Jury Decides Mom Was Sane When She Stabbed Her 2 Daughters

By PAUL ANDERSON
City News Service

An Orange County jury found today that a knife- wielding woman was legally sane when she attacked her 3- and 5-year-old daughters five years ago in Westminster.

• Get Patched in! Sign up for the daily newsletter from Los Alamitos-Seal Beach Patch.

Thuy Thi Le, 43, of Garden Grove faces 15 years to life in prison, with sentencing set for Jan. 16. If jurors had found that she was insane at the time of the attacks, she would have been sent to a state mental hospital indefinitely.

The panel rejected the findings of four psychological experts who concluded that Le was insane at the time of the Sept. 16, 2009, attacks. Three of those experts testified in the sanity phase of her trial.

Deputy District Attorney John Christl said the defendant’s statements on the day of the crime provided better evidence than the doctors’ opinions. Le told investigators that her live-in boyfriend wanted to leave her and she believed he didn’t love their children, Christl said.

“It was an angry act, a selfish act,” the prosecutor said. “She said he was not listening to her needs or wants.”

The psychological experts said Le suffered from a variety of maladies such as schizophrenia, delusions, paranoia and breaks with reality, Christl said.

Le was previously convicted of attempted murder and child abuse, but she entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, triggering the second trial phase. The legal standard is met when a defendant is deemed to have a mental disease or defect, doesn’t understand what he or she was doing or knew it was legally or morally wrong.

Jurors decide the issue based on the standard of “more likely than not” true, as opposed to “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the level applied in criminal cases.

“The defendant was functioning normally, but was highly stressed,” Christl told jurors. “The evidence is going to show you that she knew the difference between right and wrong ... The evidence is also going to show you she was seeking revenge and attention.”

Adam Vining of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office argued otherwise.

The defense picked one of the experts who analyzed Le and the prosecution picked another, Vining said. A third expert also testified in the case.

“The expert selected by the people say Ms. Le was insane,” he told jurors. “The expert selected by the defense says Ms. Le was insane. You’re going to get a third opinion that she was insane.”

Le had been living with her boyfriend of 10 years, who fathered her daughters. But the relationship was suffering because she felt he was not responsive to her stress from a short-sale on a home and the recent death of her grandmother, Christl told jurors in the trial’s guilt phase.

The prosecutor characterized it as “a case about a woman who took extreme measures to get the attention of her boyfriend.”

A week before Le stabbed daughters Rhiana, then 5, and Jobeth, then 3, and then inflicted “superficial” wounds on herself, she went to a hospital complaining of nausea brought on by disagreements with her boyfriend, Christl said.

“She pleaded with him, begged him” to listen to her problems, the prosecutor said. “She even went as far as to say the children will pay.”

Robert Greer was driving a taxi when Le took their daughters to a family member’s Westminster home to stay the night. When she awoke the morning of Sept. 16, 2009, at her cousin’s home at 14372 Starsia St., the defendant “grabbed a knife and stabbed Rhiana, while she was sleeping, in the heart,” and then stabbed her other daughter in the chest, Christl said. Le then tried to stab herself, but she only sustained “superficial wounds,” the prosecutor said.

Rhiana’s heart was nicked and she required surgery, Christl said. The younger daughter was not as seriously injured, he said.

Le called 911 and reported that she stabbed her children and wanted to kill herself, but the knife and scissors she used wouldn’t penetrate her skin, Christl said.

Le had received a prescription for a drug to treat depression a week before the attack, but she did not take the medicine because she feared the side effects, he said.

Vining called his client a “caring and loving mother” who had never hurt her children before but “was under a lot of stress.” Le was growing more paranoid prior to attacking her children, Vining said.

“She thought her kids had been switched out. She didn’t know if they were her kids,” he told jurors. “She didn’t know who or what Robert was... She thought Robert was able to read her thoughts and was torturing her mentally.”

Le also erroneously thought the FBI was “after her”; that she was being “chased by gangsters”; and that the rental home in Garden Grove where the family was living was haunted and that there was a “demon curse” on it, Vining said.

When a physician prescribed medicine for her, she did not take it because “she was afraid they were trying to poison her,” Vining said.

PHOTO Image via Shutterstock.

COMMENT ON THIS STORY BY SCROLLING TO FIND THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW.

Wondering how our new commenting platform, Disqus, works? Learn more about it here and start interacting with your neighbors on Patch.