AUGUSTA, Maine — When we think of our court system, more often than not, a person who is accused of a crime would plead guilty or not guilty. If they plead not guilty, a trial would be held to determine whether the accused is guilty. But what happens if the accused experiences mental illness? And what if that mental illness is so severe that the line between guilty and not guilty becomes blurred. In that blurry place, a person can be guilty of a crime but found not criminally responsible.
In the past few years, two homicide cases have been covered where there was no question the defendant committed the crime but was found not criminally responsible. One of the defendants was Quinton Hanna, who was charged with murder and sexual assault during what police called a "crime spree." The woman he sexually assaulted is Rebecca Porter of West Bath.
Porter said she will never forget Dec. 15, 2019.
"It was a beautiful sunny day in December, and I went to go set out for a run like I do quite often in a very rural part of Maine, on the coast, on a road that I have run thousands of times, so it was very familiar to me," she said.
During her run, she said she heard a car that didn’t sound right. The driver stopped and asked Porter to look under the car to see what was wrong. She said she thought that was strange.
"Before I could even respond to that, he pulled a knife on me," Porter said, recalling the event.
Court documents show the driver of that car was Hanna. Porter said Hanna started ordering her around.
"He told me to be quiet, not move, not run, or that he would kill me," she said.
Porter said she tried to plead with him, but Hanna would not listen to her. Then he pushed her to the ground and held her down.
"He had the knife in his hand, so this knife blade is right next to my throat, right next to my face," she said.
At that moment, she said that's when she realized what was about to happen to her.
In the woods, not far from the road, Hanna raped Rebecca Porter. After the assault, she said her "will to live" kicked in, and she somehow broke free and ran away as fast as she could.
But Hanna didn’t stop there. He got in his car and chased her. She said she remembers jumping off the road and into the woods as the car approached, but Hanna still hit her, which ended up breaking her leg.
"My left leg, which was probably extended back in that leap, got clipped by the car and, so the person didn’t stay on the road he was actually driving off into the woods to try to run me over," she said.
Court documents show this was not Hanna’s first violent crime. The night before he attacked Porter, he reportedly knocked on the door of a Freeport home and stabbed the man who answered. That man survived his injuries. The next man was not so lucky.
The next morning, Dec. 15, James Pearson died at his Scarborough home after being stabbed by Hannah, court records indicate. Right afterward, Hanna spotted Porter out on her run.
Hanna was arrested and charged for all these crimes, but instead of heading to trial, the court found him not criminally responsible, or NCR, on all charges.
But what does that mean?
When a person is found not criminally responsible, they are sentenced to the care and custody of the commissioner of Maine Department of Health and Human Services. That almost always means Riverview Psychiatric Center.
As of March of 2022, 98 people in Riverview had been found not criminally responsible, and more than 20 percent of them were accused of homicide.
Tim Zerillo, a defense attorney based in Portland, offered an explanation.
"Were you able to appreciate the wrongfulness of your conduct? And of course, we’re not talking about something that is very big. A serious mental illness that is impacting your ability to realize what is actually wrong," Zerillo said.
He also said there is a misconception about the "insanity" plea.
"The public believes that if somebody is found not criminally responsible at a trial, that means they walk out the door free. That is just not true," Zerillo said.
Before a person can be found not criminally responsible, they need to be evaluated by a forensic psychologist.
"It’s typically very serious crimes where the NCR is advanced, most often homicides," psychologist Dr. Charles Robinson said.
Robinson said he has completed thousands of these psych evaluations, and he always looks for the same three things: personality, biology, and culture.
"I look at their family background to see if their psychiatric illnesses, or, very commonly, there is alcoholism and depression, which are gene linked very, very closely," Robinson said.
He said that helps determine whether a person’s behavior is rooted in genetics. Then he looks at hospital, therapy, police, and even school records. He added that all of these things help him find historical truths and make his diagnosis. Often, the case doesn’t even go to trial.
"I write my report, I talk to the lawyers, they talk to each other, they talk to the judge, and there’s an NCR finding," Robinson said.
Robinson and Zerrillo said defense attorneys don’t often use the NCR defense because it could make things more challenging for the defendant.
"Folks who are already hurting to begin with and may or may not be able to appreciate the wrongfulness of their conduct can be sentenced more harshly, can have harsher consequences than somebody who is of the right mind," Zerrillo explained.
NEWS CENTER Maine asked Maine DHHS repeatedly for an interview to learn about the state’s perspective on handling these types of cases, but the department declined each request.
Hanna was found NCR because of his schizophrenia diagnosis, but Porter said that doesn't change the fact that she was violently raped.
She said she's not even sure whether a prison sentence would have helped.
"I don’t think even if this person was found guilty and in prison for the rest of their life, you know, this is something that every victim is going to hold with them for the rest of their lives," Porter said. "I have not used the word closure on purpose very intentionally because I think closure isn’t a great description of accurate expectation for something like this."
When a person is sentenced to Riverview, they undergo an evaluation process every six months to a year, and patients can get different permissions through this process, such as increased time outside, visitation with family, or even unsupervised time. When they get to court, a team of doctors testify and explains why or why not this person is ready for more privileges and the court ultimately decides what permissions they are ready for.
There is help for people with these types of diagnoses.
Maine has a court-ordered treatment for people with severe mental health challenges, many of whom might not even recognize they are sick, called the progressive treatment program, or PTP.
Health care providers, law enforcement, or a legal guardian of the patient are the only people who can apply for and obtain someone on the court-ordered program. But loved ones of some of the patients with mental illness told NEWS CENTER Maine they didn’t even know about the PTP program until it was too late, including the family of Justin Butterfield.
Butterfield's ex-girlfriend, Yacia Provencher, told NEWS CENTER Maine this treatment could have meant the difference between life and death.
Provencher said she and Butterfield had a "normal" relationship.
"What really drew me to him was how kind and how caring he was and that he was just this big teddy bear and big child at heart," she said, recalling the early days of their relationship.
The couple has one child together along with Butterfield’s child from a previous relationship. Provencher said Butterfield started acting differently a few years into their relationship. She said he wasn’t sleeping and started having delusions. Provencher said she figured it was stress related until it became more intense.
“It had progressed to the point where I was then the delusion. He was convinced that I was talking to people directly, out to get him and to get the children," she said.
The couple eventually split, but that didn’t stop Provencher from advocating for Butterfield to get the mental health treatment he needed. She said she pleaded with law enforcement for help, but no one directed her to a PTP, and she said she didn’t even know about the plan until it was too late.
She said she thinks the correct treatment could have saved Butterfield’s brother, Gabriel Damour. Instead, Butterfield is being charged with killing his brother.
“Now looking back at how unsafe I felt at times and how I couldn’t get help anywhere and the aftermath of it all. It’s like this huge […] not for Gabe, sorry [...] but it’s just a huge sigh of relief to not have to worry about him every single day," Provencher said.
She isn’t alone.
Jeanne Gore of Gardiner said she spent 13 years being afraid of her son while also trying to do anything she could to keep him safe and healthy.
"My marriage of 26 years didn’t survive. We had to lock our bedroom doors because we were afraid of him," Gore said.
Her son was in and out of hospitals and jails, and Gore said she had to rescue him from a religious cult. His schizophrenia was untreated.
Joe Pickering of Bangor said his family was in a similar situation.
"Like an evil flower, schizophrenia emerged into his life when he was about 20," Pickering said. But his son, Christopher, died without getting the help he needed.
"We need to have help before tragedy, and Chris could have been helped," Pickering said.
Not only were Gore's and Pickering’s sons diagnosed with schizophrenia, but they also had anosognosia, which means they weren’t aware of their illnesses.
"If you don’t believe you’re sick, you’re not going to want to take this poison that people are trying to shove down your throat," Gore said.
Gore said she was able to get her son the help he needed and has been advocating ever since for more people to be put on Progressive Treatment Plans, Pickering.
In 2004, former state Sen. John Nutting sponsored a bill that created PTP in the state of Maine. He worked with Sen. Ned Claxton last legislative session to better fund the program.
"All the stories are so similar," Nutting said.
"The legislature wanted this to be ramped up, but the department [DHHS] has been very slow in implementing it," he added.
When a court orders a person to a PTP, that person is assigned a team of mental health providers they have to see.
But, Nutting added, "it’s still just not being used the way it should."
A DHHS spokesperson wrote in an email that PTPs are designated to serve a specific population -- for someone who experiences a severe mental illness, is likely to cause serious harm, and is unlikely to voluntarily follow a plan.
Maine state law defines someone as a "danger to themselves or others" if they've threatened or attempted to harm themselves or someone else or if their behavior may cloud their ability to make an informed decision.
The state said in an email that this is just one of "an of an array of behavioral health services available in Maine." This kind of treatment does have opposition, though.
"We’ve lost the battle around PTP. It’s in Maine state law," Simonne Maline, executive director of the Consumer Council System of Maine, said.
She said that because the PTP is an involuntary hospitalization, therefore forced treatment, it’s not as likely to work as if someone wanted to get the treatment themselves.
"Forced treatment for 99.9 percent of people that experience it is traumatic. It could be the rest of their life. They lose certain liberties," she said.
She went on to say that once someone is stabilized after being placed on a PTP, they should be allowed to try and be healthy all on their own.
"You don’t want someone to make such a big mistake that they hurt somebody else or themselves, but we really need to give people the opportunities to make those choices and make mistakes and learn for themselves and hopefully embrace their own recovery journey," she said.
NEWS CENTER Maine asked Maline about cases like Butterfield, who is accused of killing his brother in Poland.
"I think about what were the failures of the system. Did we give the right level of care?" she said.
Even though Butterfield is behind bars, Provencher said she will never stop advocating for him to get the treatment he needs.
"He was a wonderful dad, and I knew that. I could have easily just stepped away and washed my hands of it all, but they deserved to have their dad, and he deserved to have them, and he deserved to be well," she said.
Both the groups in favor of and opposed to PTPs are lobbying for bills in the legislature this session.
Those in favor of the PTP are hoping to pass a bill that would force DHHS to apply for a federal funding program called the IMD Waiver, which can be used to treat people with serious brain disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The group that opposes PTP is hoping a bill passes that brings peer respite back to Maine. That’s typically a group home, where they are responsible for their mental health together. If someone were to go into crisis, a plan would already be mapped out by the mental health providers and everyone in the home have already agreed upon.