Gambill v. State

• Decision Date: 18 December 1996
• Docket Number: No. 77S00-9507-CR-861,77S00-9507-CR-861
• Parties: Lisa GAMBILL, Defendant-Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Plaintiff-Appellee.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Page 668

675 N.E.2d 668

Lisa GAMBILL, Defendant-Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Plaintiff-Appellee.

No. 77S00-9507-CR-861.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

Dec. 18, 1996.

Rehearing Denied March 18, 1997.

Joseph K. Etling, Terre Haute, for defendant-appellant.

Pamela Carter, Attorney General of Indiana, Jodi Kathryn Rowe, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, for plaintiff-appellee.

SELBY, Justice.

After the drowning death of her five-year-old son, Appellant Lisa Gambill was charged with murder. A jury found her Guilty but Mentally Ill, and the trial court sentenced her to the maximum possible sentence, sixty years. Appellant raises the following issues in this direct appeal.

1. Was there evidence sufficient to support the verdict of "Guilty but Mentally Ill?"

2. Did the trial court commit reversible error in rejecting the Appellant's requested jury instructions on insanity, circumstantial evidence, and burden of proof?

3. Does the verdict "Guilty but Mentally Ill" violate the Indiana and U.S. Constitutions?

4. Was Appellant's sixty-year sentence appropriate?

We answer the first issue in the affirmative and the last three in the negative. Therefore, Appellant's conviction will stand, but with a reduced sentence.

FACTS

Appellant was a twenty-five-year-old mother of three children, including the victim, Jordan Jones, age five. In July of 1994, Appellant began behaving strangely. She became obsessed with religious ideas, although she had never been particularly religious before. For at least three weeks prior to the killing, Appellant was acting in a manner consistent with a schizophrenic person suffering through a psychotic episode. Describing Appellant's behavior during this period, her mother testified that one time she found Appellant lying in a graveyard covered in dirt. Appellant pointed at a gravestone which had fallen over and told her mother that a baby was trapped beneath the gravestone. Also during this period, Appellant suffered from mood swings, and claimed to see spirits and angels, and to hear bells. Appellant was inordinately concerned, in a non-rational manner, with the Bible. She believed that, when she read the Bible, passages were highlighted conveying special messages only to her. Appellant manifested an array of symptoms typically associated with schizophrenia.

During this period, she established new friendships, particularly with Brandi Wallace The next day, August 13, 1994, Appellant, John Krumreich, Brandi and Rick Wallace, and Appellant's five-year-old-son Jordan were all at Appellant's home. Krumreich talked with Appellant about seeking psychiatric help, but Appellant rejected his suggestion. Around 2:00 p.m. that afternoon, Krumreich and Appellant again used methamphetamine. Around 6:00 p.m. that evening, Krumreich and Appellant drove to a local Wal-Mart, where they ingested more methamphetamine. Returning home, Krumreich and Appellant began arguing. Soon thereafter, Appellant and Brandi Wallace became involved in an animated argument. Appellant told Brandi Wallace that she thought they were all devils; Appellant called Krumreich a sinner. Krumreich grabbed her, apparently in an attempt to calm her. A struggle ensued, Krumreich finally wrestling Appellant to the floor. Appellant then advised the group that she had just experienced an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Krumreich asked someone to call the police and an ambulance. Apparently laboring under the psychotic delusion that Krumreich and Wallace were planning to sacrifice her and her son Jordan, Appellant escaped from the home with Jordan. Police, responding to a call, came to Appellant's home and immediately began searching for Appellant and Jordan.

and Ms. Wallace's brother, Rick Wallace. She used methamphetamine several times. In early August, 1994, Brandi Wallace and her son moved in with Appellant in Appellant's home, located in the town of Shelburn, in Sullivan County, Indiana. On August 12, 1994, Appellant renewed her relationship with a former boyfriend, John Krumreich. That afternoon, Krumreich and Appellant together used methamphetamine.

A short time later, Rick Wallace saw Appellant and Jordan on a neighbor's porch. Appellant walked away from the porch and toward a nearby pond. A witness for the State, jailhouse informant Nicole Plew, testified as to what Appellant did next. Appellant took Jordan to the pond. They hid there, together, while Jordan asked his mother if they could go to Grandma's house. Appellant then decided that she was not going to let "them" kill Jordan; rather, she decided, she would do it herself. Appellant brought Jordan into the water, then repeatedly shoved Jordan under the water. Jordan fought back, striking out at his mother's legs. He cried out "No, Mommy, no." (R. at 1306.) Finally, Jordan's body went limp.

Appellant carried Jordan's body back out of the pond and made an effort to revive him, to no avail. Appellant told Plew that she then left Jordan's body and walked away from the pond. Appellant looked up at the sky, saw angels there, and knew that Jordan was with the angels, and she was with Jesus. She removed her clothing to prepare for the coming of Jesus.

A few minutes later, around 9:40 p.m., Appellant appeared at the door of a nearby home. An individual inside the home heard the storm door rattle and turned to see Appellant standing naked in the living room. Appellant stated in a calm voice, "Pardon me you gotta help me." (R. at 1083.) She pulled an afghan off the couch, covered herself, and repeatedly requested: "You've gotta help me I've just killed my son, I need something to kill myself with." (R. at 1084-85.) The individual inside the home called the police, and Appellant became very upset, her tone becoming forceful. "I'm from Jesus of Nazareth ... and I've just killed my son because they were going to sacrifice him." (R. at 1086.) Appellant then walked into a bedroom. When the individual caught her, she began to struggle. Appellant kept repeating "I gotta kill myself." (R. at 1087.) The individual removed Appellant from the home, and Appellant fled.

The individual's call to the police precipitated a massive search for Jordan. Around 3:15 a.m. the next morning, police found Jordan's body. At 5:00 a.m., an individual on an early morning drive came across Appellant. Appellant asked for a ride home, stating "they beat and they raped me" and that her boyfriend had hurt "Georgie." (R. at 1195.) The driver, aware that authorities were looking for Appellant, took her to her parent's home. Appellant, crying when she arrived, told her family that "they" had killed Jordan.

Appellant was placed under arrest and hospitalized.

Appellant was charged with murder. At trial, Appellant raised the defenses of insanity and intoxication. Although four expert medical witnesses testified that Appellant was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct at the time of the offense, and was therefore legally insane, the jury discounted Appellant's insanity and intoxication defenses and returned a verdict of Guilty but Mentally Ill.

DISCUSSION AND DECISION

I. Sufficiency of the Evidence

A. Insanity Defense

Appellant first challenges the evidence supporting her conviction. Appellant argues that the jury's verdict of Guilty but Mentally Ill is contrary to law, because she claims to have demonstrated at trial that she was insane. Her insanity defense should have prevailed, she argues, and therefore her conviction cannot stand.

There is, in the record, ample evidence to support the jury's determination that the Appellant was not insane, but was Guilty of Murder but Mentally Ill. Indiana Code Section 35-41-3-6 provides for the insanity defense, a defense Appellant interposed at trial:

(a) A person is not responsible for having engaged in prohibited conduct if, as a result of mental disease or defect, he was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct at the time of the offense.

(b) As used in this section, "mental disease or defect" means a severely abnormal mental condition that grossly and demonstrably impairs a person's perception, but the term does not include abnormality manifested only by repeated unlawful or antisocial conduct.

I.C. § 35-41-3-6.

The burden rests with the defendant to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, the affirmative defense of insanity. I.C. § 35-41-4-1(b); Lyon v. State, 608 N.E.2d 1368, 1370 (Ind.1993). A determination of insanity is a question for the trier of fact. "The jury is free to disregard the testimony of experts and rely upon that of lay witnesses." Barany v. State, 658 N.E.2d 60, 63 (Ind.1995). A jury is not obligated to believe expert testimony on the issue of insanity, Bonham v. State, 644 N.E.2d 1223, 1227 (Ind.1994), and may consider lay opinion testimony on the issue of sanity. Haggard v. State, 537 N.E.2d 28, 29 (Ind.1989); Bonham, 644 N.E.2d at 1227. "Accordingly, the standard of review is a deferential one." Barany, 658 N.E.2d at 63. A convicted defendant who claims that his insanity defense would have prevailed at trial is in "the position of one appealing from a negative judgment," and such a judgment will be reversed "only when the evidence is without conflict and leads to but one conclusion which the trier of fact did not reach." Metzler v. State, 540 N.E.2d 606, 610 (Ind.1989); Barany, 658 N.E.2d at 63-64.

Such an evidentiary conflict exists in this case. Although all four of the expert medical witnesses at this trial testified that Appellant was legally insane at the time of the murder, two lay witnesses testified otherwise. These witnesses testified that, in their opinions, the Appellant was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions at the time the offense occurred. Sergeant Pierce, who had attended high school with Appellant, testified that after spending time with Appellant at the hospital on the morning after the murder, he believed that Appellant was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of her...