THE GAZETTE
RESERVOIR
Continued from Page A-1 east of I-270. A vote on the amendment is expected in February. Environmentalists meanwhile have asked County Executive Isaiah Leggett to conduct a study of the reservoir. Lake said the department has relied on the expertise of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, which manages the water in the reservoir, which serves as a backup water supply for the Washington area in times of drought. However, the land around it is controlled by the County Council, which makes land-use decisions that affect the level of pollutants and silt seeping into the reservoir and the Ten Mile Creek system that flows into it. The WSSC doesn’t “believe that what’s in the Planning Board draft is a threat to the water supply,” Lake said. He said he supports the draft, which sets a limit of 656 housing units on the Pulte site and development of the Tanger/ Peterson Cos. site east of I-270. The man-made Little
GRADUATION
Continued from Page A-1 Students who receive free and reduced-price meals — an indication of poverty — climbed 1.5 percentage points to a 78.1 graduation rate. The graduation rate of ESOL students declined about 1 percentage point after an increase of 3.9 percentage points from 2011 to 2012. The county school system also saw a slight decrease from 2012 to 2013 in the dropout rate, which fell about 0.5 percentage point to 6.3 percent. Since 2011, the dropout rate has decreased by about 1 percentage point. Montgomery’s dropout rate stands about 3.1 percentage points below Maryland’s 9.4-percent rate. Among the school system’s 25 high schools — 16 of which saw graduation rate increases from 2012 to 2013 — the highest increases from last year include Rockville’s 4.8 percentage points, Springbrook’s 4 percentage points, and Clarksburg’s and Northwest’s 3.7 points.
Seneca Lake reservoir meets Maryland Department of Environment pollution standards, and silt has not significantly reduced the capacity of the lake, according to WSSC officials. However, commission officials have advised requiring current Environmental Site Design methods to control runoff and taking other measures to protect the reservoir in the long term. Lake said he supports a broader study of the reservoir and land around it to gauge the effects of development to date, which has been approved at different times under three different master plans. “The cumulative impacts is a study that’s not be done, and from a technical standpoint, I think it’s very valuable to conduct this study,” he said. On Monday about 100 members of the Save Ten Mile Creek Coalition of 30 environmental groups presented 1,000 handwritten letters to council Vice President George Leventhal (D-At-large) of Takoma Park urging the council to protect the creek by limiting development. Meanwhile, Pulte Homes has said the county has ignored three environmental studies it
commissioned that challenge the modeling data used by Biohabitats Inc., a consultant hired by the Planning Board to predict the impact of the development in the watershed. Biohabitats has said Environmental Site Design is definitely an improvement over stormwater ponds and that the methods work on a small scale, but there is no evidence that it works on a watershed scale.
Wheaton High School saw the greatest decline in its graduation rate, dropping to 68.6 percent in 2013 from 76.1 percent in 2012 — about 7.5 percentage points. Sixteen high schools saw an increase from 2012 to 2013 among black students and 12 high schools saw an increase among Hispanic students. Of the high schools that showed an improvement among special education students, several school saw significant rate increases, including Paint Branch with a jump of 21.8 percentage points and Quince Orchard with a jump of 19.2 points. School board President Philip Kauffman said he is encouraged by the improved graduation rates but also wants to learn more about how ready students are for college or a career after they leave high school. Addressing ESOL students’ data, Kauffman pointed to recommendations in Superintendent Joshua P. Starr’s proposed operating budget that direct more resources to ESOL services. “I think that’s something
we need to do,” he said. School board member Christopher S. Barclay (Dist. 4) said the school system needs to “take ownership” of its responsibility to help prepare ESOL students for the future. “We can’t do that if we’re not helping ensure they get all the way through” high school, he said. Barclay said he thinks the school system needs to be as “aggressive” and “intentional” as possible to produce signficant changes in student performance, including those of black, Hispanic, and lowerincome students whose graduation rates are below those of their white and East and South Asian peers. “We’ve got to make larger leaps in those groups really to deal with those gaps that we see,” he said. Rockville High Principal Billie-Jean Bensen said that, while this academic year marks her first at the school, she has seen the continuation of recently started efforts that she thinks have helped students reach graduation.
Historic District septics On Monday, county water and sewer experts also reported to the committees that outdated septic systems on about 40 small lots in the Clarksburg Historic District bordering the Tanger site are not a health threat to the community or the Ten Mile Creek watershed. Lake said there has not been a history of overflows and that a sanitary study has not been done of the lots bordering Md. 355. He said a few lots have had to resort to installing holding tanks, which need to be pumped out a regular basis. “I don’t expect wastewater to be flowing down the streets,” he said.
lpowers@gazette.net
Wednesday, January 29, 2014 d
Experts: Insanity defense poses challenge for exorcism suspects Plea requires medical evaluations n
BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH STAFF WRITER
The two women accused of slaying two toddlers in an attempted exorcism in Germantown face charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, but haven’t been arraigned yet. Lawyers for the women, Zakieya L. Avery and Monifa D. Sanford, said it is too soon to discuss their clients’ cases in detail, including the possibility of them pursuing a “not criminally responsible,” or insanity, defense. During bail hearings for the two women this month, prosecutors said both women have a history of mental illness. According to Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy, Avery told police that she once was involuntarily committed for psychiatric care. Sanford told police she has tried to commit suicide twice. “The state’s attorney’s statements present a pretty compelling case for a lack of criminal responsibility,” said David Felsen, Sanford’s attorney, before declining to discuss his client’s case further. Byron L. Warnken, a University of Baltimore law professor, said that obtaining a “not criminally responsible” verdict is a “very difficult hurdle” for defendants. In Maryland, if a jury finds a person guilty, and the defendant’s lawyers can establish “not criminally responsible,” or NCR, the defendant cannot be punished, he said. “You can put me away, where you put other involun-
EVALUATION
Continued from Page A-1 they were trying to cast out demons they believed had possessed the children. The women told investigators that they saw the children’s eyes turn black, and observed demons possess-
tarily committed people ... and I might get out in one-tenth of the time, or 10 times longer, [than a convicted criminal]. It has nothing to do with punishment. It has to do with, ‘Do I pose a danger to myself, to others and to the property of others?,’” Warnken said. In a 911 call on the evening of Jan. 16, a neighbor told police that Avery left one of her children in her car for about an hour. During the call, Avery came out of her house and accosted him. In the call, which police released to the public, the caller told dispatchers Avery was “responding to internal stimuli.” The caller explained that Avery appeared to be talking to herself. During Avery’s bail review, McCarthy said the women told police they had seen demons possessing the children and turning their eyes black. Avery has been transferred to a secure psychiatric hospital. Before her case can go forward, mental health experts have to evaluate whether she is legally “competent,” or understands the charges against her and can assist in her defense. A similar evaluation has been ordered for Sanford. Dr. Neil Blumberg, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said that when defendants might have mental illnesses, health officials check if there’s a history of mental illness or drug abuse, and learn about their early development. In cases in which mothers kill their children and there’s no history of being abused or abusing children, most are psychotic or responding to hallucinations and delusions, he said. If Avery and Sanford are found not competent, they will go through a process to “restore”
them to competency, lawyers said. That would involve medication and other treatment. Judicial proceedings would continue after they finally reached competency, McCarthy said. The length of that process varies widely, possibly taking months or years, said Steven D. Kupferberg, a local attorney. Once restored to competency, the women would be evaluated by a state psychiatrist to determine whether they were “not criminally responsible” when the accusations took place. In that case, their defense attorneys would need to prove that their clients are either unable to appreciate the criminality of their conduct or unable to conform their conduct to law, said Paul Kemp, a local defense attorney. Then, they would plead guilty, but not criminally responsible. “The only cases where the defendant is usually found to be NCR is where they are separated from reality, or psychotic,” Kemp said. Waging an NCR defense requires a defendant to admit to the facts of the case. “The initial burden is on the defendant. ... You have to come in with an opinion [of NCR] from a psychiatrist,” Kemp said. “The hardest thing is you don’t have a client on the other end of the line helping you when they really have that condition,” he said. Scott Shellenberger, state’s attorney for Baltimore County, would not comment on the charges against Avery and Sanford. Speaking of NCR cases generally, he said: “The problem is whenever someone does a particularly heinous act, it’s normal for regular folks to say, ‘They must be crazy,’ but that doesn’t mean they weren’t criminally responsible.”
ing them, skipping from child to child, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said at Avery’s Jan. 21 bail review. The women, who lived on Cherry Bend Drive in Germantown, have been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the deaths of Avery’s 1-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter on
Jan. 17. Police also have charged the two women with attempting to kill Avery’s two other children, ages 5 and 8. Police found the two toddlers washed and wrapped in blankets on Avery’s bed. Avery and Sanford were arrested Jan. 17, and have been held without bail since. sjbsmith@gazette.net
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