The Washington state Supreme Court has ruled that a criminally insane man who murdered his mother should not profit from his crime by pocketing a share of the proceeds from a lawsuit related to her death.

The decision was an emphatic victory for the estate of Pamela Kissinger in a case which focused on whether Joshua Hoge was a “slayer” under Washington's “slayer statute,” which bars “any person who participates ... in the willful and unlawful killing of any other person” from receiving any benefit from the death of the decedent.

After settling a wrongful-death suit against the state mental health agency, the estate invoked the statute to deny Hoge any share of the settlement. He stabbed both his mother and stepbrother to death in June 1999 while apparently under the delusion that they had killed his child.

An appeals court in 2007 remanded the case to a trial judge for a determination of whether Hoge killed his mother “willfully” -- a term which the state Supreme Court has defined to mean “'intentionally and designedly.'” The trial judge had used a different definition in ruling that Hoge could not be a beneficiary under the slayer statute.

But the Supreme Court held unanimously May 7 that no matter how “willfully” is defined, Hoge's state of mind at the time he killed Kissinger was that of a “slayer.”

“Certainly, Hoge could have been so delusional that he did not intend or even know that he was killing a human being,” Justice Tom Chambers wrote for the court. “Not every homicide committed by the criminally insane is willful and deliberate.”

“But the trial court made very specific findings of fact and conclusions of law,” he continued, “and determined that Hoge acted with premeditated intent when he killed his mother ... [O]n the record before us, the estate has established the requisite state of mind to invoke the slayer statute.”

The trial judge concluded that “[n]otwithstanding his mental illness, Hoge subjectively knew he was killing a human being when he stabbed Pamela Kissinger, and did so with premeditated intent.”

Hoge also argued that the killing was not “unlawful” because he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the criminal courts. But Chambers agreed with the appeals court that “The insanity statute does not make homicide lawful; it simply declines to punish a defendant who has committed an unlawful act but is found legally insane.”

Kissinger's estate sued the state for improperly medicating Hoge, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and a psychiatric condition that caused him to believe his mother and stepbrother had been replaced by imposters. He is now confined to a mental hospital.

By Matthew Heller
5/13/09