Gilbert’s fate rests with jury
Prosecutor says killing was result of premeditation, not mental illness
The jury in the Sarra Gilbert murder trial on Wednesday began the task of deciding whether she is criminally responsible for the brutal killing of her mother in Ellenville last summer or was driven to the deadly act by mental illness.
There’s no disagreement that Gilbert, 28, stabbed her mother, Mari, 227 times, bashed her head with a fire extinguisher and sprayed her with foam from the device in an attempt to smother her on July 23, 2016. What the eightwoman, four-man jury is trying to decide is whether Gilbert is guilty of second-degree murder or not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
The jury got the case late
Wednesday morning and deliberated for only about 20 minutes before Judge Donald Williams had to adjourn for the day because of a personal matter. Deliberations are to resume at 9 a.m. Thursday in Ulster County Court.
The prosecution contends Gilbert plotted to kill her 52-year-old mother, and carried out the attack, because the older woman had Gilbert arrested months earlier for killing a puppy and had temporary custody of Gilbert’s young son. The defense has portrayed Gilbert as acting out of delusions brought on by a lifetime of abuse and mental illness and a state mental health system that repeatedly let her down.
In his closing statement Wednesday, Ulster County Assistant District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji conceded Gilbert was mentally ill, but he urged jurors to reject the contention that she substantially lacked the capacity to know or understand the nature of her actions.
If she was as mentally ill as the defense claims, Nneji said, “someone would have noticed.” Rather, the prosecutor said, she was able to care for herself and her son, shop, pay bills, drive and generally tend to the affairs of her life.
Nneji also reminded jurors that Gilbert admitted that she put the knife and fire extinguisher in her living room prior to her mother coming over because, according to her own words, she planned to kill her.
“She called her mother,” he said. “She took the most lethal weapon she had in her home .... and hid it under the cushion of her couch.
“It takes mental process. It takes making a plan,” he said.
“She could form the intent to do these things,” Nneji said. “That the operation of mind. Her mind is working just like yours and mine.”
Further proof of Gilbert’s guilt, he said, came from her own testimony Monday, when she said “her mother got what she deserved” and admitted she knew the consequences of her action was being arrested.
Nneji also called on jurors to reject Gilbert’s claim that she killed her mother because the woman was an “evil god,” playing again for them a portion of the video of her police interrogation in which, she said, ”I’m guilty of killing my mother” and that killing the woman was “not the right thing to do.”
Nneji also called into question the medical assessments from Gilbert’s numerous hospital stays, suggesting her mental illness diagnosis was made too quickly and without the benefit of more in-depth drug testing that might have revealed her psychosis was drug induced and not because she was mentally ill.
Defense attorney John Ray, in his closing argument Tuesday, called on jurors to recall Gilbert’s own words when she spoke of hearing voices, switching bodies with her dead sister and insisting her mother was alive even as she told police she killed her.
Ray also noted for jurors that, while being interviewed by police, Gilbert repeatedly referred to her mother as an evil god and talked about hearing voices and seeing things that didn’t exist.
He urged them to remember her claiming she wrote songs for Rihanna and Beyonce, that she had a special connection with rapper Eminem and that she believed she was called “Legendary.”
And he reminded jurors that Gilbert said she stabbed her mother “too many times to count,” pausing twice to take a break and smoke a cigarette.
“That’s a psychotic,” he said.