A Fuzzy Line Between Insanity and Responsibility

It would be easy enough to consider everyone in this case a victim: the elderly Mexican man who was dragged to his death beneath the wheels of a car, the mentally disturbed woman who drove that car and stands accused of a hate crime that could land her on death row, their friends and families, who trade tales of pain and blame.

It would be easy, but would it be true? And would it be fair? How do you balance his innocence against her responsibility? Do the years she spent suffering from mental decay somehow mitigate against the horror of his final day?

A few days after checking herself out of a psychiatric hospital, Marie Elise West turned up in the parking lot of a Van Nuys bagel store. There, in the predawn hours of Sept. 1, her car struck and killed Jesus Plascencia, a 65-year-old busboy on his morning run to pick up bagels for his deli.

She ran over Plascencia, at least three times, yelled out something about hating Mexicans, then walked into the bagel shop and ordered coffee. She was sitting in her car, putting on her makeup, when police arrived. They had to break into the auto to haul her out.

Prosecutors charged West not just with murder, but with a hate crime that makes her eligible for the death penalty.

Heavy-handed? Maybe. Because what is also not in dispute is that West is mentally ill. Her case was postponed last week after three psychiatrists examined her and declared her mentally incompetent to stand trial. She’s been sent to Patton State Hospital for treatment.

By all accounts, West was once beautiful, talented and bright. She graduated from UCLA and was in her first year of law school at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall 12 years ago, when she had a nervous breakdown that friends say ushered her into a world of paranoia, hallucinations and the wild mood swings that characterize bipolar, or manic-depressive, disorder.

“You know that fine line between genius and insanity? She crossed it,” says her husband, Al Bowman. West was hospitalized nine times in their five years together. When he gathered up her medicines after her arrest, he found 14 different medications--prescribed by several different doctors--that she’d been mixing to try to treat her symptoms.

Her husband and her lawyer say it is outrageous that West is being prosecuted for murder--as a hate crime, no less. “This woman has no more racism in her body than a pin,” contends attorney Carl A. Capozzola. “This is a woman in the midst of a psychotic episode . . . who’d been from pillar to post seeking help for her problems.”

They want to make the case a referendum on the lousy state of our mental-health system, and on laws that make it too difficult to keep tabs on mental patients who are unwilling--or unable--to maintain their own treatment.

Forgive Plascencia’s friends if they see it differently. Plascencia “was the epitome of humility; a meek, gentle soul whose life was devoted to the service of others,” says Dan Klisch, co-manager for Weiler’s Deli, where Plascencia worked for the past 12 years. “He did not deserve to die like this, his body mangled, lying out in the street, covered by a bloody sheet.”

It was West’s irresponsibility--not her insanity--that killed Plascencia, Klisch says. “There are people living responsibly with manic-depressive disorder all around us. It’s a chemical imbalance; it’s treatable, and this woman has had 10 years of medical history to work out this condition.”

“This lady is white, affluent, educated. . . . She’s not some poor, illiterate person mistreated by the state system. She had a responsibility to pursue the treatment of her own condition, and she chose not to do that. And now, she doesn’t want to be held accountable.

“What she did was brutal and vicious, no different than what the Manson bunch did.”

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It’s a dilemma that has never been comfortably resolved by our criminal justice system: what to do when the actions of the mentally ill come into conflict with the law. Should murder ever be taken as a mere symptom of illness, or should we punish the mentally disturbed, too?

“As a lawyer, you could argue it either way,” says prosecutor Jacquelyn Lacey, head of the Los Angeles D.A.’s hate-crimes unit. She made the decision to prosecute West, “and I think we made the right decision,” she says. “She’s obviously someone who has a mental problem, but she knows what she did . . . she had a well-thought-out reason why she killed him. That makes her criminally liable for what she’s done.

“You could argue that almost everybody in county jail must be crazy, because no rational person would commit those crimes.” But does that absolve them of responsibility? Does that mean they should be in hospitals, rather than jails?

“I agree with the idea that there’s some room for improvement in the way we deal with the mentally ill. But I don’t agree with the notion that as soon as you get stamped with the label ‘mentally ill’ that’s an American Express card to charge away other people’s lives.”

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West is due back in court in February, when a judge will determine whether treatment has rendered her lucid enough to stand trial. Her husband will be there, hoping that three months of hospitalization will have restored the kind, beautiful, brilliant woman inside.

Plascencia’s friends will be there too, armed with petitions bearing 2,000 signatures asking that West be convicted of murder and sentenced to death, along with a box bulging with letters, photos and poems testifying to the kind nature of their gentle friend from Jalisco, now gone.

“Let her give this insanity thing a good run,” deli manager Klisch says bitterly. “But don’t make her out to be a victim. She’s a perpetrator, nothing more. The victim? He’s dead. We buried him.”

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Sandy Banks’ column runs on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.