Woman insane when she torched her Taranaki home and fought to stay in the blaze

Fire and Emergency New Zealand were called to a house fire started by the homeowner in Waitara, Taranaki, on July 21, 2021. Photo / Bevan Conley

A mentally unwell woman who set her home on fire and then violently fought to remain in the blaze, claiming she was trying to “save her soul”, has been found insane at the time of the offending.

She has therefore been found not guilty of arson and injuring with intent to injure by reason of insanity in relation to the July 21, 2021, Taranaki fire.

The judge-alone trial was heard in New Plymouth District Court on Wednesday and focused solely on the woman’s state of mind during the incident.

Defence lawyer Susan Hughes KC said there was no dispute that her client had lit the fire and the court would need to decide whether, on the balance of probabilities, she was insane when doing so.

Two psychiatrists were called to give evidence and each had differing opinions on whether the woman met the legal test for insanity.

The facts of the case state that after the woman, now 70, set fire to the house, she clung to a door frame as her former partner tried to drag her from their burning property.

As she screamed at him that she wanted to die, he grabbed the woman by the ankles and pulled her from the door frame and towards the front door.

Once the pair were outside, she tried to run back into the burning house, so he lay on top of her to pin her down.

The woman, who legally cannot be named, retaliated by biting the man’s stomach.

The woman's case was heard in New Plymouth District Court on Wednesday. Photo / Tara Shaskey

Moments earlier, she had used the oven to ignite a newspaper, which she then took into her bedroom.

Using the burning paper, she set her curtains alight and then climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over her head.

The fire at the Waitara property she purchased about 30 years prior was fully involved when firefighters arrived about 3.30am.

After owning the property for about 13 years, the woman entered into a relationship with the man and he moved in and invested money in the property.

When they later split up, they continued to live together but in separate bedrooms.

On the evening before the fire, the pair had dinner together and then the woman went to bed about 9pm.

The man watched television before he went to bed at midnight. At 3am, he was woken by an explosion and the sound of crackling fire.

He went to the hallway where he was met by a wall of flames and smoke, before locating the woman.

She was lying on the floor in the doorway to the bedroom, struggling to breathe and refusing to move.

The house was burned beyond repair and both occupants lost most of their possessions in the fire.

In court, both Dr Nichole Galley and Dr Gordon Lehany acknowledged it was a challenging case and that it was impossible to know with certainty what the woman’s mental state was at the time.

The key area of difference in their evidence was their opinion as to the timing of the woman’s psychotic symptoms.

Galley accepted the woman had been suffering from long-standing mental illness and that her condition had been deteriorating in the days leading up to the fire.

The woman, who has bipolar affective disorder, had stopped taking her anti-psychotic medication some months before the blaze and Galley acknowledged when she had previously discontinued her medication the woman had reached a state of psychosis.

But the doctor said in this instance there was no evidence to support acute psychosis at the time of the offending and that the psychotic symptoms did not set in until the following day when the woman was in hospital.

Galley believed the woman understood what she was doing and the consequences of her actions.

But Lehany’s opinion differed, submitting she was insane on the day that she set the fire.

He believed the woman was affected by her illness at the time and was not capable of rationalising or making moral judgments.

In his evidence, he reported the woman “wanted to end it all” and believed her “heart belonged to the lord and that my actions were the only way to save my soul”.

“She remembers thinking ‘Lord, take me’,” Hughes told the court, referencing Lehany’s report.

His evidence said the woman’s history demonstrated a recurrent psychotic and affective illness characterised by religious delusions including that she was either “Jesus or the devil”, auditory hallucinations, frequent suicidality and at times catatonic features.

Given her history and her state while in care immediately after the fire, Lehany was confident in his opinion about her likely mental state on the day of the fire.

After considering the evidence, Judge Gregory Hikaka ruled that on the balance of probabilities, the woman was insane at the time of the offending.

As a result, she was found not guilty of the charges on account of insanity.

Judge Hikaka ordered permanent name suppression of the woman and that she remain under the care of a compulsory treatment order.

Following the verdict, the woman hugged her former partner who was in court to hear the trial.