State v. Blake

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Foth, C.:

This is a first degree murder case in which the defendant pleaded insanity and the jury convicted him of murder in the second degree for the fatal shooting of his two and one-half year old daughter, Kandee.

On appeal defendant presents several issues, the two major ones being (1) whether his amnesia covering the period surrounding the homicide rendered him incompetent to stand trial, and (2) whether the trial court’s questioning of defendant’s psychiatric expert coupled with its instructions deprived him of a fair trial on his insanity defense.

W…