NEW PHILADELPHIA − A Tuscarawas County judge has found a mother accused of drowning her 4-year-old son to be mentally competent to stand trial, now set for March 4.
Both county prosecutors and Ruth Miller’s attorneys agreed during a Nov. 25 court hearing with a psychologist’s assessment that Miller is fit to stand trial and assist in her own defense.
Miller, of the Millersburg area in Holmes County, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to aggravated murder, murder and felonious assault. She also faces misdemeanor charges of domestic violence and endangering children.
During a birthday weekend trip to Atwood Lake, Miller told deputies that on Aug. 23 she threw her 4-year-old son Vincen into Lake Atwood because God told her to.
Miller, 40, and her husband, Marcus Miller, were members of the Old Order Amish. Besides Vincen, they had a 15-year-old daughter and 18-year-old twin sons.
In a bizarre set of circumstances, Marcus Miller had drowned hours earlier in the lake while attempting to pass tests of faith to please God, investigators have said. Emergency responders later found the bodies of Vincen and Marcus Miller in the lake. Ruth Miller has not been charged with being responsible for her husband’s death.
According to investigators, after her husband’s death Ruth Miller erratically drove her 4-year-old son in a golf cart back to the dock and threw him into the water “as an offering to God,” and the child died.
Ruth Miller then returned to their RV and got her 15-year-old daughter and 18-year-old sons to jump into the lake. They survived uninjured.
Ruth Miller competency ruling
Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Judge Michael Ernest set a court date of March 4 to begin to seat a jury to decide whether Miller is not guilty by reason of insanity.
Miller, who was present at the hearing on Nov. 25, waived her right to a speedy trial by Feb. 7 in order to allow her attorneys enough time to prepare for her trial.
Ernest said Forensic Diagnostic Center of District Nine had provided him its competency and insanity assessment of Miller on Nov. 24. He said he had shared the reports with prosecutors and Miller’s attorneys. But he was not releasing the assessments to the public for now.
Tuscarawas County Prosecutor Ryan Styer summarized the conclusions of competency by psychologist Daniel Hrinko who saw Miller on Oct. 31.
Hrinko had found Miller had been suffering from a mental illness that included symptoms of delusion. However, she was taking medication, which significantly improved the symptoms. Therefore, he found that she was competent to stand trial.
Neither Styer or Miller’s attorneys disclosed Hrinko’s findings on whether Miller due to her mental illness on Aug. 23 did not realize the wrongfulness of her actions.
Miller’s attorneys had filed a motion asking the judge to exclude Hriko’s insanity assessment as evidence in the case.
They argued that a letter from Styer to Hrinko affected the credibility of his assessment. Styer had written to Hrinko that the courts in Ohio had found that someone could not successfully mount an insanity defense if the defendant knew what they were doing was legally wrong even if they believed a supreme being had told them to do it. Miller’s attorneys argued that it was not appropriate for Hrinko, who wasn’t an attorney, to make an assessment of Miller based on a legal argument.
Styer argued his letter seeking to legally define “wrongfulness” was appropriate because it was the psychologist’s role to determine whether a defendant knew what they were doing was wrong.
“It is a forensic examiner’s job under the Revised Code to apply their factual findings to the law in Ohio,” Styer told the judge. “If the defendant disagreed with the characterization of the law by the state of Ohio, the defendant should have made that known.”
On Nov. 25, Miller’s attorney withdrew their motion to exclude the assessment.
Miller’s attorney Madelyn Grant told the judge that because Hrinko’s assessment didn’t cite any of the case law stated in Styer’s letter to Hrinko, they were withdrawing their motion to exclude.
But she indicated that they were ready to dispute Styer sending a similar message with legal analysis to any other mental-health professional that later assesses Miller.
“We do not think any communication regarding a legal analysis or potential jury instructions in this case are appropriate for any evaluator, this evaluator or any future evaluator to review,” she said.
The two sides will convene for a hearing in Ernest’s courtroom on Jan. 5 to debate Styer’s proposed instruction to the jury on how jurors determine whether Miller knew what she was doing was wrong.
Styer and Miller’s attorney Ian Friedman declined to comment after the Nov. 25 hearing.
Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Mother accused of drowning son in Atwood Lake competent for trial
Reporting by Robert Wang, Canton Repository / The Repository
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