A 20-year-long double homicide case is nearing its legal end as the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court entered the sanity phase of the trial on April 20.
Stephen Deflaun—the man the jury found guilty of multiple murders in the first degree and of assaulting a law enforcement agent with a firearm—is awaiting a second verdict, this time from presiding Judge Jacquelyn Duffy.
Deflaun responded to the charges filed by District Attorney’s Office with pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. After the jury’s conviction, Deflaun waived his right to a jury trial for the second phase. Now, Duffy will decide whether he’s not guilty by reason of insanity.
She is hearing differing expert medical opinions on Deflaun’s state of mind at the time of the murders in the summer of 2001.
“This may be upsetting for people to hear,” defense witness Carolyn Murphy testified on April 20. “This individual still now doesn’t fully believe what he did was wrong.”
Murphy is a forensic psychologist with years of experience in the state hospital system. She diagnosed Deflaun as falling on the paranoid end of the schizophrenic spectrum. Murphy added that over the course of her 90-minute evaluation of Deflaun, she didn’t notice the paranoid nature of his disorder until roughly halfway through.
“Because of the nature of this illness, [individuals] tend to be higher functioning … and are less impaired intellectually,” she said.
During the guilt phase of the trial earlier in April, Deflaun testified that voices from an entity called “the program” urged him to kill 37-year-old Stephen Wells and his 11-year-old nephew, Jerry Rios Jr., after an altercation at the Morro Strand State Beach campground on July 8, 2001. He said the voices told him Wells was a “fed agent asshole,” which Deflaun interpreted to mean “fed agent assassin.”
Describing himself as “broken,” Deflaun went on to say that he armed himself with a loaded revolver he’d had since 1989 and extra ammunition and proceeded to meet Wells because he wanted to die at his hands. However, he claimed he changed his mind at the last minute. During his testimony, Deflaun said that he shot Wells and Rios Jr. six times over two rounds of shootings.
A returning witness who first testified during the guilt phase, Murphy stated both times that there was no evidence of malingering during her interview with Deflaun. Malingering is the diagnostic label for a person who is purposefully feigning mental illness symptoms for secondary gain like drugs or money. His actions in 2001 were the result of a “perfect storm of three factors,” according to Murphy.
The first was the ongoing delusions of “the program” that Deflaun had allegedly been experiencing since at least the late 1970s. The second factor was the 12-pack of Keystone beers he had consumed prior to meeting Wells and his family at the campground. The third was “the absolute misfortune of those people approaching him” at that time, Murphy said.
“He didn’t believe that the victim [Wells] was an actual victim based on who he thought they were,” she said.
Murphy added that Deflaun believed the boy’s killing was accidental and not intentional.
Her findings were similar to those in Kevin Perry’s assessment September 2022 report. Perry is a forensic psychologist who runs a private practice in the county and works at Atascadero State Hospital. He said he had met Deflaun twice before for a Murphy conservatorship case—a situation where a person is unfit to stand trial but has to be placed in a state hospital or psychiatric treatment facility because of public safety concerns.
“Mr. Deflaun had preexisting and longstanding psychiatric ailments at the time,” he testified on April 20.
Deflaun had testified that a doctor once diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia when he was younger. He added that while he may have been at the time, he’s not now. This belief contributed to Perry’s confirmation that he wasn’t malingering, adding that Deflaun has the “continuous” type of schizophrenia.
“He doesn’t want people to think he’s mentally ill,” Perry said. “He has typically presented as not wanting to have mental health treatment, though [he] continued to show psychotic symptoms.”
Perry’s evaluation found that while Deflaun understood that shooting the gun would kill Wells, he was not able to know right from wrong at the time of the offenses. He confirmed that Deflaun has a drinking problem that led to “impairments in functioning.” Perry also highlighted Deflaun’s history with violence dating back to 1979.
At that time, Deflaun believed his mother was poisoning him. He held her in a room for many hours and threatened and physically assaulted her. In 1982, Deflaun was arrested in possession of a knife, which resulted in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Once the defense rested on April 20, the prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Eric Dobroth, called in its first witness. The prosecution aimed to establish that Deflaun did know right from wrong when he committed the murders and assault in 2001. The burden rests on the defense to prove that he didn’t understand the difference.
The prosecution’s first witness, forensic psychologist Roxanne Rassti, produced a differing evaluation from her two peers. She drew from SLO County Sheriff’s Office and DA investigative reports, autopsy reports, law enforcement dispatch transcripts, and documents detailing Deflaun’s criminal history, along with her own 2.5-hour interview with Deflaun that resulted in a 15-page report.
“[Deflaun] was capable of distinguishing right from wrong in this offense,” she said on April 24.
Rassti added that the criteria for determining sanity hinges on whether a mental disease or defect is present, whether it impairs the quality and nature of one’s actions, and whether the disease makes them capable of distinguishing right from wrong.
“He believed that he was going to end up saving thousands of lives and the victim’s life if the victim killed him,” Rassti said. “He essentially [saw himself] as a martyr.”
She mentioned that Deflaun possessing such a worldview wouldn’t have required him to load a weapon and shoot Wells, and that he could have also carried an empty gun instead.
Further, Rassti found that there was a 10-second break between Deflaun’s first and second rounds of shooting. That pause held “no evidence that anyone continued to pose a threat to him.” Deflaun allegedly also looked away while shooting Rios Jr.
“That shows some evidence that he understood the difference between shooting a child and an adult,” she said.
Rassti testified that Deflaun neither mentioned “the program” in his journal that he kept at the time, nor did he alert others around him about his belief that Wells was a threat. The prosecution underscored these facts during the guilt phase of the trial as well.
Deflaun also repeated the phrase “I’m sorry” to first responders while they took him to the hospital from the crime scene. Rassti said she believed it indicated an acknowledgment of moral wrongfulness.
She pointed out two incidents in the lead-up to Deflaun’s arrest. His refusal to lower his gun after the shootout with law enforcement showed his ability to negotiate. Then, while being treated for injuries in the hospital after capture, Deflaun said he’d comply to a gunshot residue test “under protest.” That comment illuminated he was in touch with reality, according to Rassti.
The sanity phase is expected to conclude on April 28, which will be followed by a verdict declaration and sentencing. Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 7, 2023.