Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Curry denied release from supervision

A jury took little more than an hour Monday to decide that Sharon L. Curry, who stabbed her 8-year-old daughter to death in 1999, still has a mental defect that makes her dangerous.

Curry, 46, had asked the jury to release her from court-ordered supervision stemming from the insanity defense that kept her from having to stand trial for first-degree murder.

She was acquitted five years ago on grounds that she was suffering a drug-induced psychosis when she stabbed her daughter and herself in a car outside their Medical Lake home. Curry told jurors last week that she needed to be freed from restrictions that limit her travel and forbid contact with minors so she can crusade against drug abuse.

Testimony indicated Curry was delusional and paranoid because she was taking too much of a prescription drug, used to treat attention deficit disorder, that has the same properties as methamphetamine.

Curry’s attorneys, Cece Glenn and Chris Bajalcaliev, presented testimony from Spokane psychologists E. Clay Jorgenson and Rob Neils that Curry no longer has a mental defect that makes her dangerous and likely to commit crimes.

Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll presented contradictory testimony from Eastern State Hospital psychologist Daniel Lloyd-Flynn and psychiatrist Dodds Simangan.

“This case is about Adderall,” Glenn said, referring to the medicine a clinic had prescribed for Curry when she killed her daughter.

She said the drug is simply a legal form of methamphetamine, and Curry was prescribed three times the recommended dosage.

“We all know what meth does,” Glenn said. “…It makes you crazy.”

Driscoll reminded jurors of Curry’s admission that she had abused various illegal and prescription drugs since she was 13 years old, and that she used more Adderall than was prescribed.

“You heard from her own lips on the stand what she turns into, the psychotic event that she will go through, if she uses anything like Adderall again,” Driscoll said, referring to Curry’s chilling account last Tuesday of sending her daughter to heaven because a voice told her that was the only way to protect the girl from imaginary persecutors.

Driscoll cited testimony by Lloyd-Flynn that, given Curry’s history of drug abuse, there is a two-thirds chance that she will have another psychotic episode without continued supervision.

Lloyd-Flynn testified that Curry’s drug abuse changed her brain in a way that makes her susceptible to a psychotic relapse if she abuses drugs again, like throwing fuel onto a bed of hot coals.