Cunningham’s illness not 'remarkably consistent’

Under sometimes plodding and excruciating cross-examination, Deputy County Attorney Kristin Larish poked holes in the expert testimony of Dr. Pablo Stewart as the first phase of Matthew Cunningham’s murder trial comes to a close.

Cunningham is on trial for the brutal stabbing deaths of Robert Barker and Katharine Spain at the Andante apartment complex near 48th Street and Chandler Boulevard Oct. 12, 2004. If found guilty, 30-year-old Cunningham could face the death penalty.

He has pleaded guilty, but insane.

Stewart testified early in the week that Cunningham did not know the difference between right and wrong and that he is schizophrenic.

Under tough questioning by Larish Stewart admitted that none of the mental health reports he reviewed were written until after Cunningham was indicted by a grand jury for two first-degree murders.

“There’s no documentation history that the defendant talked about the hallucinations or delusions prior to Oct. 12, 2004,” Larish told the jury.

She also showed that Cunningham has not been as “remarkably consistent” in his description of hearing voices, hallucinations and delusions as Stewart told the jury earlier in the week.

Instead, Larish showed that Cunningham’s stories about hearing voices have changed over the years that he has been held in jail.

She pointed out that his alcohol and drug abuse started at an early age, suggesting that it was his alcohol abuse that led him on the knife-wielding rampage after he lost his job.

Part of the problem for the jury will be to separate testimony that Cunningham is currently suffering from schizophrenia, which mental health experts for the defense and the prosecution basically agree on, and what his mental condition was in 2004.

If the jury finds that Cunningham was sane when he killed the two, then in the second phase of the trial the jury must decide if the case is cruel and depraved and meets the standards to justify the death penalty.

If they agree that the murder of Barker and Spain was cruel, heinous or depraved, then in the third phase of the trial they will be asked to decide if he should receive death by lethal injection or spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The trial could last until the end of January.

Doug Murphy can be reached at (480) 898-7914 or dmurphy@aztrib.com.