Lawyers: Killer thought he was a god
Prosecutors argue against insanity defense in the 2015 crime spree
Zachary Penna had stopped taking psychiatric drugs and thought he was a god, his lawyer told a Palm Beach County jury Monday.
Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey said the voices in her 28-year-old client’s head led him on a stabbing rampage four years ago, resulting in the slaying of a married couple in Greenacres, the slashing of another man in Titusville and a violent confrontation with police.
“In his mind, he is a deity on a mission,” Ramsey said at the start of Penna’s trial on two counts of first-degree murder and other charges. “That is exactly how he sees it. That is exactly how paranoia and delusion works.”
But prosecutors say the insanity defense doesn’t hold up, and it can’t be used to explain the Nov. 19, 2015, random killings of Wayne Dixon, 58, and Freddy Sanchez, 49, inside their home, nor the crime spree that followed.
“He was brutal, he was violent, he was not insane,” Assistant State Attorney Brian Fernandes said of Penna.
The prosecutor said the jury will hear testimony from medical experts who differ over Penna’s state of mind during the attacks.
“Who are you going to believe?” Fernandes asked.
The jury will decide whether Penna will be convicted of charges that will send him to prison, or found not guilty and put in a state mental health facility.
Prosecutors Fernandes and Reid Scott say Penna, for reasons that may be unclear, simply “chose” to be evil, and commit “nothing short of a violent
Circuit Judge Caroline Cahill Shepherd told the jury that Penna is attending his trial while taking various prescribed psychotropic drugs. She advised the jurors that they “should not allow the defendant’s present condition in court, or any apparent side affects from the medication that you may end up observing, to affect your deliberations.”
On the day of the killings, Penna left his office filing job early to pick up his car at a repair shop in central Palm Beach County. But it wasn’t ready and he wound up walking several miles.
Ramsey says he first broke into his aunt’s home, suffering cuts from window glass, then took off torrent of criminal behavior.”
his shoes and began walking through nearby woods.
That’s when he ended up in the 3400 block of Chickasaw Circle, and spotted a Toyota 4-Runner parked out front of the landscaped home of Dixon and Sanchez, who co-owned a floral business and had been together for 15 years. They married in 2013, according to published obituaries.
“They did not have any idea what evil laid outside of their front door,” Fernandes said, explaining that Penna was tired of walking and eyed the SUV.
“It wasn’t about being insane, it was about getting what he wanted,” the prosecutor said.
Autopsy results shared with the jury show Dixon was stabbed 18 times and Sanchez was stabbed 14 times. Sanchez managed to get to a neighbor’s home to request help and a call to 911.
“At first I thought he got cut in his garage,” Albert Amaroso testified. “He told me he was attacked.”
Before police arrived, Penna grabbed the keys to the Toyota and headed south. He first stopped in Boynton Beach and snatched the purse of an 86-year-old woman along
with the shirt off her back and the license plate from her Nissan SUV. Penna was later charged with robbing the woman.
Penna then drove on to a co-worker’s house in Delray Beach, where he forced the man at knifepoint into the car. They drove to a McDonald’s, where the man jumped out and ran, while Penna picked up his food order. Penna faces a false imprisonment count.
At this point, Penna drove north until he reached Brevard County where the Toyota ran out of gas near the Titusville Airport early the next morning. Penna then attempted to steal a van parked outside a small weather station, and began loading up the purse and other stuff from the SUV, Fernandes said.
Weather station worker Jorge Bonetti refused to hand over the keys to the government-owned van, and Penna slashed his throat, the prosecutor said. Bonetti ran for help and police arrived.
Penna fled barefoot into woods near the airport, where he stabbed a police dog named Jack. Penna was then shot four times, shocked with a Taser and taken to a hospital, where he recovered over the next few months. He continues to face separate charges in
Brevard County over the incident there.
Fernandes said that Penna confessed to a deputy who was guarding him in his hospital room, showing that he was well aware of his actions and his victims.
“He actually says, ‘I stabbed a couple of homosexuals and a damn dog,” Fernandes told the jury, adding that Penna at one point stated, “I am going to prison for my whole f——— life.”
The defense said it is not contesting the crimes were “horrendous and violent.” But Ramsey said Penna’s actions were “from a man who was not in the right state of mind” due to being off pills needed to treat his mental illness.
Penna heard a voice telling him to “stop being afraid, do it” before stabbing Dixon and Sanchez, referred to his co-worked as a the “moon god,” and followed a road sign for Shepherd’s Way in Titusville, thinking he would get help there, Ramsey said.
The attorney told the jury it was only after Penna received drugs to treat his schizoaffective disorder did he realize what he had done.
“Zachary Penna is not evil,” Ramsey said. “He is not someone who intentionally did wrong acts.”
The trial is expected run into next week. to