Judge to decide insanity defense of Wisconsin man who killed his mother

A Hales Corners man who killed his mother last year has pleaded no contest to the crime but claims he should not be held criminally responsible.

It's the third time in recent months that the rare defense has been raised at trial, this time before a judge instead of a jury.

Robert Rozewicz, 42, has a long history of mental illness. He was hospitalized five times at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex between 2001 and 2003 and he required psychiatric evaluation 11 times from various crisis services between 1994 and 2015, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of court records.

But at least one expert testified that didn't mean Rozewicz couldn't tell right from wrong and conform his actions to the law when he suffocated and stabbed his mother on March 16, 2016.

Deborah Collins, one of two court-appointed experts who evaluated Rozewicz, said he clearly had a mental illness but that the many steps he took to hide the crime showed he "was behaviorally managing himself" the day of the murder.

Several days after she died, Julie Rozewicz, 68, was reported missing by her son. At their house, police noticed carpet missing from the living room and stairs. Rozewicz said he had taken it out because it was old and smelled.

Police pinged Julie Rozewicz's cellphone and found it — and her remains — at a Muskego landfill.

Then Rozewicz confessed to killing his mother because he felt she was affecting his life by taking him to treatment. He told detectives she hadn't done anything particular to upset him March 16, 2016, but he just decided that day to kill her and that he didn't feel bad about it.

He suffocated his mother, stabbed her then put her in a garbage can, which was how her body wound up in the landfill. He then drove her car to a nearby grocery store, parked it and walked home, which he told detectives allowed him to deny his mother's existence.

Last week, Rozewicz pleaded no contest to first-degree intentional homicide and his penalty phase trial started this week before Milwaukee Circuit Judge Mark Sanders.

A second forensic psychologist, Christopher Tyre of Delafield, testified he felt Rozewicz's ongoing delusions showed he did not have substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions. For example, Rozewicz told investigators he expected to be vindicated by the U.S. Navy, which, he had written in a journal, he thought was directing him to kill his mother.

Sanders on Wednesday announced to the parties that he wanted to re-read the reports of two court-appointed psychologists before reaching his verdict. He set a Jan. 5 hearing to announce his decision.

Sanders apologized for the unexpected delay, but said, "as both parties recognize, this is a close case."

Though statistically the insanity defense is rare, it has been raised in two other high-profile cases recently.

Last month, a jury rejected the defense raised by Dan Popp, who fatally shot three neighbors in his apartment building, also in March 2016.

RELATED: Jury accepts, then rejects, insanity defense in triple homicide

In September, a Waukesha County jury found one of the two 15-year-old girls charged in the 2013 Slender Man stabbing case not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. As part of a deal to plead guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, Anissa Weier agreed not to seek community release from secure treatment for three years if the jury found her not criminally responsible.

When raising the so-called NGI defense, a defendant has the burden of convincing 10 of 12 jurors, or a judge, by the greater weight of the evidence, that at the time of the offense, he or she suffered from a mental disease or defect, and that because of it, he or she lacked the "substantial capacity" to understand the wrongfulness of their actions or to conform them to the law.

If Sanders finds Rozewicz not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, he would commit him to a state mental hospital. If he rejects the defense, Rozewicz would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison.