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The Health Wyze Report
Written by Sarah C. Corriher
“I was on Prozac. It’s supposed to calm me down, and like level me out, but since I got on it, when something bothers me, it bothers me to [the] extreme. I just act differently. I don’t have the energy or personality I used to. I spend half the time in a trance. I didn’t realize I did it until after it was done, and then I realized it. This might sound weird, but it felt like I was left there holding a gun.”
— Kurt Danysh, police confession
Kurt Danysh was an outgoing 18-year old boy, whose troubles began when he was prescribed Prozac by a doctor who had performed no testing. The teenager quickly became withdrawn, and his emotional instability tail-spinned, making him reckless and violent. His rapid drug-induced deterioration continued; placing him in a fight with his best friend, and later compelling him to intentionally crash his truck into a stone wall. He then vandalized his own kamikazed-truck with graffiti in a manner that was reminiscent of the Charles Manson cult. This era of Kurt’s life ended with him fatally shooting his father, at only 17 days after his first dose of Prozac. There was no motive for the crime, and Kurt had no history of violence.
The Kangaroo Court
While being incarcerated for eighteen months awaiting a trial that would never come, Kurt refused to plead guilty. He was cruelly taunted by the jail staff with newspaper clippings about him during that time. His attorney, Paul Ackourey, met with Kurt in the county jail, and implored him to plead guilty to third degree murder. The attorney claimed that Kurt’s case was hopeless because there was an apparent lack of evidence linking Prozac to violence. Kurt was refused a trial by jury for eighteen months, where he could have submitted his recount of his drug intoxication. The drug had been provided by the sheriff department’s doctor, who had met Kurt after a minor offense. It is something that would have looked really bad in the press.
On one fateful day, Mr. Ackourey produced graphically disturbing photographs of Kurt’s father at the scene of the crime and at autopsy. Kurt was then threatened that if he did not plead guilty, then his family would have to witness the grotesque images at the trial. Mr. Ackourey then left Kurt alone with the disturbing photos. He later returned to find Kurt crying. Kurt finally agreed to plead guilty, and he was immediately driven to the court house to enter a formal guilty plea. After having waited eighteen months, it suddenly took only minutes to get Kurt into court. That is, once he agreed that there would be no jury, and that the drug would not be mentioned.
Despite the court having been informed that the state’s doctors had been continuing to drug Kurt with two major psychogenic tranquilizers, which are usually reserved for schizophrenic patients, the guilty plea was nevertheless accepted. The court made this decision despite evidence that Prozac had dramatically altered both Kurt’s thinking and behavior at the time of his crime, and despite the fact that the state itself was actually giving Kurt even more mind-altering pharmaceuticals at the time of his confession. The Court of Common Pleas, of Susquehanna County, PA., accepted Kurt’s “confession” for case number 132-1996 CR.. Judge Kenneth Seamans sentenced Kurt to 22.5 to 60 years inside a maximum security prison. Kurt has been incarcerated at SCI Frackville Prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania since 1996.
During his sentencing, Kurt addressed his family:
“First and most important, I never meant for this to happen. If I was in control that day, it never would have. I know that doesn’t lessen the pain, or the loss, or the anger, but it’s the truth. Even though I had no control, I know I did a terrible thing. Words can’t begin to describe how I feel. I feel the same hate and anger you do towards myself. The pain I feel will never fade… I am truly sorry for what I have done. I hope my sentence will bring some closure to the family… and to Dad, who I know is watching; I want you to know I always loved you and I never meant to hurt you.”
Kurt later received the expert opinion of Donald H. Marks, M.D., informing him that Prozac can cause violent behavior. Kurt appealed to the court with this newly discovered evidence including additional complaints about his unlawfully coerced guilty plea, and his being under-represented by an attorney who was unable to uncover the scientific information pertaining to his case. On July 22nd, 2003, the same judge who had originally sentenced Kurt, Judge Kenneth Seamans, denied his appeal and excused this by referring to Kurt’s appeal as “untimely”. The potential of Kurt having been innocent was irrelevant to the judge, because in his opinion, the evidence was delivered too late. Meanwhile, Kurt waits in prison due to his lack of punctuality, and the court’s unwillingness to admit its failures.
Eight years into Kurt’s conviction, the F.D.A. finally admitted that S.S.R.I. anti-depressants such as Prozac cause psychotic suicidal episodes, particularly in adolescents and children. These drugs were never actually approved for pediatric use, and such use is termed as an “off label” use. The F.D.A. now requires that all such (S.S.R.I.) drugs carry a Black Box Warning; citing that they are to be considered dangerous for pediatric patients, due to their unpredictable psychiatric effects. A Black Box warning by the F.D.A. is the last step before an official ban is placed upon a substance, but the industry is actually prescribing S.S.R.I. drugs to young people more often in disregard of the F.D.A.’s warnings.
Since then, it has been revealed that Eli Lilly & Co. (maker of Prozac) covered up its own data from 1988, which linked Prozac to violence. No disciplinary action was taken against them. Such cover-ups by the industry are implicitly encouraged by the F.D.A., and it allows companies to conceal negative findings under the guise of ‘commercial trade secrets’. It has obstinately argued that pharmaceutical corporations cannot be compelled to divulge the results of unflattering research, even when the lack of disclosure means deaths. Neither will the F.D.A. release its own so-called ‘proprietary’ drug information, and the agency cites that it is compelled to maintain secrecy by law. There is no such law. Pharmaceutical corporations are actually allowed to cherry pick the results that they wish to be made public. It is business as usual, and they call it ‘science’.
Kurt Danysh filed an appeal on October 11th, 2008, citing new DNA evidence exists supporting that Prozac played a crucial role in his father’s death. Genelex Corporation, a laboratory which tests for the liver enzyme CYP2D6, has positively identified Kurt as a poor metabolizer of S.S.R.I. medications, such as Prozac. Kurt’s inability to properly metabolize such drugs greatly increases his risk of having poor reactions and bizarre side-effects. Because his liver cannot properly process these drugs, they accumulate in his body in massive dosages over very short periods of time.
Kurt requested for Judge Kenneth Seamans to be excused from the hearing, due to him having committed glaring errors, and because Judge Seamans has shown an agenda of suppressing the issues surrounding Kurt’s drug intoxication. Judge Kenneth Seamans has repeatedly refused to recuse himself from any of the proceedings.
Susquehanna County District Attorney, Jason Legg, has now filed an opposition to Kurt’s right to even have an appeal hearing, because he likewise claims that Kurt was too ‘untimely’. Mr. Legg alleged that since the DNA test has existed since the year 2000, Kurt should have discovered it before now (from his prison cell). Kurt is responding, based upon the obvious ridiculousness of expecting an inmate, with extremely limited resources to have the ability to easily find such scarcely known and cutting-edge medical research within 90 days of its existence, even though most practicing doctors are still unaware of it.
The facts of Kurt’s increasingly questionable conviction may once again be ignored — because of his punctuality. For the court of District Attorney, Jason Legg, and Judge Kenneth Seamans, destroying someone’s life is given less consideration than their more important face-saving measures of political self-service.
Strange Encounters
Our reporting of this topic has generated much anger and a few threats. Our former publication, Naturally Good Magazine, was contacted by “a friend” of Judge Kenneth Seamans. He was unsatisfied with our reporting of the Kurt Danysh story. He notified us that his friend is such a heroic crusader that the inmates he locked away send piles of letters thanking the judge for his “tough love”, and that the people he locked-away flood him with Christmas cards every year. We are sure it is all very touching.
Later, an unknown individual impersonated one of our staff members (Sarah Cain), in order to ask a question of D.A. Jason Legg on his blog, regarding the use of involuntary medications during a confession. He replied to the impersonator with:
“I would estimate that well over half of all defendant’s are on some form of medication — and I have never seen a case where such medication caused a defendant to lack the capacity to enter a guilty plea. There have been occasions when defendant’s have appeared in court intoxicated, and, on those occasions, the pleas were rescheduled.”
The whole point is that defendants do have the capacity to make guilty pleas while being given (forcefully at times) mind-altering drugs. It tends to make getting those ‘confessions’ rather easy. D.A. Jason Legg is not only okay with this, but he openly boasted about it in public without any sense of shame. Then he noted that if a prisoner appears intoxicated, then the confession is rescheduled to a time when it doesn’t make the officers of the court look so bad.
The Court Documents
Despite the well-deserved criticisms that we have leveled at District Attorney Jason Legg in our publications, he has maintained a high degree of professionalism in his contacts with us. It is confusingly rare to find someone so gentlemanly, and yet so morally-ambiguous in determining the fate of human beings. While on one hand we appreciate Mr. Legg’s generosity in sharing records and his professional courtesies, there is nevertheless a machine-like coldness that seems sociopathic. Thanks to his generosity, we were presented with documents from the court’s records that prove the innocence of Kurt Danysh. The documents Mr. Legg submitted were actually intended to convince us of Kurt’s legal responsibility, but the documents had the opposite effect.
In official documents and letters, the prosecution’s own expert stated that Kurt’s criminal actions were based on insanity, which should have provided Kurt a concrete defense. The state doctor further noted that Kurt’s “insanity” was caused by a mind-altering drug. The state itself was forcing Kurt to take more of these drugs before and during his confession.
One doctor who evaluated Kurt prior to the confession made the following judgment:
“With regard to his legal dilemmas I find that Kurt Danysh is competent to proceed with his defense. He has killed his father, he has admitted and confessed to the killing of his father. Kurt is severely mentally ill. He has experienced hallucinations, delusions, distortions and illusions. He has been depressed and at least hypomanic. At the time of the crime it is not clear that he was fully conscious of his behavior. There certainly did not appear to be any clear cut motive. Nevertheless he was generally aware of what he was doing… In spite of overwhelming mental illness I do not believe that Kurt Danysh meets the specific criteria for insanity as set forth in M’Naghten. It is clear, however, that his mental illness was the causative factor in the shooting death of his father, and were it not for his mental illness that has chronically impaired his judgment, this crime would not have occurred.”
— Gary M. Glass, M.D.
Hallucinations, delusions, distortions and illusions are classic symptoms of psychiatric drug intoxication. This combination of symptoms only happens through medication or severe head trauma. It never happens organically. Such “impaired judgment” — not being able to discern right from wrong is the very basis of ‘Innocence by Reason of Insanity’ as explicitly spelled-out by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the reports we received from District Attorney Jason Legg, the doctor questioned whether Kurt was even fully conscious during the murder of his father. He furthermore reported that the crime was completely without malice, without intent, without motive, and without criminal guilt. Nevertheless, Kurt was charged as if he held full responsibility, and was given the maximum sentence for third degree murder. All of this was done willfully, methodologically, and it was openly discussed as if it were ethical.
Kurt has gained a paralegal degree whilst incarcerated, and has launched the SAVE campaign (Stop Antidepressant Violence from Escalating) in the hope of saving other children from his fate.
Kurt has gained a paralegal degree whilst incarcerated, and launched the SAVE campaign in the hope of saving other people from his fate. When he is released from prison, he intends to help other victims of S.S.R.I. drugs. He needs to raise a bare minimum of $7,500 in order for him to retain a lawyer willing to begin the process. Kurt’s official web site is at: KurtDanysh.com.
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New test may bring relief to those convicted — (Idaho Observer)
January 2009
FRACKVILLE, PA—New evidence exists in the case of Kurt Dariysh, a Pennnsylvania man who, at the age of eighteen, killed his father in Brooklyn Township, PA (The Idaho Observer, Nov. 2005).
In an appeal filed October 11, 2008, Danysh, who is being represented by Arthur S. Cohen, Esq., of Hollidaysburg, presents new DNA evidence establishing him as a poor metabolizer of Prozac. DNA testing reveals that Danysh is genetically predisposed to suffering a violent reaction to the drug.
Due to a deficiency in the liver enzyme CYP2D6, Danysh is unable to metabolize the active ingredient in Prozac, allowing it to build up in his system.
According to Genelex Corporation, the first laboratory to offer CYP2D6 testing in the U.S., poor metabolizers are at an increased risk of suffering drug-induced side effects from Prozac, which include aggression and violence.
Case history
In 1996, Kurt Danysh shot his father 13 days after being prescribed Prozac. Danysh freely confessed to the shooting, but could offer no reason for his actions. In his confession to the police, Danysh stated, “This might sound weird, but it felt like something else, like I had no control over what I was doing, like I was left there just holding a gun. It felt like someone else shot him.”
Witness testimony confirmed a drastic and violent change in Danysh’s behavior after being prescribed Prozac. In the week preceding the killing, Danysh fought with a friend, slapped his girlfriend, and intentionally crashed his truck into a stone wall.
When contacted by investigators in 1996, Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac, insisted the drug would not cause aggressive behavior. Danysh was subsequently convicted of murdering his father and sentenced to 22.5 to 60 years in prison.
Kurt is not alone
Since 2000, criminal defendants in multiple jurisdictions have been acquitted of violent crimes, including homicide, due to the effects of antidepressants.
In 2005, Eli Lilly issued a medication guide for Prozac, which cautions that patients taking the drug should be closely monitored for “acting aggressive, being angry or violent, thoughts about suicide or dying and acting on dangerous impulses.”
A new trial for Danysh
In his appeal, Danysh argues that his after-discovered evidence—evidence unavailable at the time of the trial—supports his innocence of the charge of third-degree murder and establishes that he was involuntarily intoxicated from the effects of Prozac when he killed his father.
The Pennsylvania Superior Court has held that a defendant is involuntarily intoxicated where unexpected intoxication results from a medically-prescribed drug and/or where a defendant suffers from an unknown physiological condition that renders him abnormally susceptible to a legal intoxicant. When successfully presented, involuntary intoxication negates culpability and results in acquittal.
In addition to requesting a new trial, Danysh has called for the recusal of trial judge Kenneth Seamans. Danysh alleges that Seamans committed legal and factual errors when he denied Danysh’s 2003 appeal.
Note: Since 2000, there have been dozens of acquittals and reversals in cases where murders were accomplished or attempted by people under the influence of state-ordered or doctor prescribed anti-depressant drugs such as Prozac, Paxil, Adderall, Zoloft, Haldol and Wellbutrin. However, hundreds more, many of them minors at the time, have been tried, convicted and sentenced as adults and are currently serving long prison sentences for violent crimes committed under the influence of court-ordered or doctor-prescribed “anti-depressants.” Danysh, who is now 31, founded the SAVE project in 2004. From a Pennsylvania prison, he has been working tirelessly to alert the public to the dangers of anti-depressant drugs and to free those imprisoned for crimes committed while under the involuntarily intoxicated influence of state-ordered and/or doctor-prescribed mind-altering drugs.
To find out more about the travesty of ruining young minds with dangerous prescription drugs then ruining their lives with prison sentences, go to www.thesaveproject.org. Please also consider writing Danysh: Kurt Danysh DL-4879, 1111 Altamont, Blvd, Frackville, PA 17931.
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Judge dismisses murderer’s lawsuit claiming Prozac prompted him to murder his father — (The Patriot-News)
By
September 25, 2011 at 12:04 AM, updated September 25, 2011 at 12:26 AM
Kurt Danysh won’t get a chance to argue in federal court that the anti-depressant drug Prozac prompted him to murder his father 15 years ago. A simple matter of timing has short-circuited a lawsuit the Susquehanna County convict lodged in U.S. Middle District Court against one of the world’s largest drug manufacturers.
Danysh waited too long to file his product liability case against Prozac’s maker, Eli Lilly & Co., Judge John E. Jones III ruled in ordering dismissal of the complaint.
Danysh, 33, is serving a 22½-to-60-year sentence at the state prison at Frackville. He pleaded guilty to third-degree murder a year after his father’s slaying. Numerous appeals of his conviction have failed.
In filing suit against Eli Lilly a year ago, Danysh repeated a claim he has made since he was arrested for slaying his dad with a stolen gun in 1996 — that he was under the influence of Prozac and out of control when he pulled the trigger.
Eli Lilly officials have denied any links between Prozac and homicidal behavior. They have insisted that the drug, which was introduced in the U.S. in 1987, reduces violent tendencies.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration requires that Prozac’s labeling include a warning that anti-depressant drugs can cause suicidal thoughts in some children, teens and young adults.
Danysh was 18 when he shot his father. He claimed that he had started taking Prozac by prescription shortly before the killing.
His suit originally was filed against Eli Lilly in Dauphin County Court, but the drug maker, which is based in Indiana, had it transferred it to federal court.
In voiding Danysh’s complaint, Jones agreed with federal Magistrate Judge Mildred E. Methvin, who evaluated the case, that the suit was filed outside the two-year statute of limitations allowed in Pennsylvania for lodging such cases.
Eli Lilly had urged dismissal on those grounds, noting that Danysh has been making his allegations regarding Prozac since 1996. The drug maker argued that the statute of limitations began running at that time.
Danysh, who represented himself in the case, argued in vain that the time limit should not have begun ticking until 2008. That was when he received DNA test results showing he has a liver enzyme deficiency that leaves him at risk of “violent Prozac-induced behavior,” he said.
Jones concluded that Danysh’s attempt to make 2008 the starting point for the statute “is contrary to the position taken by Danysh throughout his criminal case that Prozac caused him to shoot his father.”
When Danysh filed his suit, Roseann B. Termini, an adjunct professor and food and drug law expert at Widener Law School, cited it as being among a handful of court cases over claims that anti-depressants prompted someone to kill.
Such cases are difficult to prove because there is little, if any means to link the use of those drugs to violent behavior in a specific person, she said.
One such case was fought out in state court in Kentucky over a mass killing by a Prozac user in September 1989.
Joseph T. Wesbecker, a Prozac user who was on disability for mental illness, fatally shot eight people at a Louisville printing company where he had worked, then killed himself.
Survivors of the shooting sued Eli Lilly, but a jury ruled in favor of the firm. Years later it was learned that the company and plaintiffs reached a confidential settlement before the trial ended.