People v. McCarrick
Annotate this CaseDefendant killed her three-year-old twin daughters with a sword. A neighbor heard loud thumping from defendant’s apartment. Later, a fire alarm went off. The neighbor, seeing smoke, ran upstairs and kicked in the door, but it was blocked. He broke a sliding glass door, entered the apartment, and saw a sword, covered in blood. Firefighters forced the door open, found a fire in a closet near the front door, and found the girls’ bodies near the door. They found defendant, with cuts to her throat and wrist. A search revealed an assault rifle, a shotgun in the living room, a loaded handgun, and a straight-bladed sword covered with blood. Defendant’s fiancé, out of the state for business, had called that day. Defendant was incoherent and said, “tell them that it was an accident” and “We are going to make a fire.” He heard the alarm and a scream; then the call ended. Others also testified to having conversations during which defendant was irrational. The court of appeal affirmed her convictions of two counts of first-degree murder with a multiple-murder special circumstance finding, and two counts of assault on a child under the age of eight resulting in death. The court rejected claims that the evidence did not support the jury’s sanity verdict and that the court committed instructional error.
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