Judge hears closing arguments in Saskatoon trial of man who stabbed partner to death
The case against accused murderer Thomas Hamp is closed and it's now up to a Court of King's Bench judge to decide which interpretation of events to agree with.
Prosecutor Cory Bliss and defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle made final arguments Wednesday before Justice Grant Currie at the 28-year-old's judge-alone second-degree murder trial.
The issue is not whether Hamp fatally stabbed his partner Emily Sanche on Feb. 20, 2022 — he admitted that at trial.
Rather, the defence contends Hamp was in a mental health crisis that left him incapable of knowing that what he was doing was wrong.
"There's only one explanation for why Thomas Hamp would have done this to Emily Sanche and it's he was suffering from an acute psychotic episode where he was not in touch with reality," Pfefferle said.
The Crown is suggesting that Hamp was in a drug-induced psychosis when he killed Sanche and then claimed an intruder had stabbed her and tried to kill him.
"From our perspective, it's very unusual that someone would commit a crime while deluded and then immediately suggest that someone else committed the crime," Bliss said.
Both Bliss and Pfefferle relied, to varying degrees, on a 25-page assessment done by forensic psychiatrist Shabehram Lohrasbe. The veteran doctor was hired by the defence.
Lohrasbe concluded in his report, based on five hours of interviews with Hamp and a review of notes kept by Sanche and her cousin Catherine, that Hamp "was acutely and severely psychotic" when he killed Sanche in their apartment.
"Psychosis was the dominant factor that drove his violence," Lohrasbe wrote.
"It is likely that his capacity to 'know' that his actions were wrong, in the real world, was severely impaired."
While testifying by video, Lohrasbe said he could not overstate the importance of the notes kept by Emily Sanche and her cousin. Pfefferle noted in his close that "her real time overview was not marred by memory, delusion, distortion or inaccuracy."
"The detailed notes and text messages that Emily and her cousin Catherine compiled, described by Dr. Lohrasbe as 'incredibly important documents' are rare in their depth and immediacy." he said.
"Dr. Lohrasbe, a psychiatrist with over four decades of experience and thousands of assessments to his name, testified that he had 'never seen anything like it.' Emily's text message chain, he testified was 'poignant, and so close to the offence' that it offered unparalleled insight into the rapid deterioration of Thomas's mental state."
Bliss offered a different take on the impact of Sanche's detailed record.
He suggested that a list compiled by the 25-year-old in her journal in the days before her death, which referenced the need for a mental health warrant and the necessity of seeing a doctor, actually provided the motive for the attack.
Hamp, already in a drug-induced psychosis because of his sustained cannabis use, would have seen the list as evidence Sanche was going to force medical treatment and planning on leaving him, Bliss argued.
This threat of a partner pulling away is often a trigger for violence in intimate partner cases, he said.
Bliss referenced how Lohrasbe was generally concerned about the impact of high-potency cannabis on a user's mental health. The doctor agreed that symptoms from drug-induced psychosis could look like mental illness.
"I think there is a real concern for the public that people that choose to take psychoactive drugs, and they lose touch with reality because of that, those people should be responsible for their crimes," Bliss said outside court after the day's proceedings were done.
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