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Murder case goes to jury this morningBy BOB THAXTONStaff WriterJurors will begin deliberating this morning on the guilt or innocence of a Marion man accused of murder in the death of his girlfriend.Testimony ended Wednesday afternoon in the trial of Johnathan Slate Watson, 31, who's charged with fatally shooting Leslie McAvoy-Eugino, 42, on Sept. 16, 1998 at the home they snared in the 600 block of North Cunningham Street in Marion.While not disputing that he shot and killed the victim, Watson has pleaded not guilty because of insanity.Wednesday's proceedings in the trial consisted entirely of testimony by two psychiatrists and a psychologist, and two of them disagreed with the diagnosis of the other expert witness.Defense counsel Pat Hancock called to the stand Dr. Richard E. Coons, a prominent Austin psychiatrist who served on committees, that rewrote state law on the ^4nsahity*pl^-and~oh:the compel tency of defendants accused of crimes.Coons testified that Watson suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia and wasn't capable of considering the wrongfulness of shooting McAvoy-Eugi-no.Disagreeing with Coons' diagnosis were psychologist Dr. Betty Lou Schroeder and psychiatrist Dr. Cornelius Nau, both from San Antonio.Schroeder and Nau testified that Watson's illness was borderline personality disorder and that he knew it was wrong to shoot his girlfriend.Schroeder and Nau also disagreed with the diagnosis of several staff members at the Audie Murphy VA Hospital where Watson has been a patient in the psychiatric ward on three occasions including a 26-day stay after the shooting in September 1998.Reviewing records from the VA Hospital, Coons said Watson was first hospitalized in the fall of 1995 when he was diagnosed as being in the early stages of paranoid schizophrenia.Placed on anti-psychotic medication, Watson soon was discharged and continued treatment on an out-patient basis. About one yeaf later, in the fall of 1996,, Watson stopped taking his med-McaHonvand-go tvreaL paranoid' about his parents.He pulled a gun on them, and he wound up going back into the hospital, Coons said, adding that Watson beat up his parents' television set with thebutt of a rifle.Later during his testimony, Coons cited a similarity between the incident when Watson pulled a gun on his parents and the shooting of his girlfriend. He claimed not to remember both of those events, and Coons said he believed Watson was telling the truth about not remembering.When someone's mental capabilities are so deranged that He doesn't remember such acts it should be obvious that he was unable to consider and did not consider the wrongfulness of shooting his girlfriend, Coons said,Schroeder said she doubted Watson was telling the truth about being unable to remember the shooting. Asked if she thought Watson was trying to manipulate the system to escape responsibility for what he had done, Schroeder said, I think that's a strong probability.It was a self-serving lack of memory, Nau said, having agreed with Schroeder's diagnosis of borderline personality disorder rather than schizophrenia.•. After Nau, 1 eft the witriess-stand at 4:20 p.m. Wednesday, District Judge Dwight Peschel recessed the trial and told jurors to return at 9 a.m. Thursday for the reading of the court's charge and final arguments by the attorneys.
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Seguin Gazette Enterprise
Seguin, Texas, US
Thu, Apr 13, 2000
Page 1
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Jared T.
NA, NA 30 May 2023
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