Jurors who just convicted a 34-year-old man of bludgeoning and stabbing his parents and a longtime housekeeper to death inside their home in a gated Newport Beach community will now have to decide whether the defendant was legally insane at the time of the slayings.
The sanity phase of Camden Burton Nicholson’s special circumstances murder trial began on Thursday, Oct. 23 and will ultimately determine whether Nicholson will spend the rest of his life in state prison, or if he will be committed indefinitely to a state mental health facility.
An Orange County Superior Court jury on Wednesday found that Nicholson killed his parents — 64-year-old Richard Nicholson and 61-year-old Kim Nicholson — on Feb. 11, 2019, and the family’s longtime housekeeper, 57-year-old Maria Morse of Anaheim, the next day.
As the trial shifts into the sanity phase, the burden of proof moves from the prosecution to the defense. To find Nicholson not guilty by reason of insanity, the jury would need to determine that he was suffering from a mental disease or defect, that he did not understand “the nature or quality” of his deadly actions and that he did not understand that those actions were legally or morally wrong, Nicholson’s attorney, Richard Cheung of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, told jurors.
“The first part of the trial was thinking about what happened, this part is about why,” Cheung explained to jurors during his opening statements in the sanity phase.
Nicholson’s mental health issues first surfaced when he was taking part in missionary service in Florida as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nicholson was later forced to drop out of college and move back in with his parents. He stopped taking his medication, according to trial testimony, believing it was poisoning him.
During what Nicholson’s attorney described as a “manic” episode, Nicholson in December 2018 disappeared from his parents’ home and began sending those he knew a barrage of uncharacteristically vulgar text messages. Hoping to force him into treatment, Nicholson’s parents cut off the credit cards he was using to live in hotel rooms.
On Feb. 5, 2019, Nicholson went to Hoag Hospital, where he was placed on a mental-health hold that lasted from Feb. 6 until Feb. 11. During his stay, Nicholson was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, according to testimony.
Despite the concerns of the hospital’s doctors, Nicholson was discharged on Feb. 11, 2019 and decided to walk to his parents’ home. He attacked and killed his father and mother as they arrived home separately, and then the next day, killed their maid. He went on several errands in his parents’ and the maid’s vehicles — including buying marijuana from a dispensary, purchasing sex toys and lube from a sex shop and buying ribs and other food from Gelson’s market — before driving to a Kaiser facility in Irvine where he admitted to the killings.
Cheung, the defense attorney, said Nicholson believed his parents were trying to poison him or get him locked up in a hospital where he would be killed, and that the maid had moved his medication and was using a harsher cleaning product in order to poison him. Nicholson’s father, when encountering Nicholson at the family home, asked why he was there and said he needed to be at the hospital, Cheung added.
“Unfortunately, that is exactly what the delusion is,” the attorney added.
Nicholson understood that killing is wrong, but believed his actions were morally right because in his mind he was acting in self-defense, the defense attorney told jurors.
Dr. Lisa Grajewski, a psychologist who evaluated Nicholson prior to his trial, testified that Nicholson believed his father was going to kill him, his mother was part of the same conspiracy and the maid — who had been with the family for a decade — was an extension of his parents.
“He was afraid of what would be done to him,” Grajewski said. “These delusions eventually led him to commit the incident at the house.”
Senior Deputy District Attorney Dave Porter opted to hold off on giving his opening statements in the sanity phase on Thursday. But the prosecutor asked Dr. Grajewski why he would go to the family home if he believed his parents were a threat.
“Why on Earth would he go to the source of where the threat against his life exists?” Porter asked.
“I don’t believe there is a rational reason for why he went home,” the doctor responded. “I believe he was in a delusional state.”
Testimony will continue Monday in a Santa Ana courtroom.