The chief prosecutor of Fairfax County is letting some killers escape a conviction by accepting insanity pleas that would almost certainly be rejected by a jury. The insanity defense is used in less than 1% of criminal cases and is successful only about 25% of the time, making it a rare and difficult defense to employ. Defendants typically have to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that they were unable to distinguish right from wrong due to severe mental disease or defect at the time of the crime. Merely having a mental disorder is not enough to establish an insanity defense. It is the defendant who has the burden of proving insanity.
But Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano (D) has let 11 killers avoid conviction by accepting their plea of “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.” That’s about a fifth of the killers recently arrested in Fairfax County. So killers are 100 times more likely to avoid a conviction by claiming to be insane in Fairfax County than they would be in the rest of America. Even though there is no reason to think insanity is more common in Fairfax County than in the rest of the country, much less 100 times more common.
As Mary Katharine Hamm notes, “A man murdered Gret Glyer execution style, shot him” ten times “as he slept next to his wife.” The killing was premeditated, and the killer “even wrote it down in ‘The Plan.’” Yet Descano’s office has now accepted “a flimsy insanity plea” to send the killer to a “mental health facility, where he will be evaluated and eligible for release soon and over and over, each time potentially free and dangerous again.”
“Joshua Danehower, who was charged with murder and use of a firearm in commission of a murder, was able to plead not guilty by reason of insanity,” reported Channel 9 on February 19:
A Fairfax County judge on Thursday accepted a plea agreement finding a man not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2022 shooting death of a charitable organization CEO, a decision that sparked immediate outrage from the victim’s family.
Joshua Danehower, 37, who was charged with the murder of Gret Glyer, will move from a jail cell to a mental health facility rather than facing a criminal trial or prison time. The ruling followed a plea agreement reached between defense attorneys and prosecutors….Danehower told Judge Stephen Shannon he “didn’t possess the right mindset” due to his mental health when Glyer was killed in bed. Glyer…was shot 10 times while he slept in bed next to his wife on June 24, 2022…
“Justice is not served today,” Silvia Glyer, the victim’s mother, said…”An evil man took his life in the middle of the night….Somebody who planned step by step a murder.”…
Danehower reportedly became obsessed with Glyer’s wife after seeing her at a church function. Family members noted the two had gone on a date a decade earlier….The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said that Danehower had authored a murder plot titled “The Plan” before carrying out the shooting….This premeditation was a focal point for the Glyer family, who argued the Commonwealth’s Attorney failed to pursue a conviction despite the evidence….Danehower will be committed to a psychiatric hospital. His status will be evaluated annually for the next five years, and every two years thereafter. Each evaluation presents a legal opportunity for his release….
Ten other killers also escaped being convicted after Steve Descano’s office accepted their pleas of “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity”. Less than “50 cases for 1st & 2nd degree murder have been disposed in the last 3 years” by Descano’s office. So Descano is letting a significant proportion of Fairfax’s killers escape conviction by raising insanity defenses.
Killers can kill again after their insanity plea is accepted. Peter Bryan, a cannibalistic killer who had been treated in a psychiatric facility, killed again after being released. DC resident Javed Bhutto was killed in 2019 by a neighbor who had previously been declared not guilty by reason of insanity in a 1998 murder case. Mark Peterson was committed to a Connecticut psychiatric facility after a 1980s killing. After being released on a day pass in 1989, he stabbed 9-year-old Jessica Short over 34 times, killing her.
Descano, a progressive Democrat, was elected Fairfax County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney after spending nearly a million dollars to unseat a moderate Democrat in a very close primary election. “The lion’s share ($601,369)” of Descano’s campaign funds “came from the Justice and Public Safety PAC, whose sole donor was George Soros, the liberal billionaire who finances progressive causes,” noted Jason Johnson in The Fairfax Times.
Fairfax County is Virginia’s most populous County, with over a million people. Democrats hold 9 of 10 seats on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
