Seizure is used as defense in killing

The scene inside the small Hawthorne apartment had all the hallmarks of an ordinary domestic killing.

Arthur Bonner, 35, stood in the bedroom with fresh scratches on his chest and a badly split lip. On the bed behind him lay the lifeless body of Angel Dews, his girlfriend of eight years. Dews’ 12-year-old daughter said she had heard a commotion in the room while the door was locked.

But with Bonner’s murder trial underway at the Airport Courthouse, his defense attorney is arguing that the June 2005 killing was far from ordinary. Bonner, he contends, had no idea what he was doing when he strangled his girlfriend while he was in the throes of an epileptic seizure.

“This is a tragedy for everyone involved,” Deputy Public Defender Randall Rich said in the Los Angeles County Superior Court facility. “He did not understand he had killed her.”

Though rare, the controversial epilepsy defense has been used for decades -- with mixed results -- to explain behavior ranging from trespassing to assassination.

In one of the most celebrated examples, Jack Ruby contended in his 1964 trial that he had killed Lee Harvey Oswald during a seizure. Jurors rejected his claim. By contrast, jurors in Northern California this year acquitted a Fairfield man of murder in the deaths of two children hit by a car after his attorney said he’d had a seizure while driving.

In Bonner’s case, medical records show that he was first prescribed epilepsy medication in 1994 and has a history of seizures.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Belle Chen said Bonner admitted to detectives after the killing that he had argued with Dews and that “I put my hands on her.”

“When he squeezed her neck . . . it was not an accident,” she told jurors last week. “He did it and he knew he was doing it.”

More than 3 million Americans live with epilepsy, a neurological disorder marked by seizures caused by a surge in electrical activity in the brain. Seizures can take many forms and usually last from a few seconds to a few minutes.

Violence during an episode is rare. When it does occur, experts say, it usually takes the form of random, uncontrolled movements.

Susan Pietsch-Escueta, executive director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles, said she was skeptical that a person experiencing a seizure would strangle someone.

“People use this to excuse very bad behavior, and it just hurts all people with epilepsy,” she said. “Strangling someone is not a random reaction.”

But other experts said some people can react violently during periods of confusion that follow some types of seizures.

The reaction is usually triggered when patients are confronted or restrained. In such a scenario, strangling someone is not out of the question, said Dr. Gregory L. Krauss, an associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University who has studied violence involving people with epilepsy.

“If someone tried to hold them down, they might react to them aggressively,” he said. “They could carry out simple reactive behaviors. So you can imagine, in that case, it could be quite possible.”

Police were called to Bonner’s home when his young stepdaughter reported that she was worried for her mom’s safety.

The girl had knocked on her mother’s bedroom door, but Bonner told her the couple were busy, Chen said. The prosecutor said that the girl knocked again moments later and that Bonner told her Dews was not there.

“To me, he made those statements because something was going on in the bedroom that he didn’t want anyone to know about,” Chen said.

Police arrived and knocked loudly on the bedroom door. Eventually, Bonner opened it. Officers asked about his girlfriend on the bed. Bonner shook her foot as if to wake her, but officers found that she had no pulse and arrested him.

On Thursday, Dews’ mother testified that Bonner had accused her daughter of cheating on him about a week before the killing.

In addition, Chen said Bonner told police that he and Dews had argued over whether to buy a new car and that she had started screaming at him.

“She came at me. I put my hands on her to protect myself,” Chen quoted Bonner as telling police.

But Bonner’s defense attorney said an argument over a car was no motive for murder. And he questioned testimony about Dews’ alleged infidelity, saying her mother had revealed that information only during an interview with authorities days before testifying.

A onetime Los Angeles gang member, Bonner knew the consequences of violence, Rich said. He spent more than three years in prison for assault with a deadly weapon but turned around his life after his release in 1991.

Bonner joined the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and developed a love for insects, working to protect endangered species such as the Palos Verdes blue butterfly.

His story of redemption was the subject of profiles by The Times, People magazine and National Geographic TV.

Even though he took medication, seizures were a regular occurrence in Bonner’s life, Rich said. In one episode, a Gardena bus driver reported seeing him grow quiet and then pound on the vehicle’s doors to get out, even though the bus was moving.

“This is not some made-up condition,” Rich told jurors.

Days before the killing, Bonner experienced another seizure. He fell, splitting his lip and damaging some teeth. Rich said these were the injuries police officers saw when they arrived at his apartment the evening of Dews’ death.

As Bonner sat sobbing at the defense table, Rich told jurors he planned to call a top expert on epilepsy to confirm that Bonner’s actions were consistent with “flight or fight” behavior that some people with epilepsy exhibit after a seizure. He had no memory of the killing, Rich said.

“This is a tragedy,” he said, “not a criminal act.”

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jack.leonard@latimes.com