Prosecution and defense rest in the Yonko capital murder trial Dr. Edward Gripon, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Channel Yonko after she threw her daughter off a fourth-floor balcony to her death, took the stand in Yonko’s capital murder trial Thursday. Yonko had told Gripon that she’d stabbed her 17-month-old daughter three times to release her from demonic possession before impulsively throwing her off the balcony to “send her to heaven and free her from her torment,” according to Gripon’s notes. She had died from the blunt force trauma when she landed— she’d incurred “many” skull fractures, Chief Medical Examiner for Galveston County Dr. Erin Barnhart said. Yonko thought her daughter would be miraculously returned to her; she told Gripon. She told him she struggled to tell what was real and what was not, and sometimes hallucinated, he said. When he met with her for the first time six months after the killing, she talked about her daughter, Hannah, as if she were still alive, he said. Based on her self-reports, Gripon diagnosed her with Major Depressive Disorder, which may have evolved into psychosis before the crime because it was left untreated, Gripon said. Psychosis leads people to have false beliefs that feel real to them, which would indicate insanity, he said. Symptoms seemed to have diminished after she began taking prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics while in jail, he said. But Gripon could only speak to her mental state when he interviewed her months after the crime, he said. It’s up to the jury to decide whether Yonko was in her right mind and whether she knew that what she was doing was wrong when she threw Hannah off a balcony of a Galveston hotel on Oct. 23, 2024. With video evidence showing her committing the act having been presented to the jury on Wednesday, an insanity plea is the last line of defense between Channel and a possible life sentence without a chance of parole. Prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty in the case. The jury will hear closing arguments and begin deliberation on Friday.

Posted by SAGE SCOTT at 2026-03-06 11:58:08 UTC