Neuman Trial - Witness Details Delusions

The defense team in the Hemy Neuman murder trial offered jurors more detailed testimony about what they portrayed as a delusional mind made more dangerous by an on-again, off-again affair with the victim’s wife.

"Mr. Neuman is not criminally responsible for the death of Rusty Sneiderman," testified Adriana Flores, a forensic psychologist who was the sole witness on Thursday. "At the time of the shooting, Mr. Neuman did not have the mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong."

Neuman has pleaded not guilty by reason on insanity in the killing of Russell “Rusty” Sneiderman, who was gunned down in Nov. 2010 after dropping his child off at a Dunwoody daycare center.

Flores testified that Neuman wore a disguise, threw the murder weapon into a lake and lied to the police not because he believed he had done wrong – but to keep the victim’s wife, Andrea Sneiderman, from finding out what he had done.

Flores, an adjunct professor at Emory School of Medicine, examined Neuman after the crime and said he suffered from an ailment called bipolar one with psychosis. She said that he suffered from delusional thinking and that even when presented with the truth, he would believe the delusions rather than reality.

She also told jurors that Neuman, an executive at GE Energy in Atlanta, could be delusional for months at a time, and remain otherwise normal in appearance and be productive at work.

"The fascinating thing about someone who is delusional is that you don't know that they are delusional and that they don't know that they are delusional," Flores said.

Neuman was Andrea Sneiderman’s boss and both the prosecution and defense argue that he was having an affair with the widow.

She has denied an affair and she is not charged in the case. But she has been banished from the courthouse since last Friday after complaints about he courtroom conduct and interaction with witnesses. Andrea Sneiderman remains under subpoena and could be called back to the stand.

Flores testified that the affair was real. "It wasn't all in his head. She was in fact having sex with him."

Flores said that the affair made Neuman's delusions dangerous, because the relationship was an on-again, off-again push and pull. She said Neuman couldn't distinguish what was real and what wasn't, to the point that he believed that he was the biological father of the Sneidermans two young children. And she said he believed he needed to slay Rusty to protect them from growing up in an abusive household as he did.

Neuman told Flores that he first knew that he had to kill Rusty Sneiderman in late August, when he said an angel appeared to him while he was driving on highway 285.

"He's going to hurt them," Flores testified, relating a jailhouse conversation she had with Neuman. "He thought, 'I have to kill him, I have my marching orders.' He didn't think twice, he just had to figure out how to do it."

The defense is expected to continue questioning Flores on Friday, with more detailed depictions of what was going through Neuman's mind on the days leading up to the homicide. The prosecution is expected to push hard on the notion that Neuman could be faking his mental illness to escape spending the rest of his life in prison.

Prosecutors rested their case last week after presenting more than 140 pieces of evidence and 80 witnesses and experts in the murder trial of Hemy Neuman.

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