Jury to decide if slayer is mentally competent

By Matt Pordum

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004 | 9:36 a.m.

A Clark County jury began deliberations Monday afternoon to decide if a young man, who left his home with the knife he later used to stab his friend to death, was legally insane or competent and guilty of murder.

Michael Kane, 21, is accused of stabbing 23-year-old John Trowbridge several times while the two were listening to the radio and playing "fighting" video games in a house on the 5200 block of Koa Avenue, near Flamingo Road and Nellis Boulevard, on Oct. 22, 2001.

In closing arguments, Deputy Public Defender Scott Coffee quoted singer Bob Dylan in an attempt to demonstrate how easy it was to see his client was legally insane at the time of the killing and not guilty of murdering Trowbridge.

"Some attorneys quote philosophers or poets; I quote pop stars," Coffee said. "Bob Dylan once sang 'Don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows' and you (the jury) don't have to be a lawyer to know Michael Kane is insane."

Coffee said three doctors had testified at trial that Michael Kane, who took LSD the night of Trowbridge's death, was legally insane and stabbed Trowbridge under the "false-fixed delusion" that he was going to be hurt or raped by Trowbridge.

Coffee said his client didn't act with malice of forethought, with premeditation or deliberation, but instead because "Michael (Kane) was under an imminent threat in his mind."

Although Coffee reminded the jury they are not supposed to take the potential punishment his client receives into consideration while deliberating, he assured them that acquitting Michael Kane by reason of insanity would not set him free. Coffee said his client would simply receive better treatment at a mental health facility, from which he would never leave.

Coffee said because there is no cure for schizophrenia, a Sanity Commission would never be able to deem Michael Kane sane, and subsequently release him.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Ed Kane, who is not related to the defendant, told the jury it was easy for the defense to say malice of forethought, premeditation and deliberation didn't exist within Michael Kane, but "actions speak louder than words."

Ed Kane said, as he pulled the murder weapon out of an evidence bag and displayed it to the jury, too much evidence existed to show Michael Kane was more than "just an ill individual responding to an unexpected threat."

"It's easy to say none of this existed (malice of forethought, premeditation and deliberation)," Ed Kane said. "But (Michael) Kane left his home carrying the knife, before he took the LSD or met his friends or felt threatened. He left his house with violence in his heart."

Ed Kane said that although mental health experts had testified Michael Kane was legally insane, none of them were legally qualified to understand how narrow the legal definition of insanity is.

Although Ed Kane argued he didn't believe the defendant was delusional, he said even if the jury did make such a determination, Michael Kane's delusions failed to meet the legal burden of a self-defense claim.

Under Nevada law a homicide is justifiable if the person slain was about "to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished."

Ed Kane said Trowbridge never posed a threat, and even if the jury found Michael Kane delusional, he failed to act as a reasonable person would have if they were in the same situation. Simply put, the law regarding self-defense is the same regardless of someone's state of mind.

Ed Kane said that when the rules are looked at, the only appropriate verdict would be first-degree murder.

During opening statements, Deputy Public Defender Dan Silverstein said the extent of Michael Kane's mental problems, however, could be better understood by looking at his actions since Trowbridge's death. Silverstein said upon being placed in custody at Clark County Detention Center, Michael Kane "attacked the guards," and after being restrained in bed and unable to attack them he began "chewing holes into his own shoulder. He began gnawing on himself."

Silverstein said after being declared incompetent to stand trial in 2002, Michael Kane was sent to Lake's Crossing, the state mental hospital in Sparks. He said that on the plane ride to the facility, Michael Kane said he believed the "guards accompanying him on the flight were terrorists who were poisoning the air in the plane." Silverstein said Michael Kane went to the plane's bathroom where he "stuck his head in the toilet because he thought it was the only way to get safe air."

Silverstein said Michael Kane is only able to sit in court because he is on "heavy" medication.