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Mental defense planned in killings
Tuesday, April 10, 2001 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A defense lawyer said yesterday that he will argue that a Kittanning-area man didn't have the ability to reason that he was doing wrong last month when he killed his ex-wife and former son-in-law in an early-morning ambush.
In the meantime, lawyer Jack Heim said, defendant Donald Koffman will be transferred out of the Armstrong County Prison to Warren State Hospital for a mental evaluation and treatment of depression -- a placement that Heim said could last up to 90 days.
Koffman, still at the Armstrong County Prison, is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow in Kittanning.
The accused killer told state police that early March 9, he showed up at the Rural Valley-area farmhouse where his ex-wife, Linda Koffman, and his former son-in-law, George Graff, were living. He told police he killed Graff, 28, as he left the dwelling, then shot his 46-year-old ex-wife to death as she tried to drive away.
Heim said yesterday that he is hoping to build a defense that Donald Koffman didn't understand what he was doing well enough to form clear criminal intent -- a strategy that could spare Koffman a first-degree murder conviction and instead leave him with a conviction for third-degree murder or manslaughter.
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