BURLINGTON — A battle between mental health experts is playing out in the murder trial of a Burlington man accused of killing his wife with a meat cleaver five years ago.
The key question in front of the jury is not whether Aita Gurung killed his wife and seriously injured his mother-in-law, but whether he was insane at the time.
The defense over the past several days has presented a series of experts as they work to back up their opening statement that Gurung could not control himself during the attack and had sought psychiatric care in the days leading up to it.
On Tuesday, it was the prosecutors’ turn to put their expert on the witness stand to refute Gurung’s insanity claim.
The case is now in its third week of testimony in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington, with the jury expected to begin deliberations later this week or early next week.
Gurung, 39, is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of his 32-year-old wife, Yogeswari Khadka, at their home in Burlington on Oct. 12, 2017. He is also charged with attempted murder, accused of severely injuring his mother-in-law, Thulsa Rimal, 54, in the same attack.
The prosecution Tuesday called on Dr. Catherine Lewis, a forensic psychiatrist and professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut. Lewis did not evaluate Gurung in person, but said she reviewed Gurung’s medical records as well as other documents, photos and videos in the case.
“It is my opinion he appreciated the criminality of his conduct,” Lewis told the jury under questioning from Assistant Attorney General Rose Kennedy.
Prosecutors have contended that Gurung had a history of assaulting his wife and abused alcohol. In their opening statement, they said Gurung was in a rage when the attack occurred because his wife wouldn’t get him a beer.
Lewis said a video of the attack showing Aita Gurung speaking in English to a crowd of onlookers, rather than his first language of Nepali, was telling.
“In order for him to speak in English, he would have to recognize that the crowd, first of all, were people, and when someone is that psychotic they don’t always even recognize they are dealing with people,” Lewis said. “He would have to recognize they are English-speaking and process that information.”
Gurung then had to “translate in his head from Nepali to English, ‘she betrayed me,’ and then say that,” Lewis said. “And that actually is pretty complex higher process thinking, and in my opinion a person would not be able to do that in that psychotic of a state.”
Also, when police arrived, Lewis said, it was clear Gurung did not want to be shot and he complied with their orders.
“Someone who doesn’t care about the consequences will rush the police,” Lewis said. “But he raised his arms. He did not want the police to shoot him.”
Lewis is expected to face cross-examination by Gurung’s defense team when the trial resumes Wednesday morning.
Her testimony Tuesday came a day after Dr. David Rosemarin, a forensic psychiatrist called by Gurung’s defense team, testified that Gurung had been compelled by “voices” to carry out the attack. Rosemarin said he had examined Gurung in December 2017, two months after the killing, and had done so again as recently as this summer.
Rosemarin said Gurung was “so preoccupied with the voices” that he lacked the capacity to control his behavior.
“He was being controlled by the voices,” Rosemarin testified. “And at the time of killing, his free will was overwhelmed by the voices.”
Kennedy asked when the voices started.
“As (Gurung) describes it, the voices commanded it and he was going by the commands of the voices before the initial attack,” Rosemarin said. “Exactly when? Don’t know. Before the first hit.”
Now heading toward a jury verdict, the case almost didn’t make it to trial.
Gurung’s was among three murder or attempted murder cases that Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George dismissed in June 2019. George said she based her decisions on expert opinions about the defendants, concluding that her office could not combat insanity defenses raised in each instance.
After Gov. Phil Scott called on then-Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan to conduct a review of each case, Donovan brought the murder charge against Gurung two months later in September 2019.
Riley Robinson contributed reporting.
