The estate of a woman who was killed by her mentally ill son may create new law in West Virginia by seeking to bar him from inheriting any of her assets even though he was not technically convicted of a crime.

Richard O'Neal

Richard O'Neal pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of his mother, whom he suffocated to death in her Charleston home in March 2005. A judge accepted the plea and ordered him committed to a state mental health facility for up to 40 years or until a further order of the court.

Under West Virginia's “slayer's statute,” “No person who has been convicted of feloniously killing another ... shall take or acquire any money or property, real or personal, or interest therein, from the one killed.”

As one of Bonnie O'Neal's three sons, Richard is entitled to a one-third share of her estate. But in a declaratory relief claim, her executor says that given his responsibility for her death, it would be "inequitable” and a violation of the “slayer's statute” for him to receive that share.

“While the slayer's statute applies ostensibly when there is an actual felony conviction in connection with the wrongful act, the public policy of West Virginia prohibits Richard G. O'Neal from profiting from his wrongful act,” the complaint, filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court, states.

In the case of a woman who had not been convicted of her husband's murder, the West Virginia Supreme Court said the victim's parents could still proceed with a slayer's statute claim as long as they showed evidence of “an unlawful and intentional killing.” McClure v. McClure, 403 S.E.2d 197 (1991).

But no West Virginia case addresses whether the law applies to a criminally insane killer and some out-of-state precedent is not favorable to the O'Neal estate.

“We believe that for a homicide to be 'felonious' in the context of the slayer's rule, it must be a felony for which the killer is criminally responsible under Maryland's criminal insanity test,” the Maryland Court of Appeals said in Ford v. Ford, 512 A.2d 389 (1986).

The test for insanity in West Virginia is whether the accused lacked “substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his act or to conform his act to the requirements of the law.” Richard O'Neal, who had a history of mental illness, told police he didn't remember killing his mother, only that they argued about bad reactions he was having to his medication.

In Ford, a dissenting opinion said a finding of criminal insanity “in no way diminishes the wrongfulness of the actor's conduct,” and made the forceful public policy argument that

It is repugnant to decency to say that an insane murderer can finance her rehabilitation with new found wealth from her victim's estate.

The O'Neal estate's best hope of relief may be that the West Virginia courts adopt a similar argument.

By Matthew Heller
5/15/07