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Insanity defense, battered spouse defense and now too fat to commit the crime defense
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Edward Ates: physically unable to commit murder? (AP/TPO)
I believe it was journalist Ambrose Bierce who once defined a lawyer as “one skilled in the circumvention of the law.”
With that in mind: Edward Ates stands accused of shooting his son-in-law as he returned home from work. The man, 40-year-old Paul Duncsak, was talking on his cell phone as he entered his home where it is alleged that Ates, perched atop a staircase leading to the basement, began firing.
Prosecutors claim that Ates drove to Duncsak’s home, waited for him to arrive, and shot him six times as the son-in-law staggered down a hallway. Ates, it is claimed, was seeking revenge for Duncsak’s refusal to help him salvage a failing business.
Prosecutors also point to a bitter custody dispute between Duncsak and Ates’ daughter, Stacey, as the couple had gone through divorce proceedings prior to the shooting.
Defense attorneys, however, say their client couldn’t possibly have committed the crime, given the 5 feet 8, 285 pound, 62-year-old man lacked the bodily wherewithal to ascend and descend the staircase where the shooting took place.
In short, Ates was too fat for such physically demanding activity.
“It’s an unusual defense, but it would be a credible defense if the facts really fit in,” attorney David Berg, author of “The Trial Lawyer: What It Takes To Win,” told the Associated Press. “[But] when the battered-wife defense was first used, it was considered abhorrent and bizarre… jurors may be open to this in a society that talks about the infirmities that obesity causes.”
The defense is also using the prompt arrival of the police as part of their argument. Since Duncsak was on the phone with his girlfriend when the shooting began, the woman was able to call 911 while the crime was in progress. Police arrived within minutes.
Thanks to the punctuality of New Jersey’s finest, defense attorneys again pointed to Ates’ poor health, asserting that not only could their client not climb stairs with such rapidity, but that he would also be unable to clean-up all six shell casings and flee the scene that quickly.
Ates, who police identified as their initial suspect, was arrested 24 hours later at his mother’s house in Louisiana.
While this may be the first instance of obesity being used as a criminal defense tactic, the law and overweight inhabitants of the system have crossed paths before. Double murderer Richard Cooey argued the state of Ohio could not put him to death because of his obesity.
Cooey claimed lethal injection would be inhumane because the size of his arms would make it difficult to find a suitable vein. Officials encountered no such problems when Cooey was killed - by lethal injection - on October 14.
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