A woman accused of a Cortez a murder last year is seeking a not-guilty by reason of insanity defense.<\/p>\n
But two expert mental-health evaluations disagree on whether Valerie Espinoza, 38, was insane when she allegedly killed 62-year-old Charles Chaves with a butchers\u2019 knife on Sept. 19, 2013.<\/p>\n
During a hearing Nov. 20, District Court Judge Todd Plewe balked at a request by public defender Justin Bogan to rule Espinoza insane.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis request backs me into a corner, because there is a difference of opinion,\u201d Plewe said.<\/p>\n
Defense witness John Ragsdale, a Durango psychologist, concluded that Espinoza was insane.<\/p>\n
But an evaluation by state witnesses Dr. Richard Pounds and Dr. B. Thomas Gray concluded Espinoza wasn\u2019t insane.<\/p>\n
District Attorney Will Furse said he agrees that Espinoza was insane at the time of the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stipulation request is an example of common ground between the prosecution and the defense,\u201d Furse said. \u201cEspinoza has a long history of mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gray and Pounds, who ruled Espinoza sane, and are employed by the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, where she would be committed if determined not guilty by reason of insanity.<\/p>\n
Plewe said he was \u201cuncomfortable\u201d making an insanity judgment because the conflicting report may not come out at trial, denying a jury or judge key evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is not justice for the deceased,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The 30-minute legal debate revealed the complexities of an insanity defense in Colorado. Public defender Bogan called the sane evaluation \u201cflawed\u201d and said Espinoza would likely go to trial if Plewe did not rule her insane.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether or not evidence is entered on mental health would be a trial matter,\u201d Bogan said. \u201cThe prosecution and defense are on the same page here: Ms. Espinoza was, according to Colorado law, legally insane when all this happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plewe countered that the agreement between prosecution and defense on the insanity opinion subverts the adversarial nature of the justice system.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have the prosecution present the same evidence as the defense is telling the community how you want this case to be resolved, and not let a jury or judge look at the same facts you\u2019ve looked at to make that determination,\u201d Plewe said.<\/p>\n
Bogan disagreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a separation of powers issue,\u201d Bogan said. \u201cThe court is wading into waters on what sort of evidence litigants should put on at trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Plewe denies the insanity request, Espinoza could accept a plea bargain, have a trial in front of a judge, or a jury trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of my job is to make sure the system works,\u201d Plewe said. \u201cThe law says the court must render a decision based on evidence presented at trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plewe offered Furse and Bogan the opportunity to present their argument more fully at a separate hearing. Whether or not that will happen is undecided.<\/p>\n
A status hearing on the case is set for Dec. 18 at 1:30 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Experts disagree on mental health of murder suspect in Cortez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,168],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-116339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-crime"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116339"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=116339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}