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Following the Trial: Court Psychiatrist Rips Insanity Defense
09/19/2003
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0919roque19.html
Psychiatrist rips insanity defense
Tesifies Roque displayed reason
Jim Walsh
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 19, 2003 12:00 AM
A court-appointed psychiatrist cited a long list of reasons Thursday for why a terrorist-backlash murder defendant knew the wrongfulness of his actions when he gunned down a Sikh gasoline station owner.
Dr. Jack Potts dealt a blow to Frank Roque's insanity defense but also said the Mesa machinist probably was suffering from some form of mental illness when he murdered Balbir Singh Sodhi five days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"To me, it's not even close. He knew the wrongfulness of his actions," said Potts, who advised legislators when they revised Arizona's guilty but insane law a decade ago.
"When you're mentally ill, it doesn't preclude all reason. People often know what they're doing is wrong."
Singh Sodhi, 49, who was wearing a turban, was the first known victim nationwide of a backlash murder committed in retaliation for the terrorist attacks. Defense attorney Dan Patterson has admitted Roque, 44, gunned down the victim but said his client was legally insane.
Defense witnesses have testified Roque was suffering from a brief reactive psychosis, a serious personality disorder and major depression. They said Roque could not comprehend the wrongfulness of the slaying, the state definition of legal insanity.
But Potts disagreed, saying if Roque didn't know he did something wrong, he wouldn't have sped away from Sodhi's gas station at 80th Street and University Drive.
Roque's actions indicate a degree of planning, Potts said, because he brought two guns with him, using one to kill Singh Sodhi and the other to commit drive-by shootings at an Afghani immigrant's home and a Lebanese-owned gas station.
"He targeted certain individuals. It wasn't random," Potts said. Roque also bent his license plate to avoid identification, lied to police by denying the shootings and took the guns out of his truck, wrapping them with a towel on his dresser.
But Potts said, "it's fairly clear he is disordered (psychologically) to some extent. Whether it rose to mental disease is debatable."
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