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Woman Guilty of Using Car to Kill

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Times Staff Writer

A jury convicted a woman with a long history of mental illness of murder Monday for repeatedly running her car over an elderly Latino man and later calling him “road kill.”

But jurors rejected a hate crime charge against Marie Elise West even though witnesses said she shouted several racial epithets at the scene.

Jurors now must decide if West, 39, was sane when she killed 65-year-old Jesus Plascencia in the parking lot of a Van Nuys bagel shop four years ago.

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If found sane, she could face 16 years to life in state prison. If jurors find that West was insane, she would be sent to a mental institution for treatment.

Jurors in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson deliberated for two days before finding West guilty of second-degree murder, deciding that the crime was not premeditated or deliberate.

Had jurors decided that she killed Plascencia because of his race, it could have added three years to her sentence.

Attorneys for West acknowledged that she struck the victim, but argued that she suffered from bipolar disorder and was in the middle of a psychotic, manic episode at the time.

West had been hospitalized numerous times since 1990, when she was diagnosed with manic depression.

Her case spurred debate on when and how someone with a mental illness may be treated against their will.

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The defendant’s mother, Geraldine West, said she wasn’t surprised by the verdict because there was no doubt that her daughter was driving the car. She said she was pleased that jurors rejected the hate crime allegation, saying her daughter was not racist and only used anti-Latino slurs because of her illness.

“It’s a double tragedy,” she said outside court. “It’s a tragedy for my daughter, whose life is essentially over because of the mental illness. And it’s a tragedy that this poor man died.”

Plascencia’s longtime friend, Miles Indermill, said he felt relieved that jurors convicted West. Indermill said he believes that the defendant is sick, but still wants to see her locked up for a long time.

West committed the crime on Sept. 1, 2000, outside the Western Bagel store. Six mornings a week, Plascencia bought bagels there and took them to Weiler’s Deli in Northridge, where he worked as a busboy. On that morning, just seconds after he walked out of the shop, he was struck by a green Volvo. He fell to the ground. As he started to get up, the car ran over him again and dragged him onto Sepulveda Boulevard.

After driving her car over him a third time, West walked into the shop and casually bought a bagel. An employee asked her what happened. She answered that there was some “road kill” in the parking lot.

West became the first person in Los Angeles County to be charged under a state law that permits capital punishment for a hate crime slaying. The law applies to anyone who intentionally kills another because of that person’s race, color, religion, nationality or country of origin. But prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty against her.

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The trial was delayed for three years as West, a former law student from Hermosa Beach, was treated at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino for her mental disorder.

The prosecutor urged jurors to convict her of first-degree murder, calling West a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer.

“Plascencia was not an animal,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Allen Ramseyer. “He was executed by the defendant.”

Ramseyer argued that the murder was a hate crime because of the racial obscenities yelled by West.

She also had made several anti-Latino comments in the days before the killing, according to testimony.

Defense attorney Angelyn Gates countered that West does not have anything against Latinos and is married to a man of Latino heritage.

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In an interview, Gates said that anything that West may have said before Sept. 1 only bolsters the point that she was in a manic state.

“I have always felt that the hate crime allegation was inappropriate,” Gates said. “There was no evidence that she did what she did because of this man’s race.”

Gates said during closing arguments that there was no motive for the killing. West did not know Plascencia, and the victim had not done anything to West. “The only thing that can explain this case is psychosis,” she said.

The second portion of the trial, the sanity phase, will begin Monday.

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