PORTLAND — A psychiatrist retained by Chad Gurney’s defense team testified Tuesday that Gurney thought he was helping Zoe Sarnacki “attain eternal life” when he strangled her, mutilated her body and set it on fire in his apartment in Portland two years ago.

Dr. Harold Bursztajn gave his opinion that Gurney was so delusional that he did not comprehend the wrongfulness of his actions.

But a psychologist who examined Gurney for the state gave a different opinion. Dr. Peter Donnelly testified that Gurney may well have been suffering from delusions, but he understood his actions and their consequences when he attacked Sarnacki on May 25, 2009.

It will be up to Justice Roland Cole to consider the complex medical testimony as Donnelly takes the stand again today. Two more doctors are set to testify as rebuttal witnesses for the prosecution.

Gurney, 29, is on trial in the slaying of Sarnacki, a former Deering High School student who was 18 when she died.

He has waived his right to a jury and has pleaded not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. Cole is overseeing the trial, which is expected to conclude Thursday in Cumberland County Superior Court.

Bursztajn, who will likely be the defense’s most important witness unless Gurney takes the stand, gave his opinion that Gurney had a psychotic disorder caused primarily by a brain injury he suffered in 2005. The disorder, Bursztajn said, was exacerbated by chronic pain and Gurney’s decision to wean himself off narcotic painkillers in the months before the killing.

The dominant feature of Gurney’s mental problems – delusions marked by a belief that he was being guided by signs in his surroundings – came to a tragic head in the ritualistic killing of Sarnacki, Bursztajn said.

“He’s not seeing them as signs. He’s seeing them as facts, as a command from the universe,” Bursztajn told Cole. “It’s difficult for us because it’s just so hard to imagine.”

Bursztajn, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a consultant who has testified in more than 100 criminal cases nationwide, interviewed Gurney for a total of seven hours in August and November 2010.

Gurney told him about a trip he took to Hawaii a few months before Sarnacki’s death. He met a man named Lavi, who promised him a method for curing the chronic pain Gurney had endured since a near-fatal van crash in 2005, when he was a lacrosse player at Liberty University in Virginia.

Drawing his conclusions from his examinations of Gurney, medical records, e-mail transcripts, journal entries and case materials provided by the prosecution, Bursztajn said Gurney believed Lavi was a spiritual guru.

On the afternoon of the killing, Gurney thought Lavi was sending him an “ultimate test,” and thought Sarnacki was “a reflection of himself.” Gurney felt he was on a mission to give them both eternal life, and to be free from pain, Bursztajn said.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, questioned whether Bursztajn’s opinion was objective, given his $500-an-hour rate as a consultant for the defense. The doctor said he will earn close to $100,000 for his work on the case.

Gurney became financially independent in 2007 when he received a multimillion-dollar settlement from the van crash. He paid about $1.35 million of that to Sarnacki’s family, who had filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against him. It wasn’t clear whether the money to hire Bursztajn came from Gurney’s settlement money or another source.

Tuesday’s hour-long exchange between Marchese and Bursztajn often became testy, as Marchese repeatedly asked the doctor to limit his answers to “yes” or “no” on certain questions, and Bursztajn essentially told Marchese that she had a closed mind and couldn’t understand his testimony.

During the cross-examination, Marchese noted that Gurney made inconsistent statements to several people about why he killed Sarnacki. Only to Bursztajn did he describe the killing as part of a ritual based on delusions, she said.

In one of those alternative explanations, Gurney told a friend in a cell phone conversation about 12 hours after the killing that Sarnacki had hurt him, he was tired of being hurt, and he snapped.

Marchese also was critical of Bursztajn’s opinion because the doctor first examined Gurney about 15 months after his arrest.

Bursztajn defended his opinion, and said Gurney’s paranoia helped conceal his delusional thought processes from others, including a detective who interviewed him on the morning after the killing.

Donnelly, the first of three experts who will testify for the prosecution, had been on the stand for only about 20 minutes when court adjourned Tuesday.

He examined Gurney five times in June and July 2009. Donnelly said Gurney told him that he had always had a penchant for “reading into things,” but it had always been a positive experience for him.

On the day of the killing, Gurney said, he misread the signs and went “on some kind of power trip,” Donnelly testified.

In Donnelly’s opinion, Gurney understood that Sarnacki was another human being, and he understood that killing her was wrong.

If he is found guilty, Gurney will face a minimum of 25 years and a maximum of life in prison.

If Cole finds him not criminally responsible, Gurney will be committed to the Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta until he can prove to the court that he is no longer a threat to society.

 

Staff Writer Trevor Maxwell can be contacted at 791-6451 or at: tmaxwell@pressherald.com

 

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