Court case over fatal car crash raises issues of mental health and criminal liability

FILE - The Nathan Deal Judicial Center, home of Georgia’s Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, is seen, Feb. 11, 2020, in 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 absolves her of liability.

An Atlanta-area psychologist with a years-long history of bipolar disorder, Wierson has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of vehicular homicide and reckless driving. Robert Rubin, a lawyer for Wierson, called the entire situation “a horrible tragedy.” His client, he said, is “haunted by the tragic consequences of her psychotic behavior, but it was wholly without any intention and moral culpability since she was mentally ill at the time.”

There are two tests for insanity under Georgia law, both having to do with the person’s mental state “at the time of” the alleged crime. The first says a person shall not be found guilty of a crime if she “did not have mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong” related to the act. The second says a person shall not be found guilty of a crime if the person acted because of “a delusional compulsion” that “overmastered” her will.

The delusional compulsion defense only applies if “the delusion related to a fact which, if true, would have justified the act,” prosecutors wrote in a brief, adding, “Even under the most generous interpretation of report of a psychotic break, she was not justified in recklessly operating a motor vehicle,” they wrote.

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

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