drdĒv
02-10-2007, 01:33 AM
Jury Considers Leingang's Fate
A jury is still considering the fate of a Sioux Falls man charged with murdering his family.
Thirty-three year old Brian Leingang admits he strangled his wife Melissa and baby Caden on Good Friday last year.
But the jury has to decide whether Leingang was insane when he killed them.
The jury has several options in this case. They can find Leingang guilty or guilty, but mentally ill. In either case he'd face life in prison.
But if they find he's insane, he can't be convicted. And the difference between being insane and mentally ill is that if he was insane, he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.
In South Dakota, if someone uses the insanity defense, it is up to the defendant's lawyers to prove to the jury that he was insane when the crime happened.
Brian Leingang's lawyers say the insanity was brought on by drugs. During the week leading up to the crime, Leingang says he drank entire bottles of Robitussin cough syrup to get high.
And in the insanity that followed, public defender Jeff Larson told the jury Leingang thought killing his family made sense.... That the world was ending and he needed to send them to heaven.
Larson says: "If a person truly believes an act we all know is despicable will get his family to heaven, he doesn't know what he was doing was wrong."
Prosecutors acknowledge Leingang might have been mentally ill, but not insane. They say if Leingang suffered from mental illness, it was because he first voluntarily took drugs or cough syrup.
State's Attorney Dave Nelson told the jury that the murder was premeditated, because when Leingang started choking his wife and son, he decided to choke them to death. And that the insanity defense was just his way of coping with that fact.
http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail637....cfm?Id=0,54584 (http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail6371.cfm?Id=0,54584)
A jury is still considering the fate of a Sioux Falls man charged with murdering his family.
Thirty-three year old Brian Leingang admits he strangled his wife Melissa and baby Caden on Good Friday last year.
But the jury has to decide whether Leingang was insane when he killed them.
The jury has several options in this case. They can find Leingang guilty or guilty, but mentally ill. In either case he'd face life in prison.
But if they find he's insane, he can't be convicted. And the difference between being insane and mentally ill is that if he was insane, he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.
In South Dakota, if someone uses the insanity defense, it is up to the defendant's lawyers to prove to the jury that he was insane when the crime happened.
Brian Leingang's lawyers say the insanity was brought on by drugs. During the week leading up to the crime, Leingang says he drank entire bottles of Robitussin cough syrup to get high.
And in the insanity that followed, public defender Jeff Larson told the jury Leingang thought killing his family made sense.... That the world was ending and he needed to send them to heaven.
Larson says: "If a person truly believes an act we all know is despicable will get his family to heaven, he doesn't know what he was doing was wrong."
Prosecutors acknowledge Leingang might have been mentally ill, but not insane. They say if Leingang suffered from mental illness, it was because he first voluntarily took drugs or cough syrup.
State's Attorney Dave Nelson told the jury that the murder was premeditated, because when Leingang started choking his wife and son, he decided to choke them to death. And that the insanity defense was just his way of coping with that fact.
http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail637....cfm?Id=0,54584 (http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail6371.cfm?Id=0,54584)