A young woman who rammed her car into another in a bid to commit suicide but instead killed three musicians was found guilty but mentally ill Friday in Cook County’s Skokie courthouse.
The prosecution had charged Jeanette Sliwinski, 25, with three counts of first-degree murder, but the judge convicted her of the lesser charge of reckless homicide. A conviction of guilty but mentally ill means she will receive treatment while serving her sentence.
Sliwinski could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years. Had she been convicted of first-degree murder, she could have gotten a life sentence.
The former trade-show model from Morton Grove pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. She waived her right to a jury trial, leaving the case in the hands of Circuit Judge Garritt Howard.
He said in explaining the verdict that he believed Sliwinski was trying to kill herself.
“She put the accelerator to the floor. She never touched the brakes,” Howard said. “I believe the defendant was being truthful when she said she only intended to hurt herself and not anyone else.”
But he did not believe she was psychotic. He said he believed she “outright fabricates” some of the details of what happened.
“The defendant is a very poor historian,” Howard said.
Sliwinski, who was shaking and whispering to herself before the verdict, looked down and sobbed as the judge spoke.
But her lawyer, Tom Breen, said he “was absolutely delighted the judge felt first-degree murder was not proven and the judge acknowledged she was a deeply disturbed woman.”
‘A great big hole’
Gail Meis’ son, Douglas, was one of the three killed in the wreck.
“Nothing is going to bring them back,” she said. “Our family was so close. Now there’s a great big hole. There always will be.”
Sliwinski’s family said little in the moments after the verdict.
“We would have obviously all hoped for a verdict of innocent because of illness,” said Toni Randle, the family’s spokesman.
Chicagoans Michael Dahlquist, 39, John Glick, 35, and Douglas Meis, 29, were at a stop light on Dempster Street and Niles Center Road in Skokie in July 2005 when Sliwinski’s Mustang barreled into their Honda Civic at 87 m.p.h., prosecutors said.
The men were on their lunch break from work at Shure Inc., a Niles company that makes microphones and other audio electronic products.
During testimony this week, several defense witnesses described Sliwinski as psychotic, while others called by the prosecution suggested that her strange behavior was contrived, or demonstrated mental illness that didn’t meet the legal definition of insanity.
During closing arguments Friday, family members wept as the prosecution detailed the horrific nature of the crash.
Rather than use a gun, Sliwinski used her car as a weapon, Assistant State’s Atty. Michele Gemskie said.
“With one narcissistic, histrionic act, this woman brought their innocent lives to an end as she tried to take her own,” she said.
She noted inconsistencies in what Sliwinski told doctors leading up to the accident.
In testimony last week, psychiatrists who interviewed Sliwinski in jail said she told them she doesn’t remember the crash.
But police investigators testified that immediately after the wreck, Sliwinski said she had wanted to commit suicide after a fight with her mother earlier in the day. She said she jumped in her car, drove about a mile east on Dempster at 70 m.p.h. and floored the accelerator when she saw traffic stopped in front of her at Niles Center.
She slammed into the stopped Honda, flipping both cars. Glick was thrown from the Honda and pronounced dead on the scene. Dahlquist and Meis were trapped inside the vehicle and were pronounced dead at local hospitals.
To bolster their insanity defense, Sliwinski’s attorneys, Breen and Todd Pugh, portrayed a woman desperately seeking medical help for depression they claim drove her into madness when psychiatrists failed her.
Her mother, Ursula, testified that Sliwinski complained of hearing voices talking to her from the television. Her former attorney, Thomas Needham, testified that four days after the crash Sliwinski recounted imagined television coverage of her case on the “Tonight Show” and “60 Minutes.”
But prosecutors sought to weaken that testimony by describing a woman caught up in the grip of alcohol and drug abuse prior to the crash.
Woman’s psychosis doubted
Dr. Peter Lourgos said Sliwinski told a psychologist that she knew the psychologist “wouldn’t believe this,” but the CIA was after her and President Bush “was in on it too.” But Lourgos said people suffering from psychosis don’t preface descriptions of their delusions with phrases that suggest they know the experience is strange.
Though the burden to prove a crime was committed fell on the prosecution, it was up to the defense to prove that their client was legally insane — that she did not comprehend the criminality of her actions at the moment of the crash.
“It’s a tough burden to meet; it’s a very heavy burden,” said Tom Geraghty, a law professor at Northwestern University.
Experts say it is not easy to wade through conflicting testimony and determine someone’s mental state at a given moment.
Psychiatric evaluation isn’t a “hard and fast science,” said Dr. Morton Silverman, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago.
While there are standard questions and techniques that psychiatrists use, much of their diagnoses rests on their own observations and interactions with patients, he said. When medications are prescribed, diagnoses become even more complex, as patients can respond unexpectedly to drugs, and multiple drugs can interact in unforeseen ways.
After the verdict was announced, Gemskie said prosecutors were disappointed.
“We believe the evidence did support a finding of first-degree murder,” she said. “The families of the victims also … of course, they are disappointed. But nothing is ever going to bring their sons and brothers and friends back.”
Musicians remembered
Dahlquist played drums for Silkworm, a band that had played around the Midwest as well as in England, Italy and Japan. After he died the group stopped playing shows together. Glick played guitar and sang with the Returnables, which also disbanded after the crash. Meis played drums with Glick’s wife in The Dials, a group that continued performing.
Friends and family members have tried to keep the memory of the men alive, posting on Internet message boards and Web sites, recording tribute albums and organizing benefit shows.
“For many of us, the passing of a single day without one of these men was difficult to endure,” read a statement on the Web site for The Dials. “They will be longed for always.”
Sentencing is set for Nov. 26.
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