I think she is setting up an argument for the penalty phase. If I am not mistaken, the Judge has set aside as much time for the penalty phase of this trial as for the trial itself?
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. While Idaho does not allow a mental illness defense to homicide, it does allow it to be considered in the penalty phase.
Her "red flags" are going to come in handy during that phase. She's going to argue that he has a rare mental condition (VSS) that has certain psychotic features as a common set of symptoms and that his working class parents and their local medical system were not up to the task of helping him.
I am curious about you all feel about this argument. I think it's a tricky path for her to take, given that it will certainly come up that he "self-medicated" with heroin (etc). If the family's bankruptcies involved having to pay for BK's drug treatment and his overall treatment, she'll attempt to get the jury to sympathize. I assume that the DP has to be handed down by the jury?
Most certainly she's lining up for the penalty phase.
There hasn't, however, been so much as a whisper of VSS. Nothing.
I still think it'll be difficult to engender sympathy for BK. He's just a sorry, unsympathetic soul. But she has to try.
It's just that, for any ACE (adverse childhood experience), the opposite is arguably true.
Poverty. But actually he grew up in a pretty typical middle income family.
Maybe he was bullied. Just as much anecdotal information that he was a bully.
Clumsy, can't tie his own shoelaces, makes upside down 5s. Even the judge was incredulous-- as to what bearing that has on him now. "Was that before his doctoral program?"
VSS, to be honest, is probably her beat bet for pulling on jurors' heartstrings. Poor boy, sitting out of life, because of VSS, struggling to make sense of a significant disease, not getting the diagnosis and treatment he needed, but it looks like a door AT ain't opening. So she has reasons not to. Heroin might be one big reason. Score 1 for VSS, lose 10 with hard-core drug use. Actually lost all sympathy.
AT's biggest barrier (for the penalty phase) IMO is that any documentable hardships for BK were historical, dating to his childhood and adolescence. Kindergarten BK didn't murder anyone in Moscow. Teen BK didn't murder anyone in Moscow.
Adult BK did. An adult who enjoyed more academic success than most of the population, an adult who lived and worked independently, applied for programs and housing and secured both, who could drive a car by day and night, manage tabs and license plates, voted if he wanted to, navigated the real carnivorous world to manage a complicated vegan diet, successfully shed 100# and maintained it with dedication and running.
And killed four people anyway. Which animal wins? As the saying goes, the beast you feed.
BK catered to his own dark thoughts, as an adult. That's on him.
I feel sorry for his parents because
they lose kindergarten BK and teen BK and
baby BK, whom they surely loved as parents do. But that's not who showed up at 1122 King Road.
That was grown up BK, making life choices, freely and without apology.
IMO he betrayed them, betrayed everything they tried to do for him.
His childhood isn't going to save him now.
JMO