June 26, 2026
Mom Found Not Guilty Using Covid Insanity Defense For Killing Infant Daughter
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RSS Feed A judge ruled 38-year-old mom of 6, Precious Bland, was not guilty by reason of insanity, for drowning her 15 month old daughter Emii and then stabbing her husband and teenage daughter. Bland chose a bench trial over a jury trial and there are now calls for the judge who made the ruling to be impeached. The prosecution maintained that Bland’s defense of Covid Psychosis was fabricated, that she was actually upset because she believed her husband was having an affair. We not only discuss this shocking case, but also go into several well documented cases of post covid psychosis which includes people suffering from paranoia, delusions and hallucinations.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Friday, June twenty six.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: And a Florida woman has just been found not guilty by reason of insanity after she drowned her fifteen month old child, stabbed her husband, and stabbed her teenager. And she says COVID made her do it. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: Wrotes.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: This case has now started a bit of an outrage in Florida over how this could happen.
00:00:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm still kind of confused. This was certainly a shocking decision by a judge and one that might be precedent setting, because isn't this the first time this defense, specifically a COVID related insanity defense has been used effectively in a criminal case.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: Her attorneys say, absolutely, says the first time, and this might not be the last. Now it's as wild initially as it might sound to us. Yes, as a defense, as a defense for this thirty eight year old mother, her defense for drowning. She drowned her fifteen month old at home when the husband tried to intervene, stabbed him, stabbed her sixteen month old. The whole family had to flee from this woman. Now, as wild as that scene sounds and everybody admits and everybody knows she is responsible. How is it possible you could say COVID made me do it? And Roads it is something that is well documented. We're going to talk about more, but Robes, this is something that has been studied since we first had COVID come on our screens five six years ago.
00:01:43
Speaker 3: And yet it's still hard to get our head around. We've heard about all of these possible side effects from having COVID, whether it was the long haul syndrome. But yes, there is what is referred to as a COVID psychotic episode, and that was the cruxt of their defense that there is research that shows or suggests, I guess is the word to use, that a small percentage of people who had COVID nineteen then experienced psychosis after COVID or any I guess this can happen with other viral infections as well.
00:02:25
Speaker 2: Yes, sense, yes, it's a viral thing. And then this again Robes as this was not their attorney just going and digging something up and throwing something against the wall. This is documented, and this is a woman like in other cases Robes that they have documented where people have no history, no family history of any no psychosis, and then all of a sudden, after a COVID diagnosis. Here they are sometimes days later, end up with these psychotic breaks in which they are completely detached from reality and are behaving in ways that people around them have never seen before.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: This is scary.
00:03:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's rare, but it's real.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker 3: And I think from what you just described, based on what her family members have said, people who were there, this was not at all anything that they had ever seen come from precious Bland.
00:03:14
Speaker 4: She's a mom of six. This wasn't a woman who had behaved like this before, who had acted like this before. And she was screaming.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: I believe that God basically was telling her to baptize her children because COVID was going to kill us all. It sounded paranoid, It sounded delusional, and she was hearing voices, correct, that's what she claimed.
00:03:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: She didn't have to robes make the case. As we're hearing it and people hearing it now and trying to think, on man, that doesn't make sense, and man, why would I do if I was on a jury. It didn't come to that. She did not have to convince twelve people of her innocence by reason of insanity. It happens every once in a while. People get these options robes, and she rolled her dice and it worked because she decided to opt not for a jury trial.
00:04:03
Speaker 4: That's pretty remarkable.
00:04:05
Speaker 1: You know.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: I had always said, I think people always imagine what would I do if I were facing criminal charges, And I have always said, if I were innocent, I would want to judge, and if I were guilty, I would want a jury.
00:04:17
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: I mean maybe they felt like this was so scientifically based and that a judge with the level of education and expertise that he had would be able to actually separate the science from the shocking headline of it all, basically that a juror might get swept up in like, come on, how is this possible that maybe actually a judge would take this science that they were presenting in a more appropriate manner. I mean, that's the only rational I could think of, because that's a big bet to make that one person, to put your fate in the hands of one person versus twelve.
00:04:54
Speaker 2: But it is, I mean two. As you just explained, it's hard to get your head around. And we could go sit down with ten twelve people right now and sit and try to explain to them psychosis related to COVID and it it's going to take some explaining TOBE to get enough doctors up there, enough scientists, and actually there are documented cases, but it's not necessarily consensus, yes, about why it happens and what is going on, but it is a real thing now the reason we're here, Yes, she chose a bench trial. Let the judge decide, but this was a crying robes that goes back to twenty twenty one. It was in August, and what happened in what they describe in the scene at that house is a horror and it was being inflicted upon them by the mother of the house, who was behaving in a way that nobody recognized.
00:05:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's bodycam footage of the aftermath of it all, and she's actually done a sit down interview following this judgment. Where is she even was asked, are the rest of your children? Are your family members afraid of you now?
00:05:54
Speaker 4: And she said no.
00:05:55
Speaker 3: They know that this was just basically a psychotic break. But you can hear her yelling about God in the body cam footage and look I thought it was pretty This wasn't some complicated case that her defense attorney presented in terms of her defense.
00:06:09
Speaker 4: This was a two day hip trial. Bam, it was over.
00:06:12
Speaker 3: But the prosecution offered a very different scenario of why they believe she drowned her fifteen month old and then attacked her husband and eventually her sixteen year old.
00:06:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, they first of all, they said the other part of it was just fabricated. They said, you all are pulling this out of nowhere, about this psychotic break. The prosecution tried to motivate that. This didn't make a lot of sense to me though.
00:06:35
Speaker 4: Rhodes, Well, the motive was.
00:06:37
Speaker 3: They said that Bland believed her husband was having an affair. But you do see that. Look, it's hard to get your head around a mother being able to take her own child's life. We have certainly seen fathers do this before, and certainly in custody cases, we've seen mothers and fathers do the unthinkable and kill their children to get back at their partner or their ex and in cases of extreme emotional pain, people do yes the unthinkable. And so that was the prosecution's case. They said that, and they don't have to prove a motive, but their motive was that she was so distraught about her husband's alleged affair that she drowned her child and attacked him.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: That was one of these. Recently we covered one of these.
00:07:23
Speaker 3: It was a mother with her two children and the father and she then drove to a family member in Vermont and said, basically, the babies are dead. She strangled them, I believe, in her own bed. And that was and it was over accustody to get back at her soon to be excess.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: True, it is rare. It makes headlines. And again some of them make headlines. Maybe they're more than we're even aware of, but it is. It's it's unconstentable, it's unthinkable, unthinkable. And if you had women on that jury, Mom's on that jury.
00:07:50
Speaker 1: You know what?
00:07:51
Speaker 3: And I think that and when you start to really think about the defense strategy here, to have any gosh, anyone who has children, I think that'd be a really hard thing to understand how COVID could make you do something. And maybe it would seem more understand the bull that rage.
00:08:10
Speaker 4: Would be a more probable motivation for a woman to be able to do something like that.
00:08:16
Speaker 2: Look at it looking at it the other way robes would it be somebody on the jury, a mom or dad who look at it and go, there is no way a mom is capable of that.
00:08:28
Speaker 4: We've seen it happen, so.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: It must be COVID.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: Yes, we've seen those cases, and actually more often than not, it seems. But what do you think about if someone's sitting there going wow, Chances are there's no way this woman that I'm sitting here looking at raised six kids. There's no way something didn't happen to her and something didn't snap.
00:08:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the snap could have been that her husband was cheating.
00:08:49
Speaker 1: On I'm talking about the cod another way to possibly look at it.
00:08:53
Speaker 2: I don't know what they think, but it could go both ways, and that's why she didn't want to roll the dice.
00:08:56
Speaker 3: I guess I agree, And look, it depends on how well that science was explained, how much I believed this medical professional who is telling me that, yes, this does happen, although rare, and it can be a plausible and defendable explanation as to why somebody would snap.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: They do believe this is a first rope.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: They do believe this is a first Are we going to see this more, I don't.
00:09:20
Speaker 4: Yes, I bet it worked. So yes.
00:09:22
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, though, world, this this is a very specific case with some very specific and bizarre and alarming jump off the page type details about her behavior. I hope people defendants don't just start pulling this out left and right. Okay, that's what you see coming.
00:09:43
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, it made me do it. A virus made me do it.
00:09:47
Speaker 3: I had a temporary psychotic experience because of a virus that I caught that I had no control over.
00:09:55
Speaker 4: And look, this woman in particular.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: Like she she had a her history. I think that is the one thing that stands out. There was no history of violence. She was a contributing member of society. She was a naval veteran. Correct, didn't she serve our country overseas? So this was someone who was a hero, was commended, was a functioning, seemingly loving member of her community.
00:10:24
Speaker 2: There were no warning signs of anything. There's nothing in her background that suggested anything like this. And they say, Rode, that is one of the things that they started studying, first of all, very early in COVID, because they started noticing some things, and they started linking these things together so that there's no way. This is just a coincidence that people so soon after a COVID diagnosis end up just having psychotic breaks like they've never had before. But robes a lot of people that try to get their heads around this, and this as a defense among them of the Florida Attorney General, who's pissed, actually wants to go after this judge.
00:11:02
Speaker 4: Yes, and he wants this judge impeached.
00:11:04
Speaker 3: Yes, because he thinks it's so outrageous that the judge made the decision he made.
00:11:09
Speaker 4: I don't know.
00:11:09
Speaker 3: I don't see how that's possible. If a judge is there to judge to make a ruling guilty or not guilty, isn't it that judges prerogative based on the evidence presented to him to judge either I mean, to rule either way. So just because you don't like yes the decision shouldn't mean that you can impeach or call for the impeachment of a judge because you've disagreed with the.
00:11:31
Speaker 2: Judge, suggesting that he has been he's all he's put the community in harm by letting this woman back out.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Well love suggestion.
00:11:40
Speaker 3: If anything happens to anyone else, then yes, there would be a case for that. But until it does, I don't see how that could possibly be something he could actually have a legal argument for.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: But isn't this something that I mean that judges have to weigh that. I mean, he had to think about that. My goodness, I would be the one solely putting her back out there.
00:11:59
Speaker 1: What if she does something to another one of ritual.
00:12:01
Speaker 3: She'll have access to her children, she'll have access to her community. Look, before this, she was going door to door telling neighbors about COVID. I mean, she was acting erratically leading up to this stabbing.
00:12:18
Speaker 4: But this is just I don't know, is this a singular case.
00:12:22
Speaker 3: And she's recovered now, she's okay, Now, there's no concern about her mental health.
00:12:27
Speaker 4: Now, it was just a moment in time.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: A moment in time. We're hearing about this when it's making headlines right now, and this was going on this week. However, this is not the first. It's not the second either. There have been several of these in the United States and around the world over the years, including one very high profile one that took place with a North Carolina woman. We'll explain what happened there and exactly what this thing is COVID related psychosis there.
00:13:07
Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about a successful defense mounted by a mom of six. A judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity after she drowned her fifteen month old baby girl, stabbed her husband who was trying to stop her, and stabbed her sixteen year old daughter in the chaos that ensued.
00:13:32
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't mention it. She tried to take her own life, yes, and.
00:13:35
Speaker 4: She was so badly injured she wasn't able to Is that what I read? She was trying to shoot herself.
00:13:40
Speaker 3: So, yes, she was a mess, and her defense team argued successfully as we pointed out to the judge that this was all a psychotic break that was brought on by COVID nineteen.
00:13:54
Speaker 2: They say it's possible ropes, other coronaviruses, even ibola and things out there. They say there is an up to in their studies they have found up to four percent of people have these kinds of reactions. Now, they're not always violent, but it can be terrifying robes if you don't know what's going on.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: You just recovered from COVID and.
00:14:14
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, you start having hallucinations, your family knows you having hallucinations. You become completely delusional, a complete break from reality.
00:14:22
Speaker 1: They say, these folks have.
00:14:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to imagine. Precious Bland, that's the mother of six, the thirty nine year old woman. She did sit down for some interviews and she was asked if she remembered, and she kind of just said she didn't, but she remembers the look in her son's eyes. She said, I remember telling him through my eyes to run because I couldn't control myself, and he somehow knew it and ran. But she says she doesn't really remember. She sees the bodycam footage and she knows that's her, but she doesn't really have any real memories of doing what she did.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: This is it's wild. It's fascinating.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: They're still trying to nail down exactly why. They think it might have something thing to do with your bodies, like hyped up immune response and it throws off your chemistry in the brain and.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: Causes it to four percent. It's but bro, that's terrifying.
00:15:11
Speaker 4: It is terrifying. And you think about just.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: All of these unexplained symptoms or reactions.
00:15:21
Speaker 4: That people had to COVID into other viruses.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: I mean, look, if it can attack your lungs, if it can attack your heart, it makes sense that it attacks your brain.
00:15:30
Speaker 2: Yes, this Robes at first are one of the most cited cases.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: Well then this one was a twenty two.
00:15:40
Speaker 2: I don't have the dates right, I apologize, but it was in North Carolina. A woman started experiencing this episode Robes while she was going through a fast food drive through and literally trying to hand her kids to the employees through the drive through window because she was trying to protect them because there was so much the phones technology in the car and she tried to put them through the drive through window.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Well, psychotic breaks.
00:16:07
Speaker 2: She was end up being diagnosed, but that's one that they document, they really started studying. But this was a woman in her early mid thirties, perfectly healthy, no history, and they just had COVID.
00:16:17
Speaker 3: And that's part of I guess how they're trying to figure this out, because I can't imagine how difficult it is to study someone's post COVID brain who had a temporary psychotic break. I mean, how do you determine what the brain looked like before, what the brain looked like during and then what the brain looked like afterwards. I mean, this seems like it's a theory and they might have some examples, but is this proof, like ironclad proof that this is happening.
00:16:46
Speaker 2: Yes, they absolutely think they have enough documented cases now that there's enough literature on this where it's accepted that this is a thing.
00:16:55
Speaker 1: It does happen.
00:16:56
Speaker 2: Now I'm trying to completely nail down exactly what it is.
00:16:59
Speaker 1: Can you stop? But can you do anything about it? Can you identify it? Don't know?
00:17:02
Speaker 2: But to your point, there a lot of it is anecdotal evidence. There's somebody here thirty two ain't never had a problem all of a sudden hearing voices and hallucinating and total break from reality and had COVID four days ago.
00:17:17
Speaker 3: And I'm curious and you may not know the answer to this because I didn't see this.
00:17:22
Speaker 4: How long have they said?
00:17:23
Speaker 2: How long do these days week last days to week days to weekspened?
00:17:28
Speaker 4: Literally the person just snaps out of it.
00:17:31
Speaker 2: You know, they can't haven't figured that out. They get treated just like this woman precious planned is being monitored and she's been treated now she has been and she spent what three four years in prison. After this in jail awaiting trial and getting ready, then she was released and got to go home where she is being monitored and she is going through whatever type of psychiac treatment that they have putting her through. But they let her stay out for the past year because they thought she was doing well enough and have been cured. But this is being decided. I think today she's back in court. The judge is going to decide if she's going to be allowed to continue the monitoring and the treatment that she's getting now, or she needs to go to a facility.
00:18:10
Speaker 3: Right because oftentimes, well I think almost all the time, right, if you're found not guilty by reason of insanity, it doesn't mean you just get to walk free and you're you're, you know, just going back to the way life was. No, you're usually committed to a mental health facility in lieu of a prison because it's not at issue whether or not she killed her child or stabbed her husband. That's all been established she did all of those things. So typically, in an insanity defense where you're found not guilty, which is exceptionally rare, instead of being sentenced to a prison, you're sentenced in so many way that might be not the word to use, but to a mental facility, you're committed.
00:18:47
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to thank you that stay there until the judge or a doctor signs off when you're getting out. So it's well, it's it's not prison, but you're still being held for treatment.
00:18:57
Speaker 3: Yes, so today it will be decided if she gets to continue living at home, being monitored and having psychiatric treatment, or if she should be committed to a facility. And is it that same judge that decides that. I would think so typically that's the case. So we shall see what happens to precious Bland and her freedom. But certainly she has avoided guilty charges and she was up against she was a manslaughter and attempted.
00:19:25
Speaker 4: She wasn't first to be murder.
00:19:27
Speaker 3: She was only facing manslaughter charges, but she was looking at significant prison time if she was found guilty. So will of course continue to monitor what happens in that courtroom today.
00:19:35
Speaker 4: We always appreciate you listening to us. Everyone. I'm Amy Roeboch alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Friday, June twenty six.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: And a Florida woman has just been found not guilty by reason of insanity after she drowned her fifteen month old child, stabbed her husband, and stabbed her teenager. And she says COVID made her do it. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: Wrotes.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: This case has now started a bit of an outrage in Florida over how this could happen.
00:00:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm still kind of confused. This was certainly a shocking decision by a judge and one that might be precedent setting, because isn't this the first time this defense, specifically a COVID related insanity defense has been used effectively in a criminal case.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: Her attorneys say, absolutely, says the first time, and this might not be the last. Now it's as wild initially as it might sound to us. Yes, as a defense, as a defense for this thirty eight year old mother, her defense for drowning. She drowned her fifteen month old at home when the husband tried to intervene, stabbed him, stabbed her sixteen month old. The whole family had to flee from this woman. Now, as wild as that scene sounds and everybody admits and everybody knows she is responsible. How is it possible you could say COVID made me do it? And Roads it is something that is well documented. We're going to talk about more, but Robes, this is something that has been studied since we first had COVID come on our screens five six years ago.
00:01:43
Speaker 3: And yet it's still hard to get our head around. We've heard about all of these possible side effects from having COVID, whether it was the long haul syndrome. But yes, there is what is referred to as a COVID psychotic episode, and that was the cruxt of their defense that there is research that shows or suggests, I guess is the word to use, that a small percentage of people who had COVID nineteen then experienced psychosis after COVID or any I guess this can happen with other viral infections as well.
00:02:25
Speaker 2: Yes, sense, yes, it's a viral thing. And then this again Robes as this was not their attorney just going and digging something up and throwing something against the wall. This is documented, and this is a woman like in other cases Robes that they have documented where people have no history, no family history of any no psychosis, and then all of a sudden, after a COVID diagnosis. Here they are sometimes days later, end up with these psychotic breaks in which they are completely detached from reality and are behaving in ways that people around them have never seen before.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: This is scary.
00:03:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's rare, but it's real.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker 3: And I think from what you just described, based on what her family members have said, people who were there, this was not at all anything that they had ever seen come from precious Bland.
00:03:14
Speaker 4: She's a mom of six. This wasn't a woman who had behaved like this before, who had acted like this before. And she was screaming.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: I believe that God basically was telling her to baptize her children because COVID was going to kill us all. It sounded paranoid, It sounded delusional, and she was hearing voices, correct, that's what she claimed.
00:03:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: She didn't have to robes make the case. As we're hearing it and people hearing it now and trying to think, on man, that doesn't make sense, and man, why would I do if I was on a jury. It didn't come to that. She did not have to convince twelve people of her innocence by reason of insanity. It happens every once in a while. People get these options robes, and she rolled her dice and it worked because she decided to opt not for a jury trial.
00:04:03
Speaker 4: That's pretty remarkable.
00:04:05
Speaker 1: You know.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: I had always said, I think people always imagine what would I do if I were facing criminal charges, And I have always said, if I were innocent, I would want to judge, and if I were guilty, I would want a jury.
00:04:17
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: I mean maybe they felt like this was so scientifically based and that a judge with the level of education and expertise that he had would be able to actually separate the science from the shocking headline of it all, basically that a juror might get swept up in like, come on, how is this possible that maybe actually a judge would take this science that they were presenting in a more appropriate manner. I mean, that's the only rational I could think of, because that's a big bet to make that one person, to put your fate in the hands of one person versus twelve.
00:04:54
Speaker 2: But it is, I mean two. As you just explained, it's hard to get your head around. And we could go sit down with ten twelve people right now and sit and try to explain to them psychosis related to COVID and it it's going to take some explaining TOBE to get enough doctors up there, enough scientists, and actually there are documented cases, but it's not necessarily consensus, yes, about why it happens and what is going on, but it is a real thing now the reason we're here, Yes, she chose a bench trial. Let the judge decide, but this was a crying robes that goes back to twenty twenty one. It was in August, and what happened in what they describe in the scene at that house is a horror and it was being inflicted upon them by the mother of the house, who was behaving in a way that nobody recognized.
00:05:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's bodycam footage of the aftermath of it all, and she's actually done a sit down interview following this judgment. Where is she even was asked, are the rest of your children? Are your family members afraid of you now?
00:05:54
Speaker 4: And she said no.
00:05:55
Speaker 3: They know that this was just basically a psychotic break. But you can hear her yelling about God in the body cam footage and look I thought it was pretty This wasn't some complicated case that her defense attorney presented in terms of her defense.
00:06:09
Speaker 4: This was a two day hip trial. Bam, it was over.
00:06:12
Speaker 3: But the prosecution offered a very different scenario of why they believe she drowned her fifteen month old and then attacked her husband and eventually her sixteen year old.
00:06:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, they first of all, they said the other part of it was just fabricated. They said, you all are pulling this out of nowhere, about this psychotic break. The prosecution tried to motivate that. This didn't make a lot of sense to me though.
00:06:35
Speaker 4: Rhodes, Well, the motive was.
00:06:37
Speaker 3: They said that Bland believed her husband was having an affair. But you do see that. Look, it's hard to get your head around a mother being able to take her own child's life. We have certainly seen fathers do this before, and certainly in custody cases, we've seen mothers and fathers do the unthinkable and kill their children to get back at their partner or their ex and in cases of extreme emotional pain, people do yes the unthinkable. And so that was the prosecution's case. They said that, and they don't have to prove a motive, but their motive was that she was so distraught about her husband's alleged affair that she drowned her child and attacked him.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: That was one of these. Recently we covered one of these.
00:07:23
Speaker 3: It was a mother with her two children and the father and she then drove to a family member in Vermont and said, basically, the babies are dead. She strangled them, I believe, in her own bed. And that was and it was over accustody to get back at her soon to be excess.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: True, it is rare. It makes headlines. And again some of them make headlines. Maybe they're more than we're even aware of, but it is. It's it's unconstentable, it's unthinkable, unthinkable. And if you had women on that jury, Mom's on that jury.
00:07:50
Speaker 1: You know what?
00:07:51
Speaker 3: And I think that and when you start to really think about the defense strategy here, to have any gosh, anyone who has children, I think that'd be a really hard thing to understand how COVID could make you do something. And maybe it would seem more understand the bull that rage.
00:08:10
Speaker 4: Would be a more probable motivation for a woman to be able to do something like that.
00:08:16
Speaker 2: Look at it looking at it the other way robes would it be somebody on the jury, a mom or dad who look at it and go, there is no way a mom is capable of that.
00:08:28
Speaker 4: We've seen it happen, so.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: It must be COVID.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: Yes, we've seen those cases, and actually more often than not, it seems. But what do you think about if someone's sitting there going wow, Chances are there's no way this woman that I'm sitting here looking at raised six kids. There's no way something didn't happen to her and something didn't snap.
00:08:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the snap could have been that her husband was cheating.
00:08:49
Speaker 1: On I'm talking about the cod another way to possibly look at it.
00:08:53
Speaker 2: I don't know what they think, but it could go both ways, and that's why she didn't want to roll the dice.
00:08:56
Speaker 3: I guess I agree, And look, it depends on how well that science was explained, how much I believed this medical professional who is telling me that, yes, this does happen, although rare, and it can be a plausible and defendable explanation as to why somebody would snap.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: They do believe this is a first rope.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: They do believe this is a first Are we going to see this more, I don't.
00:09:20
Speaker 4: Yes, I bet it worked. So yes.
00:09:22
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, though, world, this this is a very specific case with some very specific and bizarre and alarming jump off the page type details about her behavior. I hope people defendants don't just start pulling this out left and right. Okay, that's what you see coming.
00:09:43
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, it made me do it. A virus made me do it.
00:09:47
Speaker 3: I had a temporary psychotic experience because of a virus that I caught that I had no control over.
00:09:55
Speaker 4: And look, this woman in particular.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: Like she she had a her history. I think that is the one thing that stands out. There was no history of violence. She was a contributing member of society. She was a naval veteran. Correct, didn't she serve our country overseas? So this was someone who was a hero, was commended, was a functioning, seemingly loving member of her community.
00:10:24
Speaker 2: There were no warning signs of anything. There's nothing in her background that suggested anything like this. And they say, Rode, that is one of the things that they started studying, first of all, very early in COVID, because they started noticing some things, and they started linking these things together so that there's no way. This is just a coincidence that people so soon after a COVID diagnosis end up just having psychotic breaks like they've never had before. But robes a lot of people that try to get their heads around this, and this as a defense among them of the Florida Attorney General, who's pissed, actually wants to go after this judge.
00:11:02
Speaker 4: Yes, and he wants this judge impeached.
00:11:04
Speaker 3: Yes, because he thinks it's so outrageous that the judge made the decision he made.
00:11:09
Speaker 4: I don't know.
00:11:09
Speaker 3: I don't see how that's possible. If a judge is there to judge to make a ruling guilty or not guilty, isn't it that judges prerogative based on the evidence presented to him to judge either I mean, to rule either way. So just because you don't like yes the decision shouldn't mean that you can impeach or call for the impeachment of a judge because you've disagreed with the.
00:11:31
Speaker 2: Judge, suggesting that he has been he's all he's put the community in harm by letting this woman back out.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Well love suggestion.
00:11:40
Speaker 3: If anything happens to anyone else, then yes, there would be a case for that. But until it does, I don't see how that could possibly be something he could actually have a legal argument for.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: But isn't this something that I mean that judges have to weigh that. I mean, he had to think about that. My goodness, I would be the one solely putting her back out there.
00:11:59
Speaker 1: What if she does something to another one of ritual.
00:12:01
Speaker 3: She'll have access to her children, she'll have access to her community. Look, before this, she was going door to door telling neighbors about COVID. I mean, she was acting erratically leading up to this stabbing.
00:12:18
Speaker 4: But this is just I don't know, is this a singular case.
00:12:22
Speaker 3: And she's recovered now, she's okay, Now, there's no concern about her mental health.
00:12:27
Speaker 4: Now, it was just a moment in time.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: A moment in time. We're hearing about this when it's making headlines right now, and this was going on this week. However, this is not the first. It's not the second either. There have been several of these in the United States and around the world over the years, including one very high profile one that took place with a North Carolina woman. We'll explain what happened there and exactly what this thing is COVID related psychosis there.
00:13:07
Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about a successful defense mounted by a mom of six. A judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity after she drowned her fifteen month old baby girl, stabbed her husband who was trying to stop her, and stabbed her sixteen year old daughter in the chaos that ensued.
00:13:32
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't mention it. She tried to take her own life, yes, and.
00:13:35
Speaker 4: She was so badly injured she wasn't able to Is that what I read? She was trying to shoot herself.
00:13:40
Speaker 3: So, yes, she was a mess, and her defense team argued successfully as we pointed out to the judge that this was all a psychotic break that was brought on by COVID nineteen.
00:13:54
Speaker 2: They say it's possible ropes, other coronaviruses, even ibola and things out there. They say there is an up to in their studies they have found up to four percent of people have these kinds of reactions. Now, they're not always violent, but it can be terrifying robes if you don't know what's going on.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: You just recovered from COVID and.
00:14:14
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, you start having hallucinations, your family knows you having hallucinations. You become completely delusional, a complete break from reality.
00:14:22
Speaker 1: They say, these folks have.
00:14:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to imagine. Precious Bland, that's the mother of six, the thirty nine year old woman. She did sit down for some interviews and she was asked if she remembered, and she kind of just said she didn't, but she remembers the look in her son's eyes. She said, I remember telling him through my eyes to run because I couldn't control myself, and he somehow knew it and ran. But she says she doesn't really remember. She sees the bodycam footage and she knows that's her, but she doesn't really have any real memories of doing what she did.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: This is it's wild. It's fascinating.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: They're still trying to nail down exactly why. They think it might have something thing to do with your bodies, like hyped up immune response and it throws off your chemistry in the brain and.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: Causes it to four percent. It's but bro, that's terrifying.
00:15:11
Speaker 4: It is terrifying. And you think about just.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: All of these unexplained symptoms or reactions.
00:15:21
Speaker 4: That people had to COVID into other viruses.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: I mean, look, if it can attack your lungs, if it can attack your heart, it makes sense that it attacks your brain.
00:15:30
Speaker 2: Yes, this Robes at first are one of the most cited cases.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: Well then this one was a twenty two.
00:15:40
Speaker 2: I don't have the dates right, I apologize, but it was in North Carolina. A woman started experiencing this episode Robes while she was going through a fast food drive through and literally trying to hand her kids to the employees through the drive through window because she was trying to protect them because there was so much the phones technology in the car and she tried to put them through the drive through window.
00:16:06
Speaker 1: Well, psychotic breaks.
00:16:07
Speaker 2: She was end up being diagnosed, but that's one that they document, they really started studying. But this was a woman in her early mid thirties, perfectly healthy, no history, and they just had COVID.
00:16:17
Speaker 3: And that's part of I guess how they're trying to figure this out, because I can't imagine how difficult it is to study someone's post COVID brain who had a temporary psychotic break. I mean, how do you determine what the brain looked like before, what the brain looked like during and then what the brain looked like afterwards. I mean, this seems like it's a theory and they might have some examples, but is this proof, like ironclad proof that this is happening.
00:16:46
Speaker 2: Yes, they absolutely think they have enough documented cases now that there's enough literature on this where it's accepted that this is a thing.
00:16:55
Speaker 1: It does happen.
00:16:56
Speaker 2: Now I'm trying to completely nail down exactly what it is.
00:16:59
Speaker 1: Can you stop? But can you do anything about it? Can you identify it? Don't know?
00:17:02
Speaker 2: But to your point, there a lot of it is anecdotal evidence. There's somebody here thirty two ain't never had a problem all of a sudden hearing voices and hallucinating and total break from reality and had COVID four days ago.
00:17:17
Speaker 3: And I'm curious and you may not know the answer to this because I didn't see this.
00:17:22
Speaker 4: How long have they said?
00:17:23
Speaker 2: How long do these days week last days to week days to weekspened?
00:17:28
Speaker 4: Literally the person just snaps out of it.
00:17:31
Speaker 2: You know, they can't haven't figured that out. They get treated just like this woman precious planned is being monitored and she's been treated now she has been and she spent what three four years in prison. After this in jail awaiting trial and getting ready, then she was released and got to go home where she is being monitored and she is going through whatever type of psychiac treatment that they have putting her through. But they let her stay out for the past year because they thought she was doing well enough and have been cured. But this is being decided. I think today she's back in court. The judge is going to decide if she's going to be allowed to continue the monitoring and the treatment that she's getting now, or she needs to go to a facility.
00:18:10
Speaker 3: Right because oftentimes, well I think almost all the time, right, if you're found not guilty by reason of insanity, it doesn't mean you just get to walk free and you're you're, you know, just going back to the way life was. No, you're usually committed to a mental health facility in lieu of a prison because it's not at issue whether or not she killed her child or stabbed her husband. That's all been established she did all of those things. So typically, in an insanity defense where you're found not guilty, which is exceptionally rare, instead of being sentenced to a prison, you're sentenced in so many way that might be not the word to use, but to a mental facility, you're committed.
00:18:47
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to thank you that stay there until the judge or a doctor signs off when you're getting out. So it's well, it's it's not prison, but you're still being held for treatment.
00:18:57
Speaker 3: Yes, so today it will be decided if she gets to continue living at home, being monitored and having psychiatric treatment, or if she should be committed to a facility. And is it that same judge that decides that. I would think so typically that's the case. So we shall see what happens to precious Bland and her freedom. But certainly she has avoided guilty charges and she was up against she was a manslaughter and attempted.
00:19:25
Speaker 4: She wasn't first to be murder.
00:19:27
Speaker 3: She was only facing manslaughter charges, but she was looking at significant prison time if she was found guilty. So will of course continue to monitor what happens in that courtroom today.
00:19:35
Speaker 4: We always appreciate you listening to us. Everyone. I'm Amy Roeboch alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.