Killer’s sanity plea fails

Jurors Monday didn’t buy a 28-year-old man’s defense that he was insane when he stabbed his roommate to death on Halloween in 2005. The verdict means Vladimir Benitez will serve 26 years to life in prison.

After the verdict was read, Victoria Vargas, the mother of victim Enrique Martinez, cried. His cousin, Veronica Velasco, expressed her relief.

“I find it satisfying that finally after three years justice has been made,” Velasco said.

Benitez’s sanity was called into question when he claimed earlier that his landlady, Eugenia Torijano, had used witchcraft against him.

He later denied he had ever made those statements. After Benitez was evicted from the house he shared with Martinez and others in 2005, he left for several days and returned about midnight, got a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the sleeping Martinez. He ran away after Martinez shouted for help. Several weeks later he turned himself in.

After hearing hours of arguments in the sanity phase of the trial, the jury that took about 75 minutes to find him guilty last week needed less than half an hour to unanimously decide he was sane at the time of the stabbing. Jury foreman Matthew Thomas said it was unnecessary to deliberate long because everyone independently came to the same conclusion.

Thomas said all the jurors agreed there was clear evidence that Benitez knew what he was doing because he had a motive, and after committing the crime he tried to conceal it.

“He was disgruntled over being evicted, he left behind the weapon, fled the scene, asked help of relatives and friends, and asked how much a flight to Mexico would cost,” Thomas said.

Public defender David Wooden argued that his client could not have been sane given the lack of compelling reasons to kill his housemate.

“There is no understandable basis for this,” Wooden said, citing what he considered a weak motive.

Benitez was evicted from the house by his landlady, which gave him enough of a reason to kill Martinez, prosecutor Sonia Balleste said. Benitez also offered several other motives when he told authorities Martinez had called him a homosexual slur and accused Martinez of attacking him with a knife.

Roberto Flores, a witness for the defense, left open the possibility that Benitez was afflicted with psychosis at the time he committed the crime.

But Dr. Kaushal Sharma, the prosecution’s witness, said there was plenty of evidence that Benitez was of sound mind.

He said Benitez could have been frustrated about being evicted from the house or he could have been indignant about his roommate’s disparaging remarks.

According to Sharma, these constitute real annoyances and not delusions.

In order to be considered insane, a defendant must either fail to understand the “difference between right and wrong,” or fail to realize the “nature and quality of the act” they commit.

In a final effort to get Sharma to cast some doubt on Benitez’s mental state, he asked the psychiatrist to confirm that psychiatry is not an exact science.

“It’s better than law, but not as good as physics,” Sharma replied, drawing uproarious laughter from the jury and the audience gallery.

Benitez is scheduled to be sentenced April 4, but the prosecutor said the judge has little leeway because of mandatory sentencing guidelines.

“The judge doesn’t really have a decision to make,” Balleste said.

“The law mandates that the defendant be sentenced to 26 [years] to life [in prison] — one year for use of a deadly weapon, and a minimum of 25 years for first-degree murder.”