Jury begins deliberations in Smart kidnapping case

A jury on Thursday began deliberating the fate of a nomadic street preacher charged with the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, after hearing federal prosecutors call him a “predatory chameleon” and defense lawyers say he’s too delusional to be convicted.

The facts of the case aren’t disputed: Even attorneys for Brian David Mitchell say there’s no question their client kidnapped Smart from her Utah bedroom when she was 14 and raped her until she was found months later, walking a suburban street with Mitchell and his now-estranged wife, Wanda Barzee.

But attorney Robert Steele told jurors Thursday that Mitchell’s actions were colored by long-standing delusional beliefs, and that the jury should find him not guilty by reason of insanity, sending him to a mental institution.

Jurors also could convict him of the crime, or find him not guilty. They will keep deliberating During the trial, Mitchell was removed daily from the courtroom for singing hymns and disrupting proceedings. Last week, he had a seizure in the holding room where he watches the trial on television. He spent several hours at a hospital before being returned to a jail.

Prosecutors say the 57-year-old is faking mental illness to avoid prosecution.

“He’s a predatory chameleon with the cunning to adapt his behavior to serve his needs and desires at any given moment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Hagen said during an 80-minute closing argument.

Hagen told jurors that Mitchell acted deliberately when he took Smart from her home at knifepoint in the middle of the night and threatened her life if she cried out for help. Mitchell was also deliberate when he forced Smart into a polygamous marriage, raped her daily and held her captive for nine months, hiding her behind long robes, a head scarf and veil and a religious name.

“He stripped her of her clothes, her identity and her innocence,” Hagen said.

Hagen said Mitchell didn’t eschew mainstream society and live on the streets in the mid-1990s because of either a command from God or because a mental illness, but because he wanted to avoid work, child support payments and income taxes He chose when to follow his so-called revelations from God, Hagen said. “If he chose those ideas then he can certainly choose to conform his conduct to the demands of the law,” she said. “He can certainly choose not to rip a child away from her home and family, to rape and abuse her, to keep her bound like an animal, to rob her of her identity, her dignity and her childhood.”

Now 23, she has testified that she was forced into a polygamous marriage with Mitchell after the abduction, held prisoner on a tether and forced to endure nearly daily rapes. She also said Mitchell forced her to wear hand-sewn, religious-looking robes, to use drugs and alcohol, view pornography and to go to California against her will.

Barzee pleaded guilty to Smart’s kidnapping last year and is serving 15 years in federal prison.