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Chesapeake — A Chesapeake man who choked his wife to death with his hands and a pair of pajama pants was convicted of murder Friday by a judge who rejected his lawyers’ argument he was legally insane at the time.
William Khine, 42, faces up to life in prison in the 2017 killing of 39-year-old Khin Shwe. He’s scheduled to be sentenced June 15.
During a week-long bench trial in Circuit Court, prosecutors David Mick and Michael Peterson argued the killing was deliberate and premeditated.
Khine’s public defenders, Rachel Wentworth and Joshua Holder, asked the judge to find him not guilty by reason of insanity because a court-appointed forensic evaluator found Khine was experiencing acute psychosis at the time of the killing.
On March 10, 2017, police found Shwe’s body inside the couple’s apartment at the Adalay Bay complex in the 200 block of Sabal Palm Lane. Khine called 911 and said he and his wife had been arguing, and “somebody in his mind” was telling him to kill her, according to search warrant affidavits filed in court.
In his closing argument, Mick said that the the day before the killing, the couple had been seen arguing at the Harris Teeter on Hanbury Road, where Khine ran a sushi stand and his wife worked part time. Shwe told a co-worker she wanted a divorce, according to testimony. The couple had a child together, court records say.
The next morning, a neighbor saw Shwe crying at the school bus stop. Inside the couple’s apartment later that morning, Khine choked his wife with his hands and then stood over her, wrapped a pair of pajama pants around her neck and strangled her, Mick said. At one point, the prosecutor added, Shwe begged, “Don’t kill me.”
Mick argued Khine killed his wife because Shwe was going to divorce him and that the killing was not done spontaneously or impulsively: “This was a murder by Mr. Khine that took time, effort and strength by him.”
After, Khine went to Harris Teeter, returned home and made several calls, including attempts to get someone to cover his wife’s work shift. It took Khine 30 minutes to call 911, and Mick argued Khine used that time to come up with an excuse for what happened: that he was hearing voices.
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Mick said the court-appointed doctor who evaluated Khine for his sanity at the time of the killing didn’t include a mental health diagnosis and based the report on Khine’s accounts of hearing voices. He said that was not enough to show Khine was insane when he killed his wife.
Mick said no one saw any outward signs Khine was hearing voices or having hallucinations. The prosecutor added that Khine’s own accounts of his symptoms were inconsistent, suggesting he was lying.
Khine is a native of Myanmar and has lived in the U.S. for two decades. Throughout the trial, Burmese interpreters translated the proceedings for him. In her closing argument, Wentworth said prosecutors hadn’t presented any evidence Khine knew his wife wanted a divorce.
The court-appointed forensic evaluator, Dr. Annie Vanskiver, was not asked to diagnose Khine with a specific mental illness but to render an opinion of his mental state at the time of the offense, Wentworth said.
Vanskiver found that Khine was experiencing acute psychosis. While psychosis is a symptom, not a diagnosis, Wentworth said, a person doesn’t experience that without an underlying mental health condition. And she said there’s no requirement that the condition be labeled for a person to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Wentworth argued the killing was not pre-planned and that Khine did not try to conceal his actions. When he called to try to get someone to cover a shift, he said his wife was dead and that he killed her, Wentworth said. When the person told him to call police, Khine did that, she said.
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Khine told the 911 operator, a police officer, a detective and the doctor who evaluated his sanity that someone was controlling him in his mind, she said.
Khine killed his wife as a result of the acute psychosis, and was unable to resist the “voice controller,” Wentworth argued.
She said the doctor examined numerous factors — including the 911 call and a transcript of Khine’s police interview — in reaching her opinion, not just Khine’s accounts. She said Vanskiver testified that Khine’s account was consistent with research and data on people known to have psychosis and auditory hallucinations.
Wentworth said the evaluator previously worked at a state hospital with people found not guilty by reason of insanity, including several who were Burmese. In evaluating Khine, she sought out peer-reviewed journals and considered culturally relevant issues about the stigma of mental health and its presentation in Burmese culture, Wentworth said.
“She took all of this into consideration,” she said.
In making his findings, Judge Rufus A. Banks Jr. said Khine’s defense, as a matter of law, had not met its burden to establish he was insane at the time of the offense. The prosecution and defense agreed to have the case decided by a judge instead of a jury, which is allowed under Virginia law.
Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com