Kreuscher found guilty A jury rejected Tyson Kreuscher's insanity plea in the intentional homicide of two police officers By Jessica La Plante News-Chronicle A Brown County Circuit Court jury agreed with Tyson Kreuscher's defense attorney that the 28-year-old homicide convict suffered from a mental illness July 22 when he rammed his Chevy pickup into a parked squad car and killed two police officers. But in a special verdict Wednesday night, the jury rejected the defense's claim it was major depression that caused Kreuscher to kill Hobart/Lawrence officers Stephanie Markins and Robert Etter. Failing in his insanity defense, Kreuscher now faces life in prison after being convicted of two counts of first-degree intentional homicide Tuesday. His sentencing is scheduled for June 6. After reaching the guilty verdict, the same group of jurors returned to court Wednesday to decide whether Kreuscher was sane at the time he acted. Reaching a unanimous verdict, the twelve jurors agreed Kreuscher's mental illness didn't impair his ability to distinguish right from wrong or control his actions. In August, Kreuscher pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to the homicide charges. To prove the defendant lacked the capacity to control his actions, the defense on Wednesday called witnesses who said Kreuscher was in the throes of a major depression at the time of the crash. Oriana Kreuscher, the defendant's mother, testified her son had been melancholy and withdrawn throughout childhood. By the time Tyson Kreuscher was in seventh grade, his parents had sought help from a counselor to find out why their son was chronically unhappy. In 1995, Oriana urged her son to see a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with a mood disorder called dysthymia and treated with mild antidepressants. During the spring of 2002, Kreuscher started going on self-destructive rampages, screaming and breaking furniture on his head. During one episode, he spit ice cream at a Dairy Queen worker, his mother said. "There were two levels (to Tyson Kreuscher)," Oriana Kreuscher said. "He had a level he was living at, and there was a level that was underneath. The (anger) underneath would erupt to the surface. You couldn't predict it; you didn't know when it was going to happen." Oriana Kreuscher said she tried to get her son committed to a mental hospital after the Dairy Queen incident, but neither police nor mental-health workers called his emotional problems serious enough to justify hospitalization. As time progressed, "the eruptions were more violent ... more frequent," Oriana said. "It didn't take much to set him off at all." The psychiatrist treating Tyson Kreuscher, Dr. Jonathan Thomas, changed his diagnosis in 2002 from dysthymia to major depression. In addition, Kreuscher was diagnosed as showing traits of manic depression and a personality disorder. Thomas said the defendant was a loner who avoided interaction with others. To treat the angry outburst, Thomas put Kreuscher on antimania medication. Although Kreuscher showed some improvement, he still had difficulty controlling his mood swings. Thomas said one of Kreuscher's outbursts occurred in the lobby of his medical office in May 2002. "A mother came into my office at 10:30 and told me a tall young blond man in construction worker clothing had been verbally threatening to another man in the lobby (shouting profanities),'" Thomas said. After that, Thomas switched Kreuscher to lithium, a more powerful mood stabilizer. The defendant, however, thought the side effects of the drug outweighed any therapeutic value, and he discontinued his medication two days before ramming the squad car, according to Thomas. Mental-health experts called by the prosecution said they felt Kreuscher was suffering from a mental illness on July 22, but the defendant had the ability to control his actions at the time of the crash. His mental illness "does not lessen his responsibility for his behavior," said James Armentrout, a clinical psychologist appointed by the court to examine Kreuscher. Armentrout said he thought the July crash was more the product of festering anger than a suicide attempt. He said much of the defendant's rage stemmed from an unhappy childhood. "I felt he was a very angry, aggressive, hostile young man who had been angry for a long time," Armentrout said. "(Kreuscher) could not remember a single happy day when he was younger." He said Kreuscher's feelings of worthlessness stemmed from verbal abuse he was subjected to as a child. "There was a connection between his anger and his depression," Armentrout said. "His anger was repressed, and it only took minor provocation to upset him." Armentrout said he believes Kreuscher felt provoked last summer when revocation of his probation status was to be considered in a court proceeding. Armentrout said Kreuscher had failed to attend a drug counseling session ordered by a Michigan judge after he was convicted of a minor drug charge. Anxiety related to the criminal justice system is perhaps one reason why Kreuscher targeted a squad car, said Armentrout, adding, "He picked a police car, which is a symbol of authority (and) a symbol of community ... a community which had not been good to him." Although Armentrout said the defendant's mental illness was a factor in the collision, he said he believed the defendant understood his actions were wrong. At that point, "he was beyond caring what was right and wrong," Armentrout said. After deliberating for nearly two hours, the jury agreed with that conclusion. When the judge read aloud the verdict that declared Kreuscher sane, family members of the victims and defendant burst into tears. Kathleen Hurning, the mother of officer Markins, said she not only felt grief for her deceased daughter, but for the defendant's family, who is "losing a child just like I did." If anything positive comes out of this tragedy, Hurning said she hopes it's a greater awareness of mental illnesses. "I hope that people realize that when they see a problem, they should go to a counselor and continue reaching out ... don't let it come to this," she said. Hurning said that advice is not only directed at family members of mentally ill people, but health-care workers as well. "As a mother, I feel that someone should have responded more (to Oriana Kreuscher) and offered her more help," Hurning said. "Here's a case where she probably did the best she could, and it wasn't good enough ... no one offered assistance."