WOODLAND — The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office prevailed Monday in its yearlong quest for murder suspect Samantha Green’s jailhouse medical and psychological records after an appellate court upheld a local judge’s decision on the issue.
Yolo Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg ruled back in April that prosecutors were entitled to the documents after defense attorneys disclosed they may seek a psychiatrist’s testimony that Green was in drug-induced psychosis when she carried her 19-day-old son Justice Rees into the Knights Landing slough, where he died of exposure in February 2015.
Previously, public defenders Tracie Olson and David Muller had said they had no plans to raise a diminished-capacity defense at Green’s trial.
“It now appears that the mental state of Ms. Green is in issue, and when you put part of mental state in issue, you put all of it in issue,” Rosenberg said in his April ruling, reversing his earlier opinion that prosecutors’ access to the medical records would violate Green’s privacy rights.
Olson and Muller challenged the decision with a writ before the Third District Court of Appeal, which last week declined to take up the matter, Muller said in court Monday.
With that, Rosenberg deemed the records fair game for the DA’s Office and said they would be in prosecutors’ hands by that afternoon.
Yolo County sheriff’s investigators originally sought the medical and psychological information shortly after taking Green into custody, explaining in a search warrant they were necessary “to better understand (her) mental and physical state following her arrest. …Alcohol and/or drugs, when ingested, can affect a person’s mental state and whether he/she knowingly and willingly committed an act.”
Muller continued to object to the documents’ release this week, however, saying they should remain sealed with the court until the defense decides for certain whether to call its expert, UC Davis Medical Center psychiatrist Matthew Soulier, to testify at trial.
“Until Dr. Soulier does testify, then without a doubt the defense has put mental state at issue,” Muller said. “Up until that time, I don’t think it’s appropriate to release these records.”
Rosenberg disagreed, saying while Soulier’s report regarding Green’s mental state would indeed remain sealed pending his testimony, prosecutors could have the records — including a stack that a Yolo County Jail medical employee handed over in court during Monday’s brief hearing.
Green, 24, is scheduled to face a jury in August, her prior April trial date postponed after the defense disclosed its plans to call Soulier as an expert witness. That prompted the DA’s Office to request more time to seek a rebuttal witness for Soulier’s anticipated testimony.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene