SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - A pharmacologist testified Tuesday that a man accused of killing a Sioux Falls hospice nurse as part of a plan to assassinate President Barack Obama could have been hallucinating throughout the two-day crime spree after ingesting a full box of cold-medicine pills.
Attorneys for James McVay, 43, called their first witnesses after the trial began Tuesday following a four-day break. McVay has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder for the 2011 stabbing of 75-year-old Maybelle Schein. McVay said he killed Schein and stole her car as part of his plot to drive to Washington, D.C., and kill the president. He was arrested in Wisconsin.
Because of the plea, jurors are only deciding whether McVay should be sentenced to life in prison or death by lethal injection. Defense attorney Amber Eggert has said McVay has a history of mental illness and his life should be spared, with a sentence of life in prison without parole.
The defense on Tuesday called its first witness, Dr. Eric Kutscher, a pharmacologist who interviewed McVay twice about his drug abuse. Kutscher in court said the dextromethorphan-based pills McVay took are widely known to induce hallucinations when abused, the Argus Leader reported. But Kutscher added it is unclear how long McVay could have felt the effects of a cold medicine overdose, particularly when mixed with alcohol. McVay reportedly took the pills with a whiskey mixed drink.
Kutscher said McVay told him that he began to use methamphetamine and heroin when he was 10. Kutscher said this drug abuse at an early age could have contributed to neurological damage.
“(The drugs) essentially change the person’s normal course of development because there’s a substance there that isn’t supposed to be,” Kutscher said.
Jurors also heard from a priest and a lawyer with the Public Defender’s Office in Madison, Wis.
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