“This is true even where that consumption or intoxication may exacerbate or aggravate the symptoms of the mental condition and even where the defendant knows such aggravation may result,’’ the court wrote.
The ruling, which follows a related SJC decision last year, sharpens the divide between mental illness and drug abuse in considering insanity defenses and potentially opens the door for appeals on similar grounds for convicts whose mental health and substance abuse were factors at trial.
Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said yesterday that DiPadova would pose “an extreme threat to public safety’’ if released. Leone vowed to retry the case.
DiPadova, a Lowell man serving a life sentence without parole for the 2004 killing of Nancy Carignan, will remain incarcerated at Bridgewater State Hospital, where he has served the bulk of his sentence since his conviction in 2007.
No one disputes that DiPadova, who has bipolar disorder and has been hospitalized numerous times for mental illness, killed Carignan. But at his trial, his lawyer argued he was not criminally responsible because he heard voices commanding him to kill the victim.
Prosecutors said DiPadova made efforts to cover up his crime, showing an awareness his actions were wrong, and that regular cocaine use had “significant impact on his mental state during that time.’’
The prosecution presented evidence that he told police the voices in his head “love when I do drugs’’ because it made the voices “more powerful.’’
An SJC ruling last year reversed a first-degree murder conviction of Sheila Berry, who killed a man in 2002 by repeatedly hitting him with a cinder block.
At her trial, several mental health experts testified that Berry was bipolar and probably delusional. She had also consumed three glasses of rum before the attack.
The court ruled in that case that the judge’s instructions to the jury were flawed and wrote new instructions for homicide cases that include evidence that a defendant was mentally ill and used drugs.
