Jurors will hear a fourth day of psychiatric evidence as the Elianne Andam murder trial resumes at the Old Bailey today (Thursday, January 9). Hassan Sentamu, 18, is accused of murdering the 15-year-old schoolgirl in Croydon town centre in September 2023. The teenager denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to autism.
On Wednesday, January 8, defence counsel Pavlos Panayi KC called Professor Seena Fazel, a forensic psychiatrist at Oxford University, to give evidence about his opinion on Sentamu. The professor said he agreed with the autism diagnosis but differed with the prosecution’s expert witness, Professor Nigel Blackwood, a forensic psychiatrist at King’s College London.
Unlike Professor Blackwood, who told jurors he believed Sentamu had a psychiatric condition called Conduct Disorder and that the defence of diminished responsibility does not apply, Professor Fazel said autism was a ‘significant contributory factor’.
In a report on Sentamu, Professor Fazel wrote, ‘It’s possible Mr Sentamu has co-occurring personality and conduct difficulties, but it is hard to disentangle the two’, and ‘I am of the view Mr Sentamu had an abnormality of mental functioning arising from a recognised medical condition at the time of the relevant offences’, jurors were told.
While Professor Blackwood focused on written documents like Sentamu’s school record, Professor Fazel interviewed his mother, and jurors were told that Professor Fazel also said he would not have diagnosed Sentamu with Conduct Disorder without speaking to someone who knows the individual well.
“I wanted to get a clearer impression of his mental health, particularly leading up to the offence, and to ask her about his background history that did not come from the records because they are often brief and you can’t get the nuance you get talking to the mother,” he explained to the jury.
On the relevance of autism to Sentamu’s defence, Professor Fazel said: “It’s my view Mr Sentamu’s ASD impacted on his ability to control his feelings of anger and being disrespected and feelings of being mocked and humiliated in front of others. In other words, ASD substantially extenuated these feelings and regulations of his emotions.”
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