A 54-year-old woman accused of beating to death her elderly mother nearly five years ago in a psychotic episode during which she believed she was fighting demons was committed to a mental health institution indefinitely.
Letitica Smith, who has been held at the Lubbock County Detention Center since her March 8, 2020 arrest, was ordered to be committed to a state mental health facility until she is determined to no longer be a threat to the community or herself.
That determination will come after annual hearings in the 137th District Court.
Smith was indicted on a charge of murder alleging that on March 8, 2020, she intentionally or knowingly caused the death of her mother, 79-year-old Wanda Porter by blunt force trauma.
She appeared with her attorney, Mark Snodgrass, before District Judge John McClendon of the 137th District Court and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to which the Lubbock County District Attorney approved.
An insanity defense requires defendants to admit they committed the crime but were under the grips of a severe mental illness or defect and didn’t know their actions at the time were wrong.
More:Records: Lubbock woman charged with mother’s murder had threatened to kill
Since her charge involves an act of violence her case will remain in the court’s jurisdiction and the possibility of her release will be evaluated yearly.
Lubbock police arrested Smith after responding to a March 8, 2020, 5 a.m. domestic disturbance at a residence in the 3300 block of East 16th Street.
Responding officers entered through the open front door and found the house in disarray.
Smith was in the kitchen tossing items out of the refrigerator, her hands and arms covered in blood, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Smith’s mother, 79-year-old, Wanda Porter, laid on the floor next to a wall stained with her blood, the affidavit states.
“I killed her,” Smith told the officer, the warrant states.
A psychiatrist’s report would later state that Smith’s “behavior on the day of the incident was bizzare, agitated and psychotic to the point that she was accusing others of being demons and crying out of the demons to get off her. Ms. Smith was in an aberrant state of mind at the time of the homicde that rendered her believe it was right to have attacked her mother.”
Porter was taken to University Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.
The officer restrained Smith and escorted her to his vehicle but pulled away from him, prompting the officer to call a paddy wagon, which took her to the Lubbock County Detention Center where she was initially booked in on a charge of capital murder.
However, the Lubbock County District Attorney’s office presented a murder charge to a grand jury, who indicted Smith.
To plead not guilty by insanity, a defendant has to admit to committing the charged offense, in this case murder, but did so because of a serious mental illness.
A question of competency
On July 2, 2020, Smith’s attorneys asked the court to examine her after believing she was incompetent to stand trial.
Competency issues relate to defendants’ ability to understand legal proceedings and consult with their attorneys with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.
“Based on conversations with Ms. Smith, as well as observing Ms. Smith’s behavior, it is my personal believe Ms. Smith is not competent to stand trial,” Snodgrass wrote in his motion suggesting his client’s competence.
A competency evaluation was set in Sept. 4, 2020 and Dr. Greg Hupp found Smith competent to stand trial.
In Feb. 11, 2021, Smith’s attorney, Mark Snodgrass notified the court that he intended to raise the insanity defense in the case and asked for an evaluation, which was also done by Hupp.
Three years later, Smith’s attorneys again asked the court for an insanity evaluation done by a psychiatrist of their choice.
In March, the court appointed Dr. Greg Joiner to evaluate Smith for insanity. Court documents state Joiner found that Smith was competent to stand trial but met the legal criteria for insanity.
Snodgrass said Smith struggled with mental illenss most of her life. Details of Smith’s mental health diagnoses were not disclosed in court.
Snodgrass said he was hoped his client will get the treatment she needs to re-enter society.
“There’s no winners in this thing,” he said. “Her mother’s still deceased, the family’s obvisouly lost a mother, a sister, a friend. But this just kind of underscores the problem we have with mental health treatment in this state and in this country. We got people out there that desperately need the help that just don’t get it… they just we don’t have the beds, we don’t have hte facilities and, unfortunately, the jail’s our biggest mental health facilities.”
Prosecutor Laura Beth Fossett said the facts of the case clearly indicated that Smith was not in her right mind at the time she killed her mother.
“The egiousness of the facts of this case just lent themselves to that belief that I had that this defendant might have been insane at the time that she committed this crime,” she said.
She said Smith’s plea of not guilty by insanity was the appropirate resolution of the case.
“It truly wasn’t difficult to reach a conclusion on this,” she said. “That’s actually our statutory mandate is not to seek convictions but to seek justice.”
Fossett said part of the delay in resolving Smith’s case was the backlog created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cases that involve mental health issues typically face delays from scheduling evaluations for competency and insanity and then waiting for experts to file their reports to the court.
Fossett said Joiner’s report from his evaluation of Smith in March was filed two months before Wednesday’s plea.
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