Seven years ago Jesse James Warren — wearing camouflage and armed with two guns — walked into the Penske Truck Rental Store where he had worked and opened fire, killing four men, police said.
But Warren will never go to trial unless his mental health makes an unexpected improvement.
On Tuesday, Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark agreed to "dead docket" the pending death penalty case against Warren — in effect setting it aside indefinitely — after state experts told her that he was too delusional to stand trial and his mental health was unlikely to ever improve enough to face a jury.
Still, Staley ordered a report on Warren’s progress every 12 months should his mental health improve considerably. In the meantime, he will remain committed to the state’s care at one of Georgia’s regional hospitals where he is not a danger .
Clark's decision came 20 months after the Georgia Supreme Court ruled the state could not force Warren to take anti-psychotic drugs to make him sane enough to stand trial for murder.
Warren was charged murdering a customer and three former co-workers in the Jan. 12, 2010 shooting at truck rental store on Barrett Lakes Boulevard near Kennesaw. A fifth man was critically wounded.
Warren’s delusions had been diagnosed even before he lost his job at Penske. The company sent Warren to be psychologically analyzed after he told a co-worker in 2009 that “Penske was stealing money from him, that 500 lawyers would go to jail for computer hacking and that Penske was involved in computer hacking,” according to a report filed in the case.
According to one report, Warren told a psychiatrist that churches and religions were trying to kill him. He had "grandiose delusions that he is the son of God, vague hallucinations of the Holy Spirit speaking to him and beliefs that thoughts were inserted into his mind and that his thoughts were being broadcast," the report said.
He claimed the military paid him $500 million to invest in wifi but Penske stole some of his money. He told police and doctors after the shooting that he was an emperor.
State doctors said in court Tuesday Warren still suffers delusions and they are reluctant to give him certain medications because of the physical dangers they posed because of his age — he is 67 — and his other physical ailments. But he is not dangerous unless his delusions are challenged as they would be during a trial, they said.
Warren was charged with murdering Penske customer Jaider Felipe Marulanda and Penske employees Van Springer, Roberto Gonzalez and Zachariah Werner. He was also charged with shooting and wounding Joshua Holbrook, Gonzalez’s brother-in-law, who continues to need medical care.
On Tuesday, Chief assistant district attorney Jesse Evans read a statement from Holbrook because he was in the hospital and unable to attend the hearing.
“Since the shooting there have been lots of ups and downs,” Holbrook wrote in an email that Evans read in Cobb County Superior Court. “It has been a long road of recovery, which seems to never end, but I am thankful that I am still here.”
Holbrook wrote that Warren had caused “havoc and ripped fathers, brothers, uncles and grandfathers from their families but … I have refused to let these men’s memories go away. I tell their stories every chance I get.”
Holbrook said he had forgiven Warren but there are still times “when I think how could I ever forgive someone who could do something like that?”
But Holbrook wrote he doesn’t wonder what led Warren to pick up a gun that day because he doesn’t want to give the shooter the “satisfaction of knowing the pain and hell” he has caused.
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