported that she stabbed her children and wanted to kill herself, but the knife and scissors she used wouldn’t penetrate her skin, Christl said.
Le had received a prescription for a drug to treat depression a week before the attack, but she did not take the medicine because she feared the side effects, Christl said.
Vining said in first phase of the trial that his client is a “caring and loving mother” who had never hurt her children before but “was under a lot of stress.”
Le was growing more paranoid prior to attacking her children, Vining said.
“She thought her kids had been switched out. She didn’t know if they were her kids,” Vining said. “She didn’t know who or what Robert was… She thought Robert was able to read her thoughts and was torturing her mentally.”
Le also erroneously thought the FBI was “after her”; that she was being “chased by gangsters”; and that the rental home in Garden Grove where the family was living was haunted and that there was a “demon curse” on it, Vining said.
When a physician prescribed medicine for her, she did not take it because “she was afraid they were trying to poison her,” Vining said.
— City News Service