Psychologist sentenced to five years for Decatur 5-year-old’s death
Editor’s note: This article, first published late Wednesday, has been updated with details from Thursday’s sentencing.
She had killed a 5-year-old boy without meaning to, and Michelle Wierson felt remorse. Wierson wrote letters to the victim’s family, but she couldn’t send them because of a no-contact order. And so, according to a friend, the Rev. Kara Russell, Wierson tried something else. One day, they went to Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, which has a large outdoor cross on its campus. Wierson read the letters of apology out loud. Then Russell burned them at the foot of the cross.
All along, the case worked its way through the legal system. Wierson, a psychologist in Avondale Estates, was charged with vehicular homicide in the 2018 death of Miles Jenness in Decatur. She had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming she was having a psychotic break when her Volkswagen smashed the Toyota Corolla in which Miles and his father were driving home.
Last week, the trial finally began. And on Wednesday, the jury delivered a verdict: guilty but mentally ill.
A sound filled the courtroom when the jury foreperson announced the decision. It was the cry of Leah Tracosas Jenness, the woman who lost her 5-year-old son.
First-degree vehicular homicide carries a potential sentence of three to 15 years. On Thursday, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Courtney L. Johnson sentenced the 59-year-old Wierson to five years in Department of Corrections custody and 10 more on probation.
“I don’t believe justice was served,” her friend Russell said after the jury’s verdict, which followed about nine hours of deliberation.
On Tuesday, the conclusion of a six-day trial, prosecutors told the jury that defense witnesses weren’t credible and Wierson’s claims of insanity were contrived.
Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Josh Geller held a remote control in his right hand and cycled through pictures of the black Toyota with its trunk smashed in from the impact of Wierson’s Volkswagen. She was driving about 50 mph and apparently never hit the brakes.
“And in an instant, his life was gone,” Geller said of Miles. “Because of her. Because of her choices.”
He said driving is a task that requires sustained attention, and Wierson was competent enough to navigate a complicated route before the collision. He dismissed the forensic psychiatrists who said Wierson met the definition of legal insanity, arguing that they were biased in favor of a fellow mental-health professional. He said Wierson’s post-collision psychosis was an effect of the crash and its aftermath — not the cause.
“She understood right from wrong,” he said.
But defense attorney Kristen Novay argued that some things don’t require punishment, because some people don’t understand what they’re doing. A 6-year-old who takes a candy bar from a gas station, for example, or an elderly person in cognitive decline who pushes a fellow resident of the memory-care unit. She told jurors that the state was trying to “prosecute the disabled, and they’re gonna use you to do it.”
Novay told the story of a woman fighting for years to keep her sanity, and sometimes succeeding. Wierson went missing and attempted suicide. More than a decade before the crash, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. With that diagnosis, she regained some control of her life. In 2010, she adopted a daughter.
Eight years later, she had a very bad year. A close friend died in a boating accident. Her father entered hospice care. That September, people close to Wierson began to see warning signs. She seemed not quite herself at a dinner with her brother on the 24th. She was acting silly when a friend visited on the 26th. At lunch at a restaurant on the 27th, she dumped the contents of her purse on the table and talked to someone who wasn’t there. At that restaurant, her friend Lisa Asher made a crucial decision. She was holding Wierson’s keys, and she gave them to Wierson.
“She told you about that moment,” Novay said, “and how she will live that for the rest of her life.”
Wierson’s desperation increased as the day went on. She ran barefoot through the neighborhood. She sat in the bathtub, fully clothed. Apparently believing that her 8-year-old daughter was in serious danger, she called 911. The jury heard a recording of that call, her desperate weeping, her nonsensical appeals to a daughter who was miles away.
That recording was the centerpiece of Wierson’s defense, along with the two forensic psychiatrists who agreed that she’d been suffering from a delusional compulsion.
“She thought that she was going to SAVE a life,” Novay said. “Not take one.”
For all the prosecution’s criticism of the defense experts, Novay pointed out that the state didn’t have one. They did not call an expert witness to say Wierson had been sane and competent at the time of the crash.
“Why do you think they don’t have an expert?” Novay asked the jury.
“I argue it’s because they couldn’t find one.”
Two prosecutors sat at a table, listening to Novay’s argument. Neither objected to that statement.
The jury began deliberating around 8 a.m. Wednesday. A day of tense waiting followed. Some homicide cases are decided with two to three hours of deliberation. This one had deep layers of complexity.
As she waited in the hallway on a gray afternoon, Russell said Wierson’s work as a child psychologist had been an effort to bring families back together. And so it was an especially cruel twist that she had torn a family apart.
Now it appeared another family would be separated. Wierson’s adopted daughter is a teenager, and Wierson had to make plans for someone else to care for her.
At 5:09 p.m., the blue and orange lights flashed above the back door of the courtroom. That meant the jury had a message for Johnson. It wasn’t a verdict. The jurors wanted to know the legal or medical definition of the word “delusion.” They were told the evidence was closed and could not be supplemented.
At 5:58, the blue and orange lights flashed once again. Several deputy sheriffs entered the courtroom. There was a highly charged silence. The jury had reached a verdict.
Wierson wiped her face with a Kleenex. She turned and gave her brother a meaningful look. A deputy took her hands, fastened the cuffs, and escorted her out through a side door.
Attorneys said she would spend the night in the DeKalb County Jail as she awaited her sentencing. They hoped she would get the medication she needed.
Out in the hallway, high above Decatur Square, the parents of Miles Jenness said they were satisfied with the verdict for which they had waited more than seven years. Miles would have turned 13 this weekend. They were grateful to the prosecutors.
“And we’re just so grateful to the jurors,” Leah said, overcome with emotion.
“For—"
She paused to collect herself.
“For—"
She was crying again.
“For standing up for a little boy who should be here.”
At Thursday’s sentencing hearing, advocates from both sides addressed the judge. They included Wierson’s mother and teenage daughter. Novay said it was so emotional that both she and fellow defense attorney Bob Rubin broke down in tears.
Wierson will appeal the conviction on procedural grounds. Novay said she’s worried about Wierson, given her history of depression and mental decline while in custody. The attorney said she approached this case as if she were fighting for Wierson’s life.
“So my hope is,” Novay said, “she survives long enough that we can handle the appeal.”
About the Author
Thomas Lake is a senior reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and The Guardian. He's a co-founder of The Lake Family Band. Please email thomas.lake@ajc.com if you'd like to share a story idea.
