Mental-Illness Defense Assailed in Murder Trial

Dismissing a mental-illness defense as bogus, Deputy Dist. Atty. Shellie Samuels told a jury that Robert M. Bloom Jr. executed his father, stepmother and stepsister, and he urged the panel to find him guilty of first-degree murder.

“Every action of this defendant--from beginning to end--had a rational basis,” Samuels told the jury during closing arguments, which are expected to conclude today. “He planned to murder the man that has been tormenting him his whole life. That’s rational.”

Bloom was convicted and sentenced to death a year after the 1982 killings, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in 1997, ruling that Bloom’s attorney didn’t produce enough evidence that his client was mentally ill.

The crux of the retrial has been Bloom’s mental state, not his guilt.

Bloom’s new court-appointed lawyer, Seymour Applebaum, presented evidence in the retrial in an attempt to illustrate that his client is mentally ill. Applebaum told the jury in closing that Bloom is a “profoundly damaged person” who is “profoundly mentally ill.”

Applebaum implored the jury to convict Bloom, 36, of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter because, he said, his client was a fearful and confused 18-year-old on the night he killed his abusive father at his Sun Valley home.

“His father is a bully, an abuser,” Applebaum told the jury, adding that Bloom and his father had a “master-servant” relationship.

Samuels, in her closing statement, acknowledged that Bloom’s father, Robert Bloom Sr., was a “jerk” but questioned whether he was a tyrant who physically and emotionally abused Bloom throughout his childhood, as characterized by the defense.

“[The] portrayal of abuse is highly exaggerated,” Samuels told the jury.

Bloom sat calmly throughout the lengthy closing arguments, at times rubbing his fingers through his shoulder-length hair or petting his beard.

He often glanced at the four color photos of himself as a child that his defense team had pinned to the bulletin board near the jury box.

Applebaum repeatedly pointed to the defendant and told the jury that Bloom was “fully dissociated” by the time he stood over his father and fired the second time, hitting him in the head. He was in a rage when he shot his father the first time during a heated argument, his attorney said.

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After the killing, Bloom went inside and shot and killed his stepmother, Josephine Lou Bloom, and stabbed his 8-year-old stepsister, Sandra Hughes, 23 times with scissors.

Although the gun was never found, Bloom was arrested within an hour of the killings with blood on his hands and shoes.

At his first trial Bloom insisted on testifying and said his father had shot the stepmother. In a rage over that, Bloom said he retaliated by killing his father.

The jury didn’t believe him. After his conviction, Bloom fired his lawyer and represented himself in the penalty phase, telling the court he had no remorse for his crimes and asking the jury to recommend the death penalty.

“He was executed,” young Bloom told the jury about his father’s death. “He got everything he had coming. Don’t slap my hand. I deserve to die. I want to die.”