Baker decides against taking stand in murder trial
Murder suspect Daniel Baker has asked to take the witness stand every day during his trial in Lake County.
But when his opportunity to testify in his own defense finally came up this morning, the Deerfield man accused of killing his girlfriend's mother with a baseball bat said he would "plead the Fifth."
Baker, now 24, invoked the Fifth Amendment, which protects witnesses self-incrimination, after telling Judge Daniel Shanes that "I have my rights intact here, unlike in Montana" – an apparent reference to the confession Baker gave to authorities when he and his girlfriend were picked up in that state days after Marina Aksman was killed in her Vernon Hills home in April 2010.
Baker's attorneys, who have sought to show Baker suffers from a variety of mental illnesses and have complained about his unwillingness to cooperate, rested their case after Baker declined to take the stand.
On Monday, a psychiatrist for the defense testified that Baker was insane at the time of the murder, calling him a "nerd on steroids," who said that having a girlfriend helped him feel normal.
Dr. Alexander Obolsky said that Baker felt his sense of normalcy was threatened by Aksman when, the morning of her murder, she left him a message saying he could no longer see her daughter.
"The victim attacked him on two fronts," Obolsky said. "She called him bipolar and she took away the relationship with his girlfriend."
Baker could not appreciate the criminality of his conduct because of his mental deficiencies, which include cognitive disorder, borderline personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder, Obolsky said. Baker also suffers from many "strange and bizarre ideas having to do with thought insertion."
"He said that other people, particularly correctional officers, would be attempting to control his mind with thought insertion," Obolsky said. He talked about his sixth sense … his ability to control the future."
Today, prosecutors brought in their own psychiatrist, who agreed that Baker suffered from multiple mental deficiencies, but h! ad a different opinion about his sanity at the time of the murder.
"It is my opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical and scientific certainty, that Mr. Baker was legally sane," said Dr. Stafford Henry.
Regarding hearing voices, as Baker had reported to Obolsky and other medical professionals and authorities, Henry said he had no evidence of that.
"He was not and has not suffered auditory hallucinations," Henry said. "He said, 'The voices I hear are real.' He made references to the voices we both heard outside of the contact room."
Closing arguments are expected to be delayed until Nov. 1 because of scheduling conflicts.
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