12-10-2015, 01:48 PM
Trial Winding Down
![[Image: danvers-comp.jpg]](http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_585w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/11/21/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/danvers-comp.jpg)
Background:
Philip Chism (^left) is charged as a juvenile with aggravated rape and robbery and with murder as an adult. Closing arguments are set to begin tomorrow, Friday.
He has pleaded "not guilty". His defense acknowledges that he murdered his math teacher Colleen Ritzer (^ right) in the school bathroom, but they're arguing that then 14-year-old Chism was mentally impaired at the time.
Colleen Ritzer's body was found in the woods behind the school, naked from the waist down, stabbed sixteen times, and her body had been penetrated by a stick. She'd been robbed of her belongings and underwear. Chism left a note read, "I hate you all" by her body.
Sane or Not?
I don't think the defense has a chance in hell of convincing a jury that Chism didn't know what he was doing or didn't know it was wrong. I think Chism is malingering, as the prosecution contends.
The legal burden is on the prosecution to prove that Chism was not insane at the time of the crimes.
Prosecutors showed the jury surveillance video of Chism following Ritzer into the bathroom, leaving the bathroom, and moving the recycle bin with Ritzer's body into the woods. Chism was looking both ways in a school corridor, pulling up the hood on his sweat shirt, and donning gloves before following Ritzer into the bathroom. He later put on a ski mask. The prosecution empahsized to the jury that this was a clear sign that Chism knew what he was doing and knew that it was wrong.
The prosecution called expert psychiatric witnesses to testify that Chism was sane at the time of the crime. The defense found expert psychiatric witnesses to testify that Chism was, in his opinion, in the throes of a psychotic episode at the time of the crime and was under the command of voices that had become more intense, violent, and insistent in the days preceding the killing.
Background:
Philip Chism (^left) is charged as a juvenile with aggravated rape and robbery and with murder as an adult. Closing arguments are set to begin tomorrow, Friday.
He has pleaded "not guilty". His defense acknowledges that he murdered his math teacher Colleen Ritzer (^ right) in the school bathroom, but they're arguing that then 14-year-old Chism was mentally impaired at the time.
Colleen Ritzer's body was found in the woods behind the school, naked from the waist down, stabbed sixteen times, and her body had been penetrated by a stick. She'd been robbed of her belongings and underwear. Chism left a note read, "I hate you all" by her body.
Sane or Not?
I don't think the defense has a chance in hell of convincing a jury that Chism didn't know what he was doing or didn't know it was wrong. I think Chism is malingering, as the prosecution contends.
The legal burden is on the prosecution to prove that Chism was not insane at the time of the crimes.
Prosecutors showed the jury surveillance video of Chism following Ritzer into the bathroom, leaving the bathroom, and moving the recycle bin with Ritzer's body into the woods. Chism was looking both ways in a school corridor, pulling up the hood on his sweat shirt, and donning gloves before following Ritzer into the bathroom. He later put on a ski mask. The prosecution empahsized to the jury that this was a clear sign that Chism knew what he was doing and knew that it was wrong.
The prosecution called expert psychiatric witnesses to testify that Chism was sane at the time of the crime. The defense found expert psychiatric witnesses to testify that Chism was, in his opinion, in the throes of a psychotic episode at the time of the crime and was under the command of voices that had become more intense, violent, and insistent in the days preceding the killing.