Twenty-one years to the day after plowing his father’s car into the crowded streets of Isla Vista — killing four people on the spot and a fifth who would die years later — David Attias stood in front of Judge Thomas Adams and explained the steps he’s taken to restore his sanity. Attias, now 39, remains the only defendant within living memory to be found not guilty by reason of insanity in a murder trial in Santa Barbara County.
Attias spent 10 years locked up in the State of California’s Patton psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane; since then, he’s lived in Oxnard under varying intensities of supervision by a state agency known as CONREP (Conditional Release Program), charged with ensuring Attias takes his medications, gets therapy, and lives a life sufficiently regimented and structured that psychotic explosions like the one that rocked Isla Vista on February 23, 2001, do not occur again.
Attias is now petitioning Judge Adams to find his sanity restored, meaning he would no longer have to check in with state officials, follow their rules, or allow them to show up unannounced and search his apartment and person if they felt it was warranted. Opposing this petition is not just Santa Barbara prosecutor Maggie Charles, but Attias’s caseworkers with CONREP. The trial started earlier this week and is expected to wind up by the middle of next week.