Narcissistic Personality Diorder, no defense: death

chicagotribune.com
Man who killed 4 in his family gets death
DuPage County jury decides in 90 minutes
By Art Barnum and Ted Gregory

TRIBUNE REPORTERS

February 28, 2008

Jurors deliberated less than 90 minutes Wednesday in deciding Eric C. Hanson should be put to death for what one prosecutor called the "monstrous crimes" of Sept. 28, 2005, when he bludgeoned to death his sister and brother-in-law, shot his parents as they slept and tried to cover the killings by cleaning the house and lying.

"The state made the case," the jury foreman said when asked whether one witness or piece of evidence was more influential in the prosecution of a crime authorities said was committed after Hanson became angry at his sister's discovery that he had stolen about $140,000 from his parents through identity theft.

The foreman added that he was "satisfied" with the verdict, but declined to answer questions about the deliberations as he and other jurors left the DuPage County Courthouse in Wheaton.

Hanson, the 14th man sent to Death Row since the blanket commutations of all Illinois death sentences in 2003 and a moratorium placed on state-sanctioned executions in 2000, remained stoic when the court clerk announced the verdict at 4 p.m. in a packed courtroom. About 20 feet over Hanson's shoulder, his lone remaining sibling, Jennifer Williams, wept, as did one of Hanson's former girlfriends.

"There are no winners at the end of this process," Williams and Penny Hestad, a sister of Hanson's father, Terrance, said in a statement shortly after the verdict, "only great losses."

Hanson, 31, of Naperville, has been placed on suicide watch at DuPage County Jail. Last year DuPage County inmates Robert Rejda and Jae Harrell, who had pending trials that could have led to the death sentence, committed suicide.

Hanson's next court hearing is March 25, when Judge Robert Anderson will set another hearing to schedule an execution date. All death sentence verdicts receive an automatic appeal by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Jurors moved swiftly in reaching their three critical decisions in Hanson's trial. They convicted Hanson of the murders on Feb. 20 after deliberating less than three hours. The next day the eight men and four women needed about 30 minutes to determine Hanson was eligible for the death penalty.

On Wednesday, the jury began deliberations at 2:30 p.m. and announced they had reached a decision at 3:50 p.m. Had they been unable to reach a unanimous determination on the death penalty, Hanson would have served life in a maximum security prison with parole granted only by gubernatorial clemency.

"The verdict speaks for itself in all three phases," the jury foreman said.

Hanson, a self-employed mortgage broker with a history of crime that started when he vandalized a car as a juvenile, used his parents' identities to defraud them of about $140,000, prosecutors said. When his sister Kate Hanson-Tsao confronted him in August 2005, Hanson threatened to kill her, Williams testified.

Prosecutors said he carried out that threat on Sept. 28, when he drove to Hanson-Tsao's Aurora home and bludgeoned to death his sister and brother-in-law, Jimmy Tsao. Hanson then drove to the Naperville home he shared with his parents, Terrance and Mary Hanson, and shot them each once in the head at about 11 p.m.

Afterward, Hanson cleaned the Naperville home and moved his parents' bodies to the Tsao house. At trial, he maintained he had been sleeping in his basement bedroom when his parents were killed.

The next morning he flew to Los Angeles to see a Neil Diamond concert with his ex-fiance. He was arrested Sept. 30 near Portage, Wis., where authorities had tracked his cell phone. A search of his SUV revealed Hanson-Tsao's wedding ring, Tsao's diamond-encrusted Rolex watch and gloves marked with the blood of Terrance Hanson.

DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett on Wednesday said, "Whether the death penalty is sought or approved is dictated by the nature of the case, the nature of the evidence and the character of the accused. The jurors peered into his heart, and it wasn't a pretty picture."

During the pretrial stage, Williams publicly stated she opposed the death penalty for her younger brother. State law prohibited her from mentioning the issue in her victim-impact statement, which she read Friday, and Williams declined to comment during the trial. "Jennifer Williams supported the prosecution of this case and is comfortable with the decision of the jury," Birkett said Wednesday. "Obviously, her life has been shattered."

Whether Hanson will be executed remains highly speculative. Despite reforms to a capital punishment system that then-Gov. George Ryan called "haunted by the demon of error" when he granted commutations in 2003, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has declined to resume executions.

Birkett and State Rep. Dennis Reboletti (R-Elmhurst) have called on Blagojevich to lift the moratorium, a call Birkett repeated Wednesday.

"The moratorium is a charade," Birkett said Wednesday, beside three attorneys who prosecuted the case, Robert Berlin, Michael Wolfe and Nancy Wolfe. "The death penalty is the law in the state of Illinois. [Blagojevich] hasn't listened."

In closing arguments Wednesday, DuPage County Assistant State's Atty. Michael Wolfe said Hanson's personality disorders, which include narcissistic personality disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, have nothing to do with his committing the crimes. Wolfe cited several aggravating factors -- including multiple murders, previous physical abuse of girlfriends and family, and the calculated nature of the crime -- that merited the death penalty.

"The defendant had it all," Wolfe told jurors. Hanson's parents gave him plenty of money, Wolfe said. He wore fashionable clothes, had a customized SUV and motorcycle, traveled and dated several women, the prosecutor said. "All his life, he had it all. All that wasn't enough."

In her rebuttal, Elizabeth Reed, DuPage County deputy public defender, said Hanson's personality disorders do "not serve to excuse what he did, but they do contribute to who he is," and suggested that imposing the death penalty is sanctioned killing.

Reed also said that Hanson had stopped taking his ADHD medications a decade ago and that a psychologist who evaluated him said he has a low IQ, wasn't a threat to commit more violence and might have been a sex-assault victim.

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Despite sentence, moratorium on death penalty continues

Gov. George Ryan issued a death-penalty moratorium in 2000 and, in 2003, commuted the death sentences of about 160 prisoners, citing a flawed system in which more than a dozen people were improperly put on Death Row.

The Illinois Supreme Court has since approved new rules including the mandatory use of videotape confessions in murder cases, establishment of a fund to help pay for legal defense in death-penalty cases, stronger restrictions on the use of "jailhouse snitches," broader use of DNA analysis and strict standards for attorneys prosecuting and defending the cases. Death-penalty opponents say other important reforms, such as narrowing the number of factors that could allow prosecutors to seek the penalty, haven't been implemented.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich has continued the moratorium, but state Rep. Dennis Reboletti (R-Elmhurst) has introduced a House resolution asking Blagojevich to resume executions.

A state committee reviewing the impact of death-penalty reforms will report its findings this year.

Hanson is the 14th man -- and the second from DuPage County -- to be sentenced to death since 2003.

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