Both sides have rested in the murder trial of Mary C. Koontz, accused of killing her husband a year ago.
The judge presiding over the case, Thomas J. Bollinger Sr., sent the jury home for the long weekend after the last witness testified Friday morning. He asked them to return on Tuesday, when they will hear closing arguments before they begin deliberations.
Two mental health experts, one for the defense, the other for the prosecution, provided dueling assessments Thursday of the sanity of the 60-year-old defendant.
The defense witness, Bethany Brand, a psychologist on the faculty of Towson University, said that while Mary C. Koontz "did not seem overly psychotic," she showed some psychotic symptoms, including three types of so-called disassociation disorders, as well as paranoia, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, amnesia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In rebuttal, Annette L. Hanson, a psychiatrist at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center who supervised a team that examined the defendant after her arrest last summer, told the jury that in her view Koontz was not ill enough to be unaware of her actions. She has a moderate case of borderline personality disorder, Hanson concluded, adding that most of Koontz's ailments were the result of severe alcoholism and abuse of prescription drugs.
The doctors' testimony came on the sixth day of Koontz's trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court. A former schoolteacher, she is accused of shooting to death her estranged husband, Ronald G. Koontz, and of trying to kill their teenage daughter, Kelsey, on June 19, 2009, at their home in Glen Arm.
The question of Koontz's mental competence is crucial to the defense's contention that she did not understand what she was doing on the morning her third husband died and is therefore not criminally responsible for what occurred. Her lawyer, Richard M. Karceski, reinforced that view by repeatedly turning the jury's attention to a litany of emotionally charged events over the course of his client's life, and particularly in the months preceding the shootings, that he suggested were ample evidence of an unstable mind.
In an attempt to disprove that theory, and persuade the jury that Koontz's insanity defense could be a ruse, Deputy State's Attorney Robin S. Coffin played a recording of a telephone call the defendant made on Nov. 11 to her brother, Robert Minehart, from the Baltimore County Detention Center.
At one point in the call, Koontz and her brother deal briefly with the fact that her daughter and the family acting as her guardian have filed a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against her. Koontz tells Minehart that she's been doing "some reading" and has learned that, if she is "found NCR" — not criminally responsible — in the current trial "it would be unlikely that they could get damages" in any civil proceeding.
In other parts of the call, Koontz speaks lucidly about her financial matters, which her brother is handling during her incarceration. She suggests canceling her Internet service and the insurance on her car — "I certainly don't need that," she says — and wonders whether her brother is taking care of her mail.
She mentions paying $18,000 for expert witnesses at her trial and approves when Minehart tells her he is giving $500 a month to one of her two sons, Christopher Luca, by a previous marriage. Koontz also asks how much her brother has given "Richard" — meaning Karceski, her lawyer.
"Richard has a total of 25 right now," Minehart replies, presumably referring to a $25,000 payment, "so we don't have to keep dipping back in the well."
"But he shouldn't have to," Koontz responds. "He has plenty."
After the day's testimony, the prosecutor elaborated on why she had played the tape.
"There's nothing wrong," Coffin said, "with her brain."