Mother enters insanity plea in abuse case

Minerva Lopez, 32, was initially charged last month with 16 counts of child abuse. Her husband, Porfirio Olivas-Lopez, 38, who was initially charged with 11 counts of child abuse, now faces 24 counts of child abuse.

Town of Madison police Detective Robb Hale, who is investigating the case, said the new abuse charges involve "other atrocious events" such as dunking the girl's head into a toilet and forcing her to eat insects and a dead mouse, along with more allegations that the girl was beaten with different objects.

Lopez also faces a charge of failure to act to prevent bodily harm.

Not guilty pleas were entered for Olivas-Lopez on the 24 felony charges he now faces. Taavi McMahon, attorney for Lopez, told Dane County Circuit Judge Stuart Schwartz that his client was pleading not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect to the 25 felonies against her.

The 14-year-old girl is the victim in all but two of the charges, Hale said, and each of the other two charges involves a 5-year-old brother and an 8-year-old sister. Hale said the 14-year-old girl is out of the hospital and recovering in a safe location.

A criminal complaint filed Oct. 2 alleged that the girl was beaten at the family's Pheasant Ridge Trail apartment with a broomstick, a metal rod, a frying pan and other objects between April and September. The complaint also alleges that Lopez admitted scalding the girl with hot water, choking her, cutting her wrist with a kitchen knife and biting her face.

Lopez is in the Dane County Jail on $32,000 bail and Olivas-Lopez is being held on $24,000 bail. But bail is essentially academic because both also have immigration holds placed by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The complaint did not say why the couple abused the girl, although Lopez attributed it to stress and Olivas-Lopez had claimed that the girl had "the devil in her." A child abuse expert wrote that the girl's injuries were the result of "serial child torture," the complaint states.

Mother Sent to St. Elizabeths To Determine Fitness for Trial

A Southeast Washington woman accused of killing her four daughters was ordered transferred from the D.C. jail to St. Elizabeths Hospital yesterday for a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she is mentally fit for trial.

The action came after Banita Jacks , 33, refused to cooperate with a court-ordered mental evaluation, declining to meet with psychiatrists because she does not want to pursue an insanity defense. D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg ordered her to spend 45 days at the District's psychiatric hospital, where an assessment will then be made.

At a court hearing yesterday, Jacks said she refused to participate in the earlier evaluations because she believed they would automatically find her mentally unfit.

"I don't choose to talk," she said. "I'm afraid if they do talk to me, they might think I'm crazy, and I'm not."

Weisberg would not back off on the need for the psychiatric examination, telling Jacks: "I've been here 30 years plus, and I may be here another 30 or so years. I can wait it out if I have to. Until I can make a valid decision on your ability to defend yourself, this is where you're going to be."

Jacks has been jailed since Jan. 9, when she was arrested after federal marshals serving an eviction notice on her rowhouse on Sixth Street SE found the bodies of her four daughters, ages 5, 6, 11 and 16. Authorities said the girls had been dead for up to six months.

New details of Jacks's physical and mental condition emerged in a four-page report issued by the chief clinical psychologist for the District's Department of Mental Health, who was assigned to examine Jacks. In his report, psychologist Robert Benedetti noted that when Jacks arrived at the jail, she was put on suicide watch and checked every 15 minutes. A week later, she was reevaluated and removed from the protective watch. That evaluation concluded that Jacks had "encapsulated delusions, delayed speech, illogical thought processes, guarded attitude and poor insight and judgment," the court papers showed.

At the time, Jacks also refused medications, including antidepressants. In a March evaluation, Jacks denied hearing voices or having delusions or phobias but remained guarded. During a competency evaluation last month, performed under an Oct. 3 order from the judge, Jacks refused to be seen and began communicating with the nurses by wiggling her toes to answer yes or no, the report said.

A grand jury indicted Jacks in September on charges of premeditated first-degree murder. Her youngest daughter, Aja Fogle, 5, was strangled and beaten, according to the indictment. Her sisters, N'Kiah Fogle, 6, and Tatiana Jacks, 11, were strangled. Brittany Jacks , 16, whom her mother later referred to as a "Jezebel," was stabbed.

In the report, the psychologist and Jacks's public defender, Peter Krauthamer, agreed that Jacks was more cooperative with them before her Sept. 12 arraignment on the charges in the indictment.

Jacks's trial was set for Dec. 1 but will be delayed. Weisberg said Jacks is "frustrating" the process of a speedy trial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Sines encouraged Weisberg to order the psychiatric evaluation and noted that "there was evidence of schizophrenia in her family." Several times during the hearing, Jacks rolled her eyes and turned her back to Sines.