He said God told him to kill his grandmother. A jury decided mental health officials weren't to blame

A Benton County jury found the Lourdes Health Network was not grossly negligent in its treatment of a mentally ill West Richland man who killed his grandmother.

In a 10-2 decision, the jury took about four hours to reach its decision recently after six days of testimony.

Adam R. Williams, 35, is in a state psychiatric facility after he was declared not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in December 2012.

The West Richland man believed God was directing him to kill Viola Williams and "in his world" was assured by characters from a 1981 action movie that he could do it, according to a report by state mental health officials at the time. She was killed in 2012.

He had been released 10 months earlier from a mental health ward at Eastern State Hospital.

Since an early age, Williams struggled with various mental illnesses including schizophrenia, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and substance abuse.

After a series of crimes when he was a teen, he ended up involuntarily committed to Eastern for assault.

After five years of treatment, mental health professionals and judges released him to the care of the Program for Assertive Community Treatment. The program was considered the least restrictive option for him.

The treatment was described as a "person-centered, recovery-oriented mental health service delivery model" with a substantial amount of research supporting its use to help people with severe mental illnesses transition into a normal life.

The team included a psychiatrist, chemical dependency specialists and a specialist to help the person find work.

Williams began missing appointments with Lourdes staff as soon as he returned to the Tri-Cities. And it wasn't long after that he began failing to get his medications refilled, according to court documents.

In July 2011, he disappeared for three weeks before calling his parents. They picked him up and took him to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland.

A Benton County Crisis Response Unit employee evaluated Williams but decided he wasn't a threat to himself or others.

For a while after his release, Williams' condition improved, but the improvement was short-lived, and he started having more problems in November 2011 , said court records.

He reportedly told a nurse, "at times he believes that he can read people's minds, and ... that he was Jesus Christ in the past."

By early January 2012, he was sexually aggressive with staff and by mid-January he was "disheveled, poor complexion, appeared agitated, gave very little eye contact and would not respond much to questions" during a meeting with a state counselor from the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, according to court documents.

Lourdes employees asked that he be evaluated by the crisis response unit, which could determine whether he should be sent back to Eastern State Hospital. A snowstorm canceled the appointment, and within days of his next appointment he killed his grandmother.

Adam Williams used foil, lighter fluid, a plastic bag and a belt to try to kill his grandmother before grabbing a knife from the kitchen and stabbing her several times. He told a police detective that the attack only stopped "when God told him that was enough," court documents said.

Williams smoked methamphetamine the night before the slaying, which he believed "elevated his mood and increased the speed of his thinking."

He took a photo of his grandmother's lifeless body and showed the camera to a fellow bus rider on the trip back to his West Richland home.

A court report later concluded that he might have intended to brutally attack the 87-year-old woman, but he "was so acutely ill and entrenched in his delusional system" that he was insane at the time of the murder.

Her family sued Benton and Franklin counties and Lourdes Health Network. A judge dismissed the case, but a higher court ruled that Lourdes could be sued.

Much of the recent civil trial focused on how much the mental health staff could reasonably be expected to predict about Williams' behavior.

Attorneys for Viola Williams' daughter and son argued the team should have seen a number of warning signs that Adam Williams was becoming worse, and he should have been returned to Eastern State.

Rebecca Roe, the family's attorney, said the care wasn't just grossly negligent, it was bad. They should have stepped in when he said he wasn't taking his medications, she argued.

But Jerry Aiken, a Lourdes attorney, argued, "You can't predict the unpredictable. They provided appropriate and reasonable care."

Though Williams will be placed in the custody of the state Department of Social and Health Services, he will remain under the control of the court and any requests to leave Eastern State Hospital grounds will have to be approved by a judge.

This story was originally published May 19, 2018 at 3:13 PM with the headline "He said God told him to kill his grandmother. A jury decided mental health officials weren't to blame."