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A 12-person jury went home after more than three hours of deliberations in Brian David Mitchell's federal court trial for the abduction of Elizabeth Smart.
They began deliberations just after 5:30 p.m. Thursday and could have deliberated as long as midnight, but will return at 8:30 a.m.
The case was quickly winding down even as it opened Thursday morning with Mitchell's defense attorneys continuing their cross-examination of psychiatrist Michael Welner, the last witness for the prosecution.
Mitchell was escorted from the courtroom to view the proceedings remotely after he began singing — something he has done each day of the 20-day trial.
Completing her cross-examination of Welner, defense attorney Wendy Lewis said no one in the court doubted that Mitchell was "hypersexual." But Lewis questioned whether it was odd that Mitchell selected only young LDS girls to take as future wives, asking the New York forensic psychiatrist whether Mitchell's selection spoke more to following delusional religious beliefs rather than being a pedophile.
Welner said it did not.
"Lust trumps religion for Brian Mitchell," Welner said, adding that some schismatic, fundamentalist LDS sects use religion as a false justification for sexually abusing young girls.
He also pointed to the fact he raped Smart one to four times per day for nine months and abandoned the sex calendar he created to schedule time with Wanda Barzee and Smart.
"These demonstrate how dominant his libido is to his life," Welner said.
She also questioned Welner's diagnosis that Mitchell suffers from pedophilia, antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders and psychopathy — which do not qualify as severe mental defects that could lead to Mitchell being found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Welner said the fact that Mitchell hid from police with Elizabeth Smart the night that he kidnapped her showed that he did not have true belief in his religious views.
However, Lewis argued that Mitchell would have had to lie to police in order to prevent Smart from being taken away, so he could carry out his delusional belief that Smart was his wife. Welner said if Mitchell were delusional, that would make logical sense. Yet Welner said Mitchell is not delusional.
She also analyzed Mitchell's three years at the Utah State Mental Hospital.
Welner said had Mitchell been delusional, he would have spent his time there "building a new Zion" rather than watching popular film such as "50 First Dates."
Lewis, though, pointed to quotes from Mitchell that he said he was like Joseph of Egypt, who had to serve time in prison before being reunited with his wife and continuing God's work. She also read other quotes that cited Mitchell's religious beliefs he espoused while in the hospital, including him saying that God commanded him to take Smart as a wife.
She asked why those notes would not point to Mitchell holding a fixed, firm belief in his religions.
He said that they showed "variable beliefs" and an evolution in Mitchell, especially when he improved with his relationship with another patient who was a sex offender and had similar religious beliefs to Mitchell.
"He improved with no medications, but improved with the relationship," Welner said. "If he were so ill, companionship would not have impacted him so, he would have needed medication."
Lewis, though, countered with the testimony from defense witness Dr. Paul Whitehead that the relationship was actually an unhealthy one.
Outside the courthouse, Shirl Mitchell said his son "painted himself into a corner and he can't get out of that corner. I think he's to engrossed in the megalomania of Immanuel."
When asked what jury should do, he said, "They can't ignore his insanity."
"The only sane thing for sane people to do is see him as insane," Shirl Mitchell said.
Continuing her cross examination of Welner, Lewis discussed the Andrea Yates case, where a woman killed her children in a horrific murder and then later turned herself into police.
Welner went on to describe what he thought about Yates' thought process for the committing the acts.
"I believe she was psychotic and her psychosis related to delusional guilt," Welner said.
He added that he concluded she made a decision to kill her children out of anger to her husband and her stress of having to care for them by herself.
"That is not delusional thinking, that is the thinking of an overburdened person," he said.
"And what was the outcome of that case?" Lewis asked.
The prosecution raised an objection, stating the outcome of the Yates case wasn't relevant to Mitchell's case. The judge agreed.
Lewis brought up that Welner testified Mitchell turned around and was "leering" at the TV when Welner showed him a video interview with Elizabeth Smart. He added that it was similar to the way Mitchell acted at the state mental hospital while watching the TV show "Charmed." Welner said he believed Mitchell acted this way more out of lust than interest in the content or dialogue being shown.
Welner said at the mental hospital Mitchell didn't just sit and watch "Charmed" on the TV. He got up and went over to the TV and "he got real close."
"I found that to be eerily reminiscent," Welner said of how Mitchell acted.
Regardless of whether the women in "Charmed" were playing the roles of young women or girls, Welner said, "the ways he engaged Elizabeth Smart on screen was the way he engaged the women of 'Charmed.' His interest in them was not spiritual, and it was not religious."
He said because Mitchell's actions and posture to the TV screen were distinct and similar in both scenarios, he "interpreted it as lust."
Lewis asked Welner if it was not true that if he had found Mitchell mentally ill he would have only made $10,000 compared with the nearly $800,000 he is making now in the case.
"There were things I took on, that added a certain level of complexity and certain level of understanding. At that early stage, there was no prognosis of where [anything] would lead," he answered, adding that he probably turns down about 70 percent of the cases coming into his office.
"If it isn't this case, it is another case," he said. "I am not invested to do any more than come up with conclusions."
Prosecutor Diana Hagen followed up by asking about Mitchell's relationship in the state mental hospital with another patient named John C.
"In a way he was a friend and a kind of a student, someone that was curious ... and learning from him as a bit of a role model, but also someone he was friends with and he could talk about a variety of things," Welner said.
Hagen asked if Welner had any opinion on a previous evaluation, when Mitchell was 17, that he had a psychotic disorder.
"That diagnosis specifically referred to social withdrawal. At the end of DSM 2 [a manual of mental illnesses], that category was done away with," Welner said, adding that the diagnosis is obsolete.
Welner said he believed Brian David Mitchell graduated from conduct disorder to anti-social personality disorder in his later life.
The prosecution rested at 11:40 a.m. Thursday. The defense called its sole rebuttal witness, Stephen Golding, who runs a part-time forensic psychology practice and who taught psychology for 36 years at the University of Utah.
He dissected the testimony from the prosecution's forensic psychiatrists, saying that paranoid schizophrenics can stare for prolonged periods of time and learn , despite contrary testimony from Noel Gardner.
He also said that people with delusions can carefully plot logical plans to carry out a delusion, and they can lie to complete a conclusion.
"Let's be honest, delusional people are dangerous and they are dangerous because they have the ability to fulfill those ideas," Golding said. "Often those ideas involve things that are against the law."
More Elizabeth Smart / Brian David Mitchell stories from the Tribune archive
To read witness testimony from throughout the trial, jury selection stories and previous coverage, visit breaking.sltrib.com/mitchell