KELOWNA – A forensic psychiatrist testified for the defence Wednesday in the second-degree murder trial of a Kelowna man.
It’s a fact Conor Grossmith killed his mother, Kathleen Gilchrist, with repeated hammer blows to her head as she was sleeping in bed in September 2012.
But Grossmith suffers from bi-polar disease and has pleaded not guilty, claiming to be legally insane at the time of the murder.
Dr. Stanley Semrau believes Grossmith’s mental illness rapidly escalated into an extreme manic episode that fateful night.
“His mental state was highly disordered so that it would have very seriously compromised his ability to appreciate the nature of what he was doing in the sense of its real meaning and purpose and also to know that it was wrong,” Semrau testified.
Grossmith was extremely drunk when he attacked his mother without provocation. Semrau says the intoxication was a secondary factor in the killing to Grossmith’s manic state.
That’s important because temporary insanity is a defence to murder but self-induced drunkeness is not.
“The law is where you have a psychosis that’s primarily responsible for the behaviour, as opposed to the intoxication, then the intoxication becomes irrelevant,” says defence lawyer Joe Gordon.
The prosecution agrees with the defence that Grossmith should be found not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.
Two psychiatrists have now testified at the trial. A third takes the witness stand Thursday.
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