OTTAWA — Even without having spent upwards of 23 hours interviewing Luka Magnotta, a key defence witness said she would still have reason to believe the killer was in a state of psychosis when he slayed and dismembered Jun Lin.
Her statement came during cross-examination, as Crown prosecutor Louis Bouthillier asked a series of questions suggesting forensic psychiatrist Marie-Frédérique Allard was not rigorous, thorough and meticulous in her examination of Magnotta.
After Magnotta was arrested, French authorities inspected and photographed a hotel room he’d rented in Paris. At the bottom of the toilet bowl they found a torn University of Toronto ID card bearing Magnotta’s name.
READ MORE: Magnotta lied, omitted information from night of killing, Crown says
Bouthillier on Thursday wondered whether Allard asked the defendant why he left it behind. No, she said.
The prosecutor pressed: Why, because it’s not a good question?
“It’s a very good question,” Allard conceded.
Defence counsel Luc Leclair hired Allard to assess Magnotta’s responsibility for the crimes of which he is accused. She had access to the video the defendant posted online depicting Lin’s dismemberment, read his medical files dating back to 2001, went through extensive witness testimony from preliminary hearings, and met with Magnotta for more than 23 hours over eight days beginning in December 2013.
Allard began her chief testimony last week, when she told the court Magnotta is schizophrenic, the illness was present the night he killed Lin and it is responsible for the actions that led to the five charges Magnotta now faces.
READ MORE: Did Magnotta make up rumours about himself? What prompted him to mail packages to Ottawa?
Magnotta is charged with first-degree murder, committing an indignity to a human body, publishing obscene material, criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament and mailing obscene and indecent material.
Although he has admitted to the “physical acts” behind the crimes, he maintained a plea of not guilty with his lawyer arguing Magnotta is not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
The cross-examination started Wednesday with Bouthillier attempting to poke holes in the conclusions Allard drew and the means by which she did. Countering the defence team’s claim of insanity, Bouthillier is arguing Magnotta’s crimes were planned and deliberate.
READ MORE: Magnotta was convinced Lin was government agent sent to kill, according to psych report
When Magnotta first opened up about that fateful night in May 2012, he told Allard he’d become convinced, when voices inside his head started talking to him, Lin was a government agent sent to kill him. He told the forensic psychiatrist he posted the video of the dismemberment online in an attempt to stop voices from racing through his head. He told her he’d already had a plan to move to Paris, so made the “logical” decision to take off and begin his new life earlier than planned.
Even without Magnotta’s version of events, Allard told the court, many aspects of Magnotta’s history — both personal and medical — point to him not having the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong on that night in May 2012.
Standing her ground, Allard pointed to his past diagnosis of schizophrenia, the fact he didn’t have a psychiatrist following him since mid-2010, a hospitalization the following year and a visit to a psychiatrist weeks before killing Lin.
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