Psychiatric Opinion Prompts Judge’s Decision : Child Killer’s Term to Be Reconsidered

A previously undisclosed opinion of a prosecution psychiatrist that Debra Sue Robles was legally insane when she murdered her two children has prompted the judge in the case to reconsider the El Cajon woman’s prison sentence of 30 years to life.

Superior Court Judge Richard Huffman agreed this week to reconsider the sentence after the San Diego County district attorney’s office turned over the doctor’s opinion to the defense 48 hours after Huffman had sentenced the 28-year-old woman.

Defense attorney Michael Popkins intends to ask Huffman on Monday to impose a lesser term of 15 years to life, he said. The new information supports his position that Robles’ mental state “controlled her actions to a point where (her) culpability is substantially reduced,” Popkins said.

Officials in the district attorney’s office said the psychiatrist did not submit the report until May 8, a day after Robles was sentenced. They knew the report was in the works, they said, although they did not know its conclusions.

“There is no doubt that it was a mistake on the part of our office not to have it in hand,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Michaels, “but the data and the information could have been obtained at any time by either the prosecution or defense had there been a specific request for information.”

Under court rules, a prosecutor must turn over to the defense all evidence against a defendant, incriminating or not. Michaels noted that a police report in the file given to Popkins did indicate that the prosecution psychiatrist was evaluating Robles.

“This is not something that anyone would have held back, and everyone would have turned it over immediately,” Michaels said of the psychiatric report. “No one’s going to risk his career over something like this.”

Robles was sentenced May 7 to two consecutive terms of 15 years to life for the suffocation murders of her young sons. The murders occurred five years apart and went undetected until she spontaneously confessed in January, one year after the second murder.

At her sentencing, Popkins cited Dr. Haig Koshkarian, a psychiatrist hired by Popkins, to present an evaluation of Robles. Koshkarian noted that Robles had been under psychiatric care since the age of 13. He said she was “barely able to take care of herself, let alone take care of a child.”

But Koshkarian did not conclude that Robles was legally insane--an opinion Popkins might have used to support a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. (To win his case, Popkins would have had to prove Robles was incapable of understanding the nature and wrongfulness of her actions.)

The prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Wait Griswold, did reach that conclusion, however.

“It is the opinion that Debra Robles is legally insane,” Griswold wrote in his report, dated May 2. “ . . . It is the further opinion that this individual is in need of hospitalization for ongoing treatment of a severe chronic mental illness.”

Griswold examined Robles in late January at the request of the El Cajon Police Department and the district attorney’s office. An investigator in the office said he called Griswold’s assistant March 28, after Robles pleaded guilty. He asked to have the report before the sentencing, set for May 7.

Instead, the report arrived, hand-delivered, late in the afternoon on May 8, according to court papers filed by the investigator, Raymond Cameron. Cameron said he placed the report on the desk of Stephen Anear, the prosecutor on the case, who was out sick and discovered it early May 9.

Abigail Dickson, Griswold’s psychological assistant, said Thursday that her office is responsible for the delay. She said it took months to collect the extensive psychiatric and medical records of Robles and her children and that the report was not completed until May 2.

After that, she said, it was given to a typing pool. She said she did not know when it was sent to the prosecutor’s office nor whether it was mailed or delivered by hand.

“It’s our fault entirely,” Dickson said. “It is not the fault of the D.A.’s office; it is not the fault of the prosecutor. We take full responsibility. We were just trying to do a good job. . . . I think we owe them an apology.”

On May 9, Anear immediately contacted Popkins, according to a court declaration filed by Anear. On Monday, Anear, Popkins and Huffman met in the judge’s chambers. Huffman agreed to reconsider the sentence and scheduled a hearing for next Monday.

On Thursday, prosecutor Michaels said his office had been under the impression that Griswold would conclude Robles was mentally ill but not legally insane. In his declaration, Cameron said he got that impression from several telephone conversations with Dickson in February.

“I think it’s clear that the defense obviously believed that what Dr. Koshkarian had reported to them was accurately reported, and the prosecutor believed that that was what was going to be reported by Griswold,” Michaels said.

He added: “If you read the (Griswold) report thoroughly, in some sense the conclusion is somewhat unusual considering the body of the lengthy report. It just seems to me the (information in) the report equally supports the conclusion that Dr. Koshkarian reached. We look at both the reasons and the conclusions.”

Popkins said Thursday that Robles does not intend to withdraw her guilty plea, despite the fact that Huffman has offered her the opportunity to do so. Instead, Popkins will argue that Griswold’s report “further supports what I was arguing at the hearing . . . that her actions were the result of her inability to cope with frustrations.”

“My position basically is that it simply isn’t fair to sentence a person who is mentally disabled to the same maximum term for two second-degree murders as you would a person who was not mentally disabled,” Popkins added.

Robles was charged initially with two counts of first-degree murder, but she pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder under an agreement with the prosecutor’s office. Had she elected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, she would have been tried on first-degree murder charges and would have risked the stiffer sentence accorded first-degree convictions.