Attack victim vouches for mentally-ill murderer
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A murderer with a history of mental illness is fighting to stay out of prison.
Christopher Westrick was stabbed to death seven years ago. The killer was Jerry White.
For the last 45 years, White has been in and out of mental institutions. He's also been in various jails for acts of violence, culminating in the murder he committed in 2007. But Monday, one of the people he's attacked came to his defense.
By the time he killed Westrick with a kitchen knife, Jerry White had been hospitalized for mental issues at least eleven times.
"Mr. White is a victim of a horrible affliction of schizophrenia that has crippled him," said his defense attorney Jane Boulger in opening statements of his sanity trial.
The diagnosis dates back to the late 1960s when White threatened to stab a classmate with a kitchen knife at school.
In 1981, he broke a social worker's cheek with a blindside punch. But 33 years later, that social worker told a jury he doesn't consider White a criminal for the attack that required facial reconstruction.
"Mr. White has a true schizophrenia," said Mark Duarte. "He is auditorily hallucinating most of the time. It's an affliction. His ability to cope, at best, is primitive."
White didn't cope well when Westrick tried to stop him from cooking with oil. He stabbed the halfway house employee, then ran across the street to a bus stop, knife still in hand.
Two men say he threatened to stab them next if they didn't get out of his way. Prosecutors say that warning proves that while he may have been mentally ill, White was sane when he committed murder.
"It demonstrates he knew what he just did," said prosecutor Robert Mangano. "He killed another human being, Christopher Westrick. It demonstrates he is conscious in the present reality and is threatening other people as well."
If the jury finds White insane, he could spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital. If they find him sane, the 58-year-old will serve 16 years to life in prison.
