A Glen Burnie man who was so high on PCP that he did not know for days afterward that he had stabbed his father to death and wounded his stepmother won a much-sought-after judicial recommendation yesterday: treatment at Patuxent Institution in Jessup as part of a 30-year prison term.
"I wish I could take it back," Charles Martin Grierson, 27, said in Anne Arundel Circuit Court after apologizing to his stepmother. "I carry a picture of my father in my heart."
Calling it a sad case that has torn a previously close-knit family, Judge Pamela L. North told Grierson that he seemed to be a "good person who did a very horrible thing and made a very dangerous choice when you started using this drug."
Her recommendation for an evaluation for Patuxent was crucial for quick action, said Laura Robinson, one of his lawyers, who described Grierson as a genial and hardworking young man whose behavior turned monstrous from using PCP. Under Patuxent's rules, he must serve at least half of his term -- and perhaps more, depending on his progress in therapies.
Last month, in a plea bargain, prosecutors dropped a first-degree murder charge for a plea to second-degree murder and assault, and a 30-year sentence. Assistant State's Attorney Laura S. Kiessling said Grierson was so drug-crazed at the time of the killing that the case did not meet the legal criteria for first-degree murder.
"I can never forgive you," his stepmother, Deborah Grierson, 42, said yesterday in court, describing numbness and continuing ailments from the stabbing. "Certainly drug use is no excuse for what you have done. You chose to take drugs. Others may feel sorry for you, but I don't."
PCP is often linked to uncharacteristic violence prompted by delusions. The defense lawyer told the judge that in the days before he stabbed his father, Fred Charles Grierson, 62, and stepmother Jan. 22, the younger Grierson believed he saw his mother's head spin in a full circle. He had other delusions as well. His roommate so feared his behavior that he called Grierson's mother, Robinson said.
"That wasn't our Charlie," Barbara Grierson, his mother, said after the sentencing.
On the day of the slaying, Charles Grierson's mother called police seeking help for him. Grierson also called police. After finding him, but no drugs and nothing amiss at his father's home, the officers left.
Hours after the police visit, Grierson made an unprovoked attack on a friend in his father and stepmother's home. When they intervened, he stabbed them, according to testimony.
After his arrest, Grierson was so disoriented that he asked police to kill him, and detectives stopped questioning him because he drifted in and out of rationality. Only days later did he understand what he had done.