Kentucky Supreme Court considers rare split verdict in 2015 murder of Versailles boy
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.
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 3:33 PM.
