A Lake County jury on Friday found Daniel Dion guilty of attempted murder for the multiple stabbing of a 24-year-old Vernon Hills woman outside of a Deer Park movie theater while they were on a date Jan. 8, 2015.
The jurors began deliberations just before noon Friday and announced that they had reached a verdict about 5 p.m. Dion faces between six to 30 years in prison at a pending sentencing hearing before Judge Daniel Shanes.
Dion, 20, of Des Plaines, charged with one count of attempted first-degree murder, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The jury rejected the insanity defense and a special alternate verdict, guilty but mentally ill, which would still have required him to serve his entire sentence once it is issued but would have also called for mental health treatment.
“We are disappointed that the jury didn’t appreciate the challenges my client faces,” defense attorney Ian Kasper said in a statement late Friday. “We plan an appeal and will continue to fight to try to get mental health treatment for someone who obviously needs it.”
Closing arguments focused primarily on Dion’s mental state at the time of the attack, as the defense did not dispute during the trial that Dion stabbed the woman, instead attempting to prove the insanity assertion.
Under state law, to find a defendant not guilty due to insanity, a judge or jury must find the defendant had a defect or disease of the mind serious enough that it prevented him from realizing the criminality of an act.
A forensic psychologist testifying for the defense told the jury that she believed, after interviewing Dion several times in jail and reviewing police and medical reports, that Dion was “insane” at the time of the stabbing.
A psychiatrist testifying as a prosecution witness said she believed Dion was not insane and was instead “malingering,” feigning a serious mental illness due to his circumstances.
“This is not a whodunit, not a case of whether they got the wrong person,” Kasper told the jury Friday in closing arguments. Kasper asked the jurors to study the evidence from an intellectual rather than an emotional viewpoint, acknowledging that “nobody’s heart doesn’t go out” to the woman.
He said the evidence, including video played for the jury of Dion’s behavior when and after he was arrested — such as repeatedly screaming “he made me do it” — as well as a long history of disturbing behavior during his teen years and the testimony of the psychologist, should lead jurors to the conclusion that Dion was insane when he attacked the victim.
“The idea that Danny is faking it, that he’s some sort of criminal mastermind with a borderline low IQ, is incredible,” Kasper said of the prosecutor’s assertions in the case.
Dr. Karen Chantry had testified for the defense that after extensive interviews and testing, she believed Dion suffered from schizophrenia or a similar paranoid delusional disorder and that his mental state during the attack met “the criteria of not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Lauren Kalcheim Rothenberg, at times holding the knife used in the attack as she addressed the jury Friday, said that “on Jan. 8, 2015, Daniel Dion wanted to kill (the woman) because he thought he could get away with it.”
Rothenberg said Dion planned the attack, fled the scene on foot after stabbing the victim in her car, and went straight to his car, which was parked at his nearby workplace. But when it wouldn’t start, and his boss saw him covered in blood, Dion “knew he wouldn’t get away with it and decided at that point he was going to play insane,” she said.
“He clearly had intent to kill her. He told police he wanted to kill her,” Rothenberg said. She also noted that prior to that date, Dion had written notes, entered as evidence, regarding the steps he needed to take to get away with the crime.
“That shows he knows what he is about to do is wrong,” she said.
The woman testified earlier in the trial that she had a dating relationship with Dion, who was a co-worker of hers at a Deer Park business, and the two had decided to see a movie after work that day.
She said the two were inside her car outside the theater when Dion began kissing her aggressively and then grabbed a knife and stabbed her repeatedly as she tried to escape the car. When she did escape, after being stabbed more than 20 times, she staggered into the theater lobby before collapsing and being rescued by police and paramedics.
The woman was in critical condition before and after surgery to treat the wounds, and the first sheriff’s deputy responding to the scene at the theater testified that after seeing her, he didn’t believe she would survive.
The deputy turned on his body camera, capturing the woman, drenched in blood, being asked who had stabbed her.
“Danny … Danny Dion,” she responded.
Dion has been held in Lake County Jail without bail since his arrest the night of the attack.
Twitter @jimnewton5
