Stayner Trial Update

The Stayner trial enters the sanity phase. I didn't realize this, but it appears that the guilt phase goes first, and that the defendant gets to put on evidence of sanity to negative the intent element, then there is a sanity phase, which seems redundant to the finding of guilt, and then there is the penalty phase. Anyhow, Stayner had a defense expert testify about his family history:

Stayner, too, was shaped by his environment, McInnes said. The kidnapping of his brother, Steven, when he, too, was just a boy. Molestation by an uncle who showed young Cary pictures of nude young girls that he could never erase from his mind. The return of Steven after seven years of sexual abuse. Steven's death in a motorcycle accident. The murder of a favorite uncle. A suicide attempt.
Those incidents and more fueled Stayner's mental illness and his break with reality in 1999, she said.
He thought the world was ending, that he was receiving messages from television and others commanding him to "do something that he didn't want to do," McInnes said. And he saw dotted lines on the necks of people around him, shortly before he strangled Sund and Silvina and cut Juli's throat.
Then, McInnes said, he could no longer distinguish right from wrong or comprehend his actions -- the legal test for insanity.
Evidence in the sanity phase of the trial is expected to conclude this week.

I suspect that Stayner will lose the sanity phase also - the jury has already found against him once on the sanity issue and the evidence that he was not able to understand his actions is nonexistent. On the other hand, this evidence is really designed to have an effect on the only phase that matters in this trial, which is the penalty phase.