Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Defense expert testifies suspect legally insane

Psychiatrist: Pattison fits legal definition

Dante Pattison Accused of killing pregnant sister, grandparents

A man accused of killing his pregnant sister and his grandparents in 2001 fits the legal definition of not guilty by reason of insanity, a psychiatrist said in court Monday.

Psychiatrist Gregory Brown said that when slaying suspect Dante Pattison killed his relatives with an assault rifle, he believed his grandmother's asking him to carve a dinner roast constituted a test to determine his worthiness to be emperor of Japan.

In Pattison's mind, he failed the test, and he then concluded that his family members were actually assassins orchestrating his murder.

"Mr. Pattison would, in my opinion, fill the criteria under Nevada statute for not guilty by reason of insanity," Brown said.

"He perceived his grandmother and his grandfather were assassins, and shot them," Brown said.

But prosecutors contend Pattison's psychosis was the result of methamphetamine use.

"Someone could be using a lot of drugs and exhibit symptoms similar to paranoid schizophrenia?" Pesci asked.

"Yes, that's correct," Brown said.

Pattison, 25, is charged with first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon in the shooting deaths of his grandmother, Sally Kato, 75, her 82-year-old husband, Yoshio Kato, and Pattison's 32-year-old sister, Carrie Pattison-Adrick. Pattison-Adrick was seven months pregnant at the time of her death, prompting a manslaughter charge against Pattison for the death of his sister's unborn child.

In the moments after the shootings, police found Pattison muttering the words "Father, speak to me," as he walked out of his grandparents' house near Vegas and Torrey Pines drives.

Brown, who was called to the witness stand by the defense Monday, said Pattison suffered from delusions in which he heard voices coming from the television and radio.

"The voices would tell him to kill his mother, and they would kill him if he did not kill his mother," Brown said.

He also said that shortly before the slayings, Pattison was making a habit of dunking his head in toilets to baptize himself. He actually jumped into a pool at a low income apartment complex in East Las Vegas the day before the slayings and called 911 to tell authorities about it.

Brown said after meeting with Pattison, he diagnosed the defendant as a paranoid schizophrenic.

"Jail wasn't really jail," Brown said of one of Pattison's beliefs. "It was a secret agent training ground."

But prosecutors suspect Pattison was highly intoxicated on methamphetamine at the time of the slayings. To support this, Pesci noted that methamphetamine was found in the system of Pattison's sister. On the day of the slayings, Pattison had spent much of his day with his sibling, but no tests for drugs were performed on Pattison in the hours after the slayings.

Testimony in the trial is expected to resume this morning.

Pattison faces a potential death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, he could be committed to a state mental health treatment facility for an undetermined period of time.