In a motion filed Wednesday, the lawyers said Lori Tasney nodded off repeatedly during the process, wrote indecipherable notes to herself and did not seem to remember which jurors were selected or why. In response, the court ordered Tasney to undergo a competency evaluation and postponed her trial until August.
Tasney was one of two people arrested on animal cruelty charges in 2013 after a Sea Street woman found her cat’s bludgeoned body outside her house. Tasney’s co-defendant, Christopher Lang, was sentenced to three years in prison in December after pleading guilty in two cases, including the animal-cruelty case.
Prosecutors allege that Lang put the cat in a clothes dryer while Lang and Tasney were guests in the Sea Street home. Tasney’s lawyers have argued that she was not aware of the cat’s whereabouts when Lang put the animal in the dryer, and therefore she should be acquitted.
Jury selection in Tasney’s trial began Tuesday, but one of her lawyers said in an affidavit filed the next day that Tasney appeared to be “in physical and mental distress” and had trouble staying awake through the process.
“Though I was able to occasionally converse with Ms. Tasney, I do not believe she was able to meaningfully participate in the selection of jurors in her case,” the attorney, Sandra Gant, said in the affidavit. “I do not believe she is able to recall who was ultimately seated on her jury, nor is she able to recall who was excused or why.”
The motion also included three pages of Tasney’s “notes” from jury selection, each of them marked with an illegible scattering of cut-off words, half sentences and random scribbles. One of the only legible portions read: “My life is a mess.”
Tasney’s trial is scheduled to resume Aug. 17.
(Wicked Local Quincy - Apr 17, 2015)
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