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Thread: Ronald Exantus Sentenced in 2015 KY Slaying of Six-Year-Old Logan Dean Tipton

  1. #21
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    "Like Logan didn't matter.' Slain boy's big sister, others protest nurse's assault sentence

    An Indiana nurse was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison for the assaults on the two sisters and the father of 6-year-old Logan Tipton, the Versailles boy who was stabbed to death in his bed.

    The sentencing was preceded by a march through downtown Versailles of about 150 Tipton relatives and supporters who protested a jury’s verdict last month that found Ronald Exantus not guilty by reason of insanity for the murder of the kindergartner and the burglary of the Tipton house.

    In a decision criticized by family and prosecutors as inconsistent, the jury found Exantus, 34, guilty but mentally ill on the assaults. Had he been found guilty of murder, Exantus could have faced the death penalty.

    "Justice for Logan! Justice for Logan!" the marchers chanted as they walked in a light drizzling rain down a couple of blocks on Main Street to the Woodford County Courthouse.

    At the courthouse, Logan’s mother, Heather Pujol Tipton, asked for a moment of silence to remember Logan. Then the boy’s great-aunt, Joyce Kinder, led the crowd in a chant that the jury verdict "Did not fit the crime! Did not fit the crime!"

    Before sentencing, Special Judge Phil Patton again denied a defense motion to have Exantus found not guilty by reason of insanity on the assaults as well. Patton had previously ruled against that motion, but the defense asked the judge to reconsider.

    Had that defense motion been successful, Exantus would have served no prison time but would have faced possible involuntary commitment to a mental hospital.

    The crimes occurred after Exantus, a dialysis nurse, drove from Indianapolis to Versailles, a place he’d never been, entered the unlocked Tipton household before dawn, and stabbed Logan in the head while the boy was in bed on Dec. 7, 2015.

    A defense psychologist testified at trial that Exantus suffered from psychosis due to an underlying mental illness.

    Logan’s older sister, Koral Tipton; mother; and father, Dean Tipton, all spoke in the courtroom before final sentencing.

    “I want you to know that you are lucky that me and my dad didn’t kill you” during the struggle after Logan was stabbed, Koral Tipton said. She also said jurors “acted like Logan didn’t matter.”

    Dean Tipton said the verdict is an example “of what’s wrong with America today.” Mass shootings happen, he said, because those who shoot don’t fear punishment.

    “They’re not scared of the time they’re going to get,” Dean Tipton said.

    Heather Tipton told Exantus “when you murdered my son, you slaughtered my entire family. ...None of us are the same.”

    Heather Tipton said she will one day forgive Exantus for her sake, not for his.

    “You have rocked this whole community, this whole town,” Heather Tipton said. “You did that by your own choices.”

    Exantus did not make any statement before sentencing.

    “You had plenty to say that night!” Koral Tipton suddenly said in the courtroom before descending into tears. She was silenced by relatives.

    Judge Patton ordered that Exantus receive mental health treatment during his incarceration.

    http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/...#storylink=cpy
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  2. #22
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Kentucky Supreme Court considers rare split verdict in 2015 murder of Versailles boy

    By John Cheves
    Lexington Herald Leader

    The Kentucky Supreme Court on Friday considered the legitimacy of an unusual split jury verdict that followed one of Central Kentucky’s most terrible crimes in recent years.

    In 2018, a Fayette Circuit Court jury handed down separate and seemingly contradictory verdicts in the case of Ronald Exantus, an Indianapolis dialysis nurse who broke into a Versailles house three years earlier and stabbed to death 6-year-old Logan Tipton before assaulting Logan’s father and two of his sisters.

    After hearing defense testimony alleging that Exantus suffered a psychotic break days before the attack, the jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity on the charges of murder and burglary. However, jurors found him guilty but mentally ill on three counts of assault for injuries he caused to other members of Logan’s family.

    The split verdict allowed Exantus to avoid the death penalty, instead getting a 20-year prison sentence. Logan’s family and others in Woodford County said they were outraged by the relatively light punishment.

    Although he evaded Death Row, Exantus appealed the assault convictions to the Kentucky Supreme Court. He argued that if his insanity meant he wasn’t responsible for his actions during one part of the nightmarish attack then he should not have been held responsible for any of it.

    “Nothing Ron did was calculated, planned or premeditated. He went somewhere he had never been, broke into a house he had never been to before and attacked people he had never known,” Karen Shuff Maurer, one of Exantus’ attorneys, told the Supreme Court on Friday. “Ron’s psychosis was present before, during and after the crimes.”

    Prosecutors disagreed all along with the scope of Exantus’ insanity defense. They argued at trial that Exantus caused at least some of his own problems with synthetic drug use that induced a psychosis.

    Addressing the Supreme Court on Friday, prosecutors said the jury could have had legitimate reasons for its split verdict. After the initial stabbing attack that killed Logan in his bedroom, Exantus started to seem more lucid, said Thomas Van De Rostyne, an assistant attorney general.

    Once Logan’s father ran upstairs and subdued Exantus, ending the Dec. 7, 2015, attack, Exantus begged to not be harmed. He offered the paramedics advice on how to perform CPR on the boy. And speaking later to police officers, he expressed remorse for the attack and said he understood why Logan’s father was angry at him.

    Based on the narrative, it’s entirely logical that jurors concluded Exantus came to his senses partway through the attack and therefore was responsible for his actions from that point forward, Van De Rostyne said.

    “Any of us who are familiar with mental health — Alzheimer’s, dementia, all kinds of things — there are moments of lucidity,” he said. “Some mental states can be very fluid. They can change rapidly in either direction.”

    Several of the high court’s justices quizzed the lawyers on the extent of Exantus’ mental illness and how much related evidence was presented to jurors at trial.

    The primary expert witness at trial was Kenneth Benedict, a psychologist who testified that Exantus showed signs of psychosis in the days before his sudden late-night drive to Kentucky and random attack on the Tipton home. He appeared paranoid and agitated and had dramatic mood swings, alternatively giggling or weeping, according to his colleagues and loved ones in Indianapolis.

    Once he was incarcerated while awaiting trial, Exantus was prescribed an anti-psychotic medicine that seemed to make his behavior less erratic.

    However, Justice Michelle Keller of Covington told the lawyers that the narrative of Exantus’ attack immediately after he stabbed Logan “sounds like culpable behavior.” Exantus stopped his all-out assault and appeared to start thinking about protecting himself, Keller said.

    “His behavior did seem to shift. It shifted to the behavior of somebody who has been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing,” Keller said. “I don’t understand from a scientific standpoint. You’ve not said there is any expert who has said unequivocally ‘He was in a psychotic state that entire time and therefore he was insane.’”

    The court is expected to take several months before issuing a decision in the case.

    https://www.kentucky.com/news/politi...246660513.html
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