Sixteen years ago, Marci Webber killed her 4-year-old daughter, Maggie, in the midst of a psychotic episode, then cut her own wrists. When Ms. Webber’s eldest daughter, then 18, found them in the bathroom, Ms. Webber told her, “Shhh, don’t wake the baby.”
She has been institutionalized in Illinois ever since, but for over a decade she has argued that she no longer needs inpatient care. In November, a judge will decide whether she can go free.
The particulars of Ms. Webber’s case are different from those of Lindsay Clancy, whose recent trial on charges of killing her three young children resulted in a hung jury. Ms. Clancy is scheduled to have a hearing to determine next steps in her case next month. But Ms. Webber’s case offers a look at what long-term institutionalization and involuntary treatment can mean for someone found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Ms. Clancy’s trial lasted three weeks, during which the jury saw autopsy photos and children’s pajamas, and even took a trip to the crime scene. Defense lawyers argued that she was insane, and persuaded all but one juror that she should be found not guilty. Now the prosecutor must decide whether to put her on trial again.
Ms. Webber’s trial, on the other hand, took one day and had one witness, a forensic psychologist. She chose not to have a jury. A judge in DuPage County, the suburban county outside Chicago where the killing occurred, found her not guilty by reason of insanity.
The result has been years of debate and hearings over the role of medications and whether she is stable enough to live outside of a mental health facility. As Ms. Webber has tried to win her freedom, the court has heard conflicting testimony on Ms. Webber’s diagnosis, treatment, behavior and what she says are attempts to force her to take psychiatric drugs.
Prosecutors say Ms. Webber fails to fully grasp the harm she caused, in part because she blames medications, not mental illness, for Maggie’s death.
Involuntary commitment for those found not guilty by reason of insanity is supposed to be for treatment, not punishment. In Illinois, patients may be committed for no longer than what their prison sentence would have been if found guilty — in Ms. Webber’s case, 100 years. There is no minimum.
In many states, such patients receive periodic assessments to determine if inpatient treatment is still needed. In Illinois, a patient may petition the court for release.
In phone interviews from the state hospital where she is being held in Illinois., Ms. Webber spoke of how acutely she missed Maggie. “She was everything to me,” she said.
Years of imprisonment or institutionalization, she argued, will not prevent more children from dying at the hands of their parents. “These mothers are trying to protect their child from something in their heads.”
Ms. Webber, an Army veteran, began taking an antidepressant in the mid-1990s when she was embroiled in a custody dispute with the father of her eldest daughter. Over the years, she was prescribed a host of other antidepressants and antipsychotics, along with a beta blocker sometimes used to treat acute anxiety.
Millions of Americans use medication to treat mental health disorders, and they are considered both safe and effective. A regimen involving several drugs is not necessarily a red flag — experts said it can be desirable in complex illnesses.
But Ms. Webber’s case raises questions that also arose in the Clancy trial, about whether a shifting regimen of psychiatric drugs can contribute to violence. Psychiatric drugs can have adverse effects, particularly when treatment is initiated, doses are changed, or medications are discontinued. If unaddressed, experts say, these side effects may increase the risk of suicide or violence.
Ms. Webber said she had experienced akathisia, an involuntary and sometimes torturous restlessness.
“What they did for years was add meds, switch meds and just continue on,” Ms. Webber said. ‘Nobody thought to say, ‘You know what? I think she’s allergic to this stuff.’”
Dr. Gerard Sanacora, director of the Yale Depression Research Program, said it can be difficult to tease out whether conditions like psychosis are the result of disorders or the drugs being used to treat them.
“These medications are much more likely to help somebody than hurt somebody, but that doesn’t mean that an individual can’t be harmed,” he said.
Ms. Webber was raising three daughters and attending law school in upstate New York when she became obsessively religious, attending Mass daily and traveling 100 miles to a prayer group on weekends, children in tow. When she spotted a praying mantis at a gas station she “rescued” it, believing it was a sign.
Her older daughters had been named after a sitcom character and a president. She named Maggie after Mary Magdalene.
In the Clancy trial, prosecutors sought to portray the defendant as manipulative and controlling, saying she had meticulously planned her children’s death as she had planned their meals and activities.
Ms. Webber said such evidence proved nothing.
“Planning has nothing to do with whether a person is psychotic and insane,” she said. “You will have things that you’re doing that seem totally normal, but on the inside — unless people ask questions — you’re not normal.”
In 2010, Ms. Webber was increasingly worried for Maggie’s safety, believing that she was the target of sexual predators, and moved the girl to her grandmother’s townhouse in Illinois.
Ms. Webber was convinced that Satanists had rented the surrounding properties, and that she was being followed. She kept a knife under her mattress for protection. She felt evil as a physical sensation on her skin.
On a trip to the grocery store, she remembers asking others, “Is there a pill we can take to end our lives if they capture us?”
“You think you can handle it,” she said, “You think, ‘Oh, it’s going to go away or something.’ Until it’s too late.”
Relatives noticed that something was wrong, but Ms. Webber denied it. She now wishes they had asked more questions. She is no longer in touch with her family and asked that they not be contacted, saying that they had been through enough.
In a recent interview on “60 Minutes,” Patrick Clancy, Ms. Clancy’s former husband, offered a glimpse into what friends and relatives face when trying to respond to a deteriorating mental state. “Mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive,” he said.
Ms. Webber was having nightmares and not sleeping. Her paranoia coalesced into “a firm, fixed, false belief,” and she heard a voice telling her that Maggie needed to be saved, she said. She wishes she had been involuntarily hospitalized.
Instead, on Nov. 3, 2010, Ms. Webber’s teenage daughter entered the bathroom to find her sister’s body and the words “divine mercy” written in blood on the wall. Ms. Webber had turned on an audio recorder to capture angels arriving to take her and Maggie to heaven.
In 2014, after the judge’s not guilty verdict and several years of inpatient treatment, Ms. Webber refused psychiatric drugs. Her psychosis did not return, a judge found. Still, in 2017, he denied her release, saying both Ms. Webber and the state needed to do more to prepare. She attempted suicide.
In 2019, that judge released Ms. Webber with a treatment plan, after expressing concern that the state was not treating her fairly.
She returned to her apartment, but prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision and won. After less than two weeks, she returned to the mental institution.
Ms. Webber says that her institutionalization has gone on too long and is harming her physical and mental health.
In one conversation with Ms. Webber, prolonged screaming could be heard in the background. It was a fellow patient who, Ms. Webber said, was in a wheelchair and calling for help.
“God, I can’t stand living like this. Do you hear this?” she asked. “It is the most untherapeutic place you could ever be in.”
Prosecutors have argued that Ms. Webber remains dangerous, citing the suicide attempt, “aggressive, unruly and hostile behavior” and rule infractions. They say that her symptoms improve when she takes medication and worsen when she stops.
Under Illinois law, the burden is now on Ms. Webber to convince a judge that she is not likely to harm herself or others, or would not benefit from continued inpatient care. Her next hearing is in November.
The post She Killed Her 4-Year-Old Girl. Can She Ever Be Considered Sane? appeared first on New York Times.
