School Teacher Pleads "Insanity" When She Had Sex with Those Boys

A Mason, Ohio former physical education teacher, Stacy Schuler (pic, left), says she was "insane" when she had sex with 5 teenage boys in an alcohol-fueled incident or incidents last year.  Here's Janice Morse's story from this morning's Cincinnati Enquirer:

Stacy Schuler, who faces 19 charges, changed her plea from "not guilty" to "not guilty by reason of insanity."  The change in plea, filed in a one-line document Monday, left Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell scratching his head Tuesday.

"It’s certainly an interesting development," Fornshell said, noting Schuler previously denied the incidents happened and now, in essence, is admitting they occurred but says she should not be held legally responsible.

Schuler’s lawyer, Charlie H. Rittgers, declined to discuss why he changed the plea on behalf of Schuler, 33, of Springboro. The so-called insanity defense is highly unusual and rarely succeeds, experts say, although there’s typically some basis for it when it is attempted.

"Generally, when I’ve seen these pleas, there’s something behind this – it tells me something came up that’s cause for concern," said Akron lawyer Carmen Roberto, past president of the Ohio State Bar Association. During his 38-year law career, Roberto estimated he had seen fewer than 10 such pleas amid thousands of cases as both a defense lawyer and prosecutor.

Because the defendant is admitting the offense occurred in an insanity plea, "you start off a little bit behind the eight-ball," making the case difficult to win, Roberto said.

As of 2002, only about 2 percent of all suspects pursued an insanity defense -- and only about one-third of them secure an acquittal for mental-health reasons, Rita J. Simon, a professor of public affairs and law at American University in Washington, D.C., told the Enquirer previously.

Under Ohio law, Rittgers must show "by a preponderance (majority) of the evidence" that his client suffered a mental problem that blocked her ability to understand right versus wrong.  By filing the insanity plea, Rittgers opened the door for Schuler to possibly undergo three separate mental evaluations. The defense, prosecutor and judge may each request a separate one.

Attorney Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based organization that advocates "swift and certain punishment" of convicted criminals, said "most people are skeptical and reasonably so," when they hear of an insanity plea being filed. The insanity plea may be a "last-ditch argument" by a desperate defendant, he said.

But Simon has said that insanity pleas tend to draw a lot of attention, leading to a misperception that they are more common than they actually are.

Fornshell said the case is his first involving an insanity plea since he was appointed county prosecutor in February. He said Judge Robert Peeler could take some action related to the plea when the case heads to its next hearing July 21 in Common Pleas Court in Lebanon.

Schuler, who resigned from her job, is set for trial Aug. 8. She’s accused of 16 counts of sexual battery, which allege she had sexual contact with boys, plus three counts of providing alcohol to minors. The sex charges carry up to five years in prison if she’s convicted; each alcohol charge is punishable by six months in jail.
Schuler was released in February from the Warren County Jail on her promise to appear in court. Schuler’s location is being electronically monitored, officials said.
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This is an interesting article for several reasons: an interesting, um provocative underlying story; an interesting legal defense;  interesting comment from legal experts;  and, a local reporter trying to convey something about the situation that actually conveys something informative.  I particularly liked when the reporter offered a parenthetical explanation of the burden of proof for an insanity defense.  What Ms. Morse meant was that in pleading "insanity" the burden of proof shifts to the defendant to prove her lack of capacity by a "preponderance of evidence," as opposed to a normal "not guilty" plea in which the prosecution must prove all elements of the charged offenses "beyond a reasonable doubt."

But the story really caused me to think about "capacity" and my own changing view. You might say I am uniquely qualified. 

This blawg has several running themes not the least of which is the role of alcoholism and impairment.  You don't have to follow this blawg for long to see many examples of profoundly impaired people from all walks of life doing inexplicable, judgment-impaired acts of near-insanity (or complete insanity) often with tragic results.  I also recognize that real time "insanity" attributable to active alcoholism is not the same thing as a valid defense of "insanity."  But personally, I can't think of a clearer example. 

Would I even bother talking about this if we were talking about a male school teacher drinking and getting all touchy, feely with female high school students?  Probably not.  I confess, I would probably say, "throw the book at him."  And yet, I genuinely think our paradigms for legal responsibility are not terribly nuanced. This is largely because we insist on calling the defense of capacity: "insanity."  What the hell is that? 

In fact, we really don't mean insanity.  "Insanity" is not like "cancer" or "AIDS" or any condition which can be objectively diagnosed.  You'll look in vain for a definition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychological Association.  There are no diagnostic criteria to say for instance:  x + y = Insanity; although, remarkably MRI studies do demonstrate "changes" in the brains of alcoholics and addicts.  And yet the term, insanity, is tossed around in court as if there is some sort of objective standard or quantifiable status.  The reality is that "insanity" is a legal conclusion, the outcome of some sort of legal sausage-making. We mean when we say someonw is "insane" that certain charged criminal acts lacked mens rea therefore the defendant is not criminally responsible. 

If the evidence shows that Stacy Schuler suffers from alcoholism and that her actions with her students were causally-related to her use and abuse of alcohol should she be forgiven, no.  (But, would you forgive her if her actions were related to dementia caused by medications taken to treat a serious medical condition?)  Should Stacy be helped, yes.  I don't find anything ridiculous or absurd about Stacy Schuler's change of plea.  We'll see how it works out.

Young Woman/Drunk Driver Sentenced to 6 Years for Killing a Cyclist

From the San Juan Capistrano Patch: 

A 30-year-old San Juan Capistrano woman was sentenced to six years in state prison today for running her car off the road in Dana Point and killing a bicyclist  In March, Michelle Nicole Stearns pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for the October 2007 incident.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Robison could have granted Stearns probation or sentenced her up to 10 years. Robison said he struck a middle ground because she had no criminal history and family and friends wrote letters to the judge on her behalf.

"I do believe her expressions of remorse are genuine,'' Robison said.  Stearns formed a nonprofit organization called Safe Cruz that
provides rides home for impaired drivers, Deputy District Attorney Nancy Hayashida said.
"Not a second goes by that I'm not in agony over this,'' Stearns told  the judge. "I would do anything to make this not real ... That's the torture. I can't change this.''

Stearns was driving her BMW north on Del Obispo Street near Quail Run at 2 a.m. when she lost control of the car, jumped the curb, hit a traffic sign and crashed into Jose Umberto Barranco-Patino, 32, as he pedaled home from his job as a busboy, prosecutors said.

She also hit a utility box, triggering a power outage in the area for about 600 customers. Stearns' blood-alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit, according to prosecutors. Barranco-Patino was pronounced dead at the scene.

"I am so sorry,'' she tearfully said in court.

Barranco-Patino's brother, Cesar Barranco, and his wife, Martha Pliego, said after the hearing they were satisfied with the sentence. With help from a translator, they told reporters the victim was a "great father'' who was happy and concerned with his family's welfare.
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In the blink of your eye, your whole life changes when you get behind the wheel of a car drunk.  You take the drink, the drink takes the drink, the drink takes you and innocent others.

Blackout Drinking! Uh, Where Did I Leave That Masterpiece?

MSNBC is reporting the story of the man who lost a valuable artwork while "blackout" drinking, here's their story:

"Call it the lost art of drinking responsibly: A man entrusted with helping to sell a $1.3 million painting said it disappeared while he was in a drunken haze, according to a lawsuit filed by a co-owner of the canvas.  James Carl Haggerty took the painting — noted French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's circa 1857 'Portrait of a Girl'— to a Manhattan hotel on July 28 for a potential buyer to examine, Kristyn Trudgeon's lawsuit said. Then Haggerty hung out at the hotel bar and was seen on security cameras leaving the building with the painting after midnight, according to the lawsuit.

But there was no sign of the portrait on the cameras at his Manhattan apartment building when he got home nearly two hours later, the lawsuit said.  And the next morning, Haggerty told painting co-owner Thomas A. Doyle III he 'could not recall its whereabouts, citing that he had had too much to drink the previous evening,' according to the lawsuit filed Monday in a Manhattan state court.

[Ms.] Trudgeon is seeking what she says is the roughly $1.3 million value of the painting, which spent years in the collection of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, according to museum spokeswoman Sarah Stifler.

News service Bloomberg reported that Haggerty would have made $25,000 if the painting, which shows a young woman with a steady gaze, wide forehead and white lace collar, was sold.  A London dealer, Offer Waterman, had been interested in buying the picture, Bloomberg cited the complaint as saying.

Haggerty didn't immediately return phone messages left Tuesday at two possible home numbers for him and at his office at a company that leases out private jets.  Doyle isn't involved in the lawsuit and didn't return a message left for him at his office at the same jet company. He is a friend of Haggerty's and involved him in the effort to sell the painting, according to Trudgeon's lawyer, Max Di Fabio.

Corot, who lived from 1796 to 1875, was an important figure among the proto-Impressionist group known as the Barbizon School. Members turned their backs on Parisian urbanity to embrace a back-to-the-land emphasis on painting scenes of rural French life, often doing their artwork outdoors.

Trudgeon, who also was acquainted with Haggerty, owns a small portion of the painting, Di Fabio said. He said he had no information on whether it was insured.  Trudgeon 'was terribly hurt and dismayed and disappointed,' Di Fabio said. 'She just would like some answers.'"
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The answer is "blackout drinking."  The man entrusted with this painting , is a drunk.  He had so anesthetized himself he genuinely has no idea what he did with your painting.  In the years when I actively drank like this, "pig drinking" I would awaken and wonder how I got home, where my car was, did I hurt anyone, what I had done, how I would pull myself together to do what laid ahead that day, and so on.

For those of you who are not drunks, let me explain the irrationality of alcoholic drinking.  It is not the tenth drink that destroys you, it is the first.  You take a drink and you can not predict where your drinking will take you.  There is an apt Chinese saying: first the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the drink, finally the drink takes the man.  In other words, it is not the caboose of the train that kills you, it's the engine.  And when you are alcoholic, the drinking and the thinking combine in a whiplash to destroy lives and the sanity of the drunk and those in the lives of the drunk.