The court today denied review in People v. Hermosillo, where the Fourth District, Division Three, Court of Appeal, in an unpublished opinion, affirmed a murder conviction and a jury’s rejection of an insanity defense of a mother who had pushed her infant son from the fourth floor of a parking structure.
A concurring statement by Justice Kelli Evans accompanying the denial urges the Legislature to take further action on what she calls the “unique and severe mental illness” of postpartum psychosis. Justices Goodwin Liu and Joshua Groban joined the statement.
Quoting Division Three’s opinion, the separate statement says “ ‘the current insanity defense, due to inconsistencies in how it may be applied in any given case, can have the unintended but very unfortunate consequence of criminalizing the mentally ill[,]’ and in particular postpartum women with severe mental illness including postpartum psychosis.” Justice Evans further notes that, although the Legislature has taken action in the area of maternal mental health, it has not done what Illinois has done — “attempted to redress the criminalization of maternal mental illness by expressly allowing undiagnosed or untreated postpartum depression or psychosis during the commission of an offense to be used as a mitigating factor in sentencing, and by permitting defendants who commit forcible felonies as a result of undiagnosed or untreated postpartum depression or psychosis to seek postjudgment sentencing relief.”
The defendant argued the superior court improperly admitted testimony of an under-qualified prosecution expert witness. Justice Evans agrees the Supreme Court should not hear the case, “[g]iven the deferential standard of review [citation], and because . . . the concerns about the expert’s background were matters of weight rather than admissibility.”
