The V.I. Supreme Court overturned in a recent opinion Alvin Petric’s murder convictions in the grisly killings of his father, brother, father’s girlfriend and the family dog in 2006 in La Vallee on St. Croix, ruling that Petric should have been found not guilty due to insanity.
The bodies of Petric’s 31-year-old brother, Zizko Petric, his 75-year-old father, Ivan Petric Sr., and his father’s companion, 69-year-old Nanny Meijn-Kuiper, were discovered on Nov. 21, 2006. According to a police affidavit filed with the court, a caller reported an abandoned car in the area of Estate La Vallee, and while police were investigating that report, they discovered the bodies at the home.
Police said they found Petric Jr. sitting on a bed in the same room as his brother’s body, holding two fully loaded .357 revolvers and a toolbox that contained boxes of bullets. Petric told officers the shootings occurred after a domestic dispute, according to the affidavit.
At a 2008 court appearance, Petric, in leg irons, handcuffs and slippers rather than shoes, did not speak at all, but sat staring ahead, rocking slightly.
Defense attorneys have maintained since Petric’s arraignment that untreated mental illness played a role in the slayings.
A jury convicted Petric of three counts of first degree murder for the three deaths on Sept. 28, 2012. Petric was also convicted of three counts of unauthorized possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, one ammunition offense, and first degree animal abuse for shooting the family dog.
In 2013, V.I. Superior Court Presiding Judge Darryl Donohue sentenced Petric to three consecutive life terms in prison.
Last week’s Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Maria Cabret, finds the Superior Court used the wrong test for the insanity defense and gave the jury directions that were in conflict with the correct standard, and if judged by the correct standard, the prosecution had not met the standard of proof to show Petric was sane at the time of the acts.
"At trial both the Superior Court and the parties labored under the mistaken assumption that the applicable test for insanity was whether the defendant had “sufficient reason to know right from wrong” at the time the offenses were committed," Cabret wrote. "This test, commonly referred to as the M’Naghten test, exempts individuals from criminal liability where at the time of committing the offenses the defendant “was labouring under such a defect of reason … as not to know the
nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong," she explained.
But the territory explicitly rejected that standard and adopted its own statutory definition for the insanity defense, she wrote.
Instead, the Supreme Court pointed to its own 2009 opinion in Nibbs v. People, that "to raise the insanity defense a defendant need only introduce “some evidence” tending to show that he was “mentally ill and … committed the act charged against [him] in consequence of such mental illness.” Once the defendant introduces “some evidence” of mental illness, the defendant’s sanity at the time of the offense becomes an element of the crime, which, like all other elements of the crime, must be proven by the people beyond a reasonable doubt."
The court then looked at psychiatric testimony from trial that Petric likely suffered from an undiagnosed “psychotic disorder" and was in a “delusional state” such that Petric “thought that his actions … [were] correct” and “believed that his act was in self-defense.” It also pointed to testimony and evidence of mental illness in the family, past episodes of mental illness in Petric, and a history where the father did not believe in and would not allow mental health care. Petric was hospitalized for several weeks as a teenager for a psychotic episode.
The court also overturned an ammunition conviction, saying the prosecution agreed the charge was not proven. The opinion concludes directing "Superior Court to enter judgment finding Petric not guilty by reason of insanity on the remaining charges and take further action consistent with that."
