WOODLAND — On the night she fatally shot her husband, Susan Hoskins had suffered such chronic abuse at his hands that she acted in fear for her life, and that behavior was consistent with being a victim of domestic violence, two mental health experts testified on her behalf this week in Yolo Superior Court.
Seeking to spare their client from a first-degree murder conviction that could imprison her for the rest of her life, Hoskins’ defense attorneys elicited testimony from a forensic psychiatrist who said the abuse, combined with the acute threat of an attack, altered her mental state on Aug. 3, 2014.
Furthermore, the lack of emotion Hoskins demonstrated to police after shooting Bryan Hoskins Sr. in the chest is not unusual for trauma victims, who often “shut down” in the wake of a violent episode, another expert said.
“That’s one of the most common responses to trauma, is dissociation,” said Linda Barnard, a Sacramento marriage and family therapist with expertise in domestic violence and traumatic stress. “The emotions are split off from the behaviors.”
Susan Hoskins, 60, is on trial for murder and unlawful discharge of a firearm in connection with her husband’s death. The shooting occurred in their Knollwood Drive condominium in Woodland after a day of motorcycle riding and bar-hopping.
Testifying in her own defense this week, Hoskins said she armed herself when her husband’s alcohol-fueled anger escalated “very quickly” upon their return home, and that he advanced toward her while taunting, “Shoot me, shoot me.”
“I was afraid of him hurting me, or doing more than hurting me,” said Hoskins, who right after the shooting told authorities she did it “because he’s an a—— and he kept calling me a whore” and because “I just wanted him to shut up.”
Yolo County prosecutors have alleged that Hoskins, long frustrated by her husband’s alcoholism and the rollercoaster marriage that resulted from it, shot him as he accused her of having an affair. In need of a defense, they say, she raised claims of domestic violence.
But in Barnard’s view, Susan Hoskins’ description of an increasingly abusive marriage was corroborated by statements from people outside the relationship — including friends, neighbors and coworkers — who considered Bryan Hoskins to be aggressive, intimidating and volatile.
The lack of any medical records or other evidence showing Susan Hoskins suffered from intimate partner battering — encompassing not only physical abuse but also psychological, verbal and sexual attacks — doesn’t mean it never occurred, she added.
“That is a myth,” Barnard said Thursday when asked by defense attorney Shannan Dugan if battered victims typically have a documented history of violence, or confide in others about the abuse. “Domestic violence is one of the most underreported crimes in this country.”
As for Hoskins’ failure to immediately disclose that fear for her safety led her to pull the trigger, Barnard said that’s common behavior, too.
According to Barnard, trauma victims process information differently, focusing on sensory-oriented memories rather than a “who, what, when, where, why” style of narrative.
“You get fragmented information, particularly if you interview the person in the first 72 hours,” she testified. Ideally, a trauma victim would undergo a short initial interview, followed by a more detailed one 48 hours later, though Barnard acknowledged “that’s not how law enforcement works.”
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Carolyn Palumbo, Barnard admitted to relying only upon Hoskins’ statements and materials provided to her by the defense team in reaching her conclusions, and not independently seeking perspective about the couple’s marriage from Bryan Hoskins’ friends and family.
“Is it possible that she didn’t mention physical abuse (to police) because there was no physical abuse?” Palumbo asked.
“It’s possible,” Barnard replied.
Also this week, Hoskins’ jury heard from Dr. Melissa Piasecki, a forensic psychiatrist from the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno who concluded that Hoskins was experiencing extreme stress and fear after years of verbal, psychological and, later in the marriage, physical and sexual abuse.
“Because of this pattern of abusive, threatening, hostile behavior, she became very sensitized to these episodes,” Piasecki testified Wednesday.
A longtime nurse, Hoskins was reluctant to disclose the abuse to coworkers and doctors because she knew them to be mandated reporters to law enforcement, “and she did not want this to become a medical-legal issue,” she said.
Piasecki, whose expertise includes pharmacology, said Hoskins may have been impaired by the medications she took for depression and anxiety, as well as the alcohol she consumed on the day of the shooting. Authorities have estimated her blood-alcohol content was about 0.085 — the legal intoxication limit — at the time of the shooting, while her husband’s was nearly twice that.
Piasecki said the medications also could have accounted for Hoskins’ “flat or dampened mood state” — what prosecutors have characterized as a lack of emotion or remorse — both during the 911 call and her recorded interview with a police detective.
“As a nurse she may have used some of her clinical skills to manage the situation in a more businesslike way,” she added.
Piasecki also acknowledged under cross-examination she did not interview Bryan Hoskins’ family or friends as part of her evaluation, and said that despite being informed that Susan Hoskins had engaged in a jailhouse conspiracy to manufacture medical records that would support the abuse allegations, “I found her to be credible.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene