A schizophrenic man was sentenced today to life in prison without parole for hacking a psychotherapist to death with a meat cleaver, capping a criminal case confounded for years by questions about the attacker's mental health.
In a moving proceeding, David Tarloff described a constant battle occurring in his head and pleaded for mercy as he was sentenced on his first-degree murder conviction, a conclusion that came after repeated mistrials and findings that Tarloff was unfit for court.
Tarloff, 47, never disputed killing psychologist Kathryn Faughey in February 2008 in her Manhattan office. Tarloff had never met her but intended to rob her officemate, a psychiatrist he hadn't seen in 17 years, in hopes of netting tens of thousands of dollars to use to take his sick mother to Hawaii.
His defense argued that the often hospitalised, frequently delusional Tarloff should not be held criminally accountable for the bloodbath. But prosecutors said despite his psychiatric condition, Tarloff, whose doctors had found him to be obsessed with religion, behaved deliberately and knew he was doing wrong.
"His illness doesn't negate the ability to assess the morality of his actions," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Evan Krutoy said in a closing argument. "Convict him. Because he's guilty."
But defense lawyer Bryan Konoski told jurors that "David's reality is nothing like any of you have ever experienced in your life."
Tarloff was diagnosed with schizophrenia while in college, when he told physicians he felt like his "brain was falling apart." Over the ensuing years, he reported seeing the "eye of God" on a kitchen floor, believing his brain was talking to him as Satan and thinking he was the Messiah, medical records show.
By early 2008, he had become panicked about how a nursing home was caring for his mother, and he was fixated on getting her out. He came up with the robbery plot targeting Faughey's officemate, Dr. Kent Shinbach, who had been the first doctor to commit Tarloff to a hospital.
