A jury is deciding the fate of a woman on trial for throwing her 2-year-old granddaughter to her death from a pedestrian walkway at Tysons Corner Center.
The Fairfax County Circuit Court jury must decide whether Carmela Dela Rosa was legally insane when she tossed Angelyn Ogdoc from the sixth-floor bridge last November.
Prosecutors have portrayed Dela Rosa as a hate-filled woman who became upset when her college-student daughter became pregnant, and killed the child to get revenge on her daughter’s husband.
“She was basically angry at the world and her place in it,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said during closing arguments Wednesday. “She decided to take it out on the child.”
To prove an insanity defense, her attorneys must show that Dela Rosa had a mental disorder that prevented her from understanding her actions or knowing right from wrong at the time of the killing. Medical professionals who have treated her testified that she suffered from major depression, but was not psychotic. A defense psychology expert found her insane; an expert for the prosecution said she was not.
Dela Rosa is a good person who was overcome by her mental illness, defense lawyer Dawn Butorac said in her closing statement. The depression affected her response to the pregnancy, Butorac said.
“It makes it much harder for her to get over it, to deal with it, to move on, to learn how to cope with it,” Butorac said.
But Morrogh said Dela Rosa was still well aware of what she was doing the night of Nov. 29. In a taped police interrogation a few hours after the incident, Dela Rosa says she did a “terrible thing” when she tossed Angelyn to her death.
“Does anyone really believe that she didn’t know the consequences of throwing the child?” he said.
But just because she was lucid during the interrogation doesn’t mean she hadn’t been psychotic hours before, Butorac said, citing the testimony of health professionals.
The jury consists of eight men and four women. Fourteen jurors were initially selected to hear the case, but two — one man and one woman — asked to be dismissed during the trial because they were having trouble listening to the emotionally charged case. Judge Bruce White released both jurors.
