PATRICE GUILTY BY INSANITY ON FOUR COUNTS
Patrice was accused in assault of wife, trying to drown daughter in 2015.
WEST PALM BEACH — A West Palm Beach man charged with trying to drown his 2-month-old daughter in 2015 was found not guilty by reason of insanity on Tuesday.
A jury spent much of the day deliberating before returning notguilty verdicts for Bryan Patrice on charges of attempted second-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, domestic battery and resisting with violence.
Following the verdict, Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes requested attorneys for both sides submit recommendations for how to proceed on evaluating Patrice’s mental health status. A hearing was set for Oct. 11.
After the verdict, Patrice stood silently as one of his attorneys gave him a pat on the back. Members of his family embraced outside the courtroom.
“I’m glad the jury recognized that mental health is a serious thing and that it affects a lot of people,” Patrice’s attorney, Michael Salnick, said.
“This is a well-educated, good, nice young man with a very supportive family who, on that particular occasion, had a problem, had a break from reality.”
Patrice was charged following a February 2015 incident in which authorities said he tried to
drown his child at his family’s Clematis Street apartment. Authorities said he assaulted his ex-wife, then grabbed the child from his mother’s arms and screamed “Jehovah” and “Jesus” before allegedly attempting to drown the baby.
When West Palm Beach police arrived at the home, they broke down a bathroom door and found Patrice naked, sweating profusely and holding the baby’s head under water in the sink. They alleged he may have been having an episode of “excited delirium” brought on by the use of synthetic drugs.
Jurors began deliberations at midday to decide whether Patrice was under the influence or whether the incident was the result of a mentally ill man caught in a psychotic breakdown.
During closing arguments Tuesday morning, a prosecutor told jurors that Patrice wasn’t insane when he held the child’s head under the water and that he should be convicted in the alleged attack.
“He was not having a lovely religious ceremony and trying to protect this child from demons,” Assistant State Attorney Marci Rex said. “You don’t lock a door if you don’t have a willful intent, a malicious intent, to do harm.”
Salnick told jurors what they had to consider was Patrice’s “mindset at the time.” He said several of Patrice’s relatives have histories of mental illness. And, he said, Patrice “was having delusions. Delusions of a religious nature.”
Rex countered by saying that on the night of the incident, Patrice took drugs in private, urinated in a toilet instead of just wetting himself, locked the door before he assaulted the baby, and fought with police — all signs of a connection with reality and normalcy.
In those incidents, she said: “He knew what he did and he knew it was wrong. But he comes here today to say, ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’ ”
Salnick countered: “Because he didn’t pee in his pants, that means he’s not crazy?”
Kastrenakes began Tuesday by denying a motion for a mistrial.
Defense attorneys had argued that a prosecution witness, a forensic neuropsychiatrist, was not supposed to mention Patrice’s past drug use. But Kastrenakes said the comment did not sufficiently taint the defense’s argument of insanity to warrant starting over.