WOODLAND — Next week’s trial for murder defendant Samantha Green was postponed Wednesday following a contentious Yolo Superior Court hearing that saw prosecutors accusing Green’s defense attorneys of “last-minute shenanigans.”
Samantha Green. Courtesy photo
The dispute stemmed from the defense’s disclosure on April 14 that it plans to summon an expert witness, UC Davis Medical Center psychiatrist Dr. Matthew Soulier, to testify that Green was suffering from a drug-induced psychosis when she allegedly took her infant son Justice Rees into a Knights Landing slough last year and left him out all night, resulting in his death.
Searchers found the 19-day-old baby’s body on Feb. 25, 2015, a day after a disheveled, hysterical Green emerged from the slough area and claimed she and Justice had been abducted from Woodland two days earlier. She later recanted the story.
Whether Soulier’s testimony is deemed relevant and allowed at Green’s trial has yet to be determined. But prosecutors, who have yet to see Soulier’s report and likely would seek their own mental health expert if he does testify, said they’d be at a disadvantage if the trial began Monday as planned.
“Because of what I’m going to describe as last-minute shenanigans, we’re now in the position of having to ask for a continuance,” Supervising Deputy District Attorney Robert Gorman said.
Gorman also disputed whether Soulier is, in fact, a last-minute defense witness as the defense claims, saying jail officials last July intercepted a handwritten letter from Green in which she referred to “her doctor working on her case.”
Public Defender Tracie Olson, one of Green’s two court-appointed attorneys, insisted the letter is unrelated to Soulier’s involvement in the case.
“This was not planned so they don’t have sufficient time” to prepare, she said.
Judge David Rosenberg granted the trial delay but clearly was unhappy about it, noting the “efforts the court went to to carve out the time for this trial” and to bring in a visiting judge to handle his regular court calendar.
Green’s trial is now scheduled to begin Aug. 15 and last anywhere from three to four weeks.
The case also is back on the calendar for Wednesday, April 27, to handle discovery-related issues as well as a prosecution request that Green’s attorneys be sanctioned for the late witness disclosure.
In addition to delaying Green’s trial, Wednesday’s revelations also managed to resurrect a previously settled discussion of whether Green’s mental state would be put under the microscope during her trial, and if prosecutors should be allowed access to her jailhouse psychiatric records.
Olson and Deputy Public Defender Dave Muller have successfully argued against disclosing those records to the DA, saying they do not plan to raise an insanity or any other diminished-capacity defense in which mental state becomes an issue.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, are seeking a second-degree murder conviction against Green under the implied malice theory — that Green, having abused methamphetamine during and after her pregnancy, acted so recklessly on the night of Feb. 23, 2015, that Justice’s death was a likely and foreseeable outcome.
Rosenberg noted that voluntary intoxication is not a defense to implied malice, and said he’d reject the defense’s attempt to raise it at trial.
However, “involuntary intoxication could be raised as a defense to implied malice,” Rosenberg said. “The defense would have to show that Ms. Green was effectively ‘slipped a mickey,’ that someone intoxicated her” and rendered her unconscious of her own actions.
Should the prosecution’s theory of the case change — that is, they argue that Green willfully and intentionally caused her baby’s death — “then certainly the testimony of Dr. Soulier may be relevant,” Rosenberg added.
As of Wednesday, Green’s attorneys wouldn’t confirm whether they plan to argue voluntary or involuntary intoxication. Gorman’s co-counsel Ryan Couzens said the implied malice theory still stands, “but at the same time we do want to keep our options open” should new evidence arise.
Couzens also conceded there could be relevance to Soulier’s testimony, and that case law on the issue “is super-murky.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene