Driggs, ID - The recent sentencing of Jeremy Best to multiple life sentences brought a powerful end to a dramatic Idaho familicide case that featured multiple mental health opinions. Best was 50 years old when he was arrested on December 2, 2023 and charged with the murder of his pregnant wife, Kali Best; the couple’s one month old son, Zeke; and a family dog, Sister. Days before the arrest in the evening of November 30, Best shot and killed Kali in their home and then, absconded with baby Zeke and their dog.
After police discovered his wife, an ensuing dragnet, determined to save Zeke, attempted to track Best amidst heavy snowfall. Best, traveling in an SUV on rural passageways, ultimately ran off a road and into a ditch in Bonneville County. On December 2, a passerby discovered Best, naked, bloodied, and in a sleeping bag. Responding police then made the grisly discovery of Zeke and the dog in the back seat of the disabled SUV. Their throats had been slit.
From the start, questions were raised about Mr. Best’s mental state. Earlier on the day of the offenses, he was taken to a hospital after disrobing and walking into a convenience store, naked. Later evaluated by psychiatric staff, Best was composed and rational, without suicidal or homicidal threat, and refused any treatment. His wife Kali came to the hospital and took him home, and the two related appropriately. When Best was captured, and soon afterward, his statements were irrational. Moreover, he was described as irrational by friends who had been speaking to him on the day he killed Kali.
After an assessment found Best competent to stand trial, Mr. Best ultimately pleaded guilty to the offenses, moving the case to a sentencing phase. A court-ordered evaluation and then, three mental health experts for the defense assigned Mr. Best a major psychiatric diagnosis to attempt to mitigate sentencing. The experts also diminished Mr. Best’s risk based on his having targeted family, his age, and recognition of the risk of illness.
Bonneville and Teton County prosecutors then retained The Forensic Panel to consult to them on the significance of psychiatric, psychosocial, and risk issues attendant to Best. The Forensic Panel has been involved in several of the significant cases in Idaho in recent years, most notably the Vallow-Daybell familicide in Freemont County, the death penalty proceedings of Jonathan Renfro in Cour D’Alene, and the Ruben Diaz competency and criminal responsibility proceedings in Boise. In those cases, The Forensic Panel contributed to resolving controversies about religious zealotry vs. mental illness vs. criminal deviance, discerning the behavioral effects of methamphetamine, neuropsychological testing and neuroradiology assessment, and identifying the contributing role of schizophrenia to a violent crime, respectively.
Here, The Forensic Panel’s Chairman, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, MD, engaged the opinions of the court appointed psychologist and the three defense-retained examiners. Along with reviewing the entire available file, Dr. Welner interviewed a number of collateral witnesses who were acquainted with the Best couple and had contact with Jeremy Best around the time of the killings. When Dr. Welner then arranged to interview Mr. Best in a videotaped setting, Mr. Best and his defense team elected not to participate and expose Mr. Best’s claims to further study, resulting in the withdrawal of all their three defense-retained experts by Idaho law.
Dr. Welner then presented the report of his findings on risk, psychosocial mitigation, and diagnosis. He did not present a definitive opinion on diagnosis because of the limits of no in-person interview. However, the Welner report embedded Mr. Best’s drug use into a timeline that coincided with his developing irrational behavior. Moreover, the history of Mr. Best’s historical claims of mental illness were not supported by his functional history as someone who did not seek treatment for many years, including the many years of his marriage. These points had been altogether overlooked by defense experts and the court-appointed psychologist. Mr. Best’s history of non-compliance and rejection of psychiatric care was an important aspect of his history and what one could anticipate with his return to the community, especially in the absence of his devoted support system and anything that could anchor him to sobriety. Prosecutors Bailey Smith, Randy Neal and Rachel Smith used this analysis to understand the salient and evidence-based points in their questioning of witnesses and to underscore the proper understanding of changes in his behavior at sentencing proceedings.
At sentencing, the contribution of Mr. Best’s elective use of drugs to changes in his mental state rightly drew attention. The court appointed psychologist ultimately conceded that Mr. Best would be a higher risk of relapse, moving off the more optimistic projections of the court appointed expert’s original report.
Prosecutors elicited testimony of a granular reconstruction of the sequence of events of the killing and its aftermath. The testimony acquainted the court with Mr. Best’s wounding his wife and then, finishing her off to prevent her from calling police as she begged his restraint. With two subsequent days to deliberate the fate of his one-year-old, no efforts to account for the baby’s welfare during the two days of escape, and the cutting of the baby’s throat despite no threat to himself, the court found these aggravating qualities to eclipse mitigation arguments. The Court sentenced Mr. Best to three life terms.
Reacting to the sentencing and its teaching points, Dr. Welner observed, “With Best, The Forensic Panel has now had multiple cases in which marijuana was implicated as a contributing factor or singularly responsible for homicidal violence. Marijuana may be safe for some, but it is not safe for all, especially in increasing quantities and under times of high stress and poor coping. Moreover, marijuana is not a holistic remedy any more than alcohol is – it is simply another psychotropic drug. In the Best case, marijuana was part of the overall substance problem, but ignoring its significance only enables psychiatric “diagnosis” to be used as a distraction.”
Dr. Welner, reflecting on over two decades of experience in examining familicide cases of various explanations and motivations, noted, “The Best proceedings demonstrated how both sides properly recognized in time that whitewashing the role of drug use and explaining it away with a selectively informed psychiatric diagnosis is not forensic science. Such diversions may make familicide less disturbing to a jury, but justice is not about embracing an explanation because we feel better when we hear it. Justice is served when diagnosis-driven cases are evidenced as such and as tragedies that offenders have no choice over. On the other hand, drug use is a life choice and sadly, so are the well-studied and demonstrated consequences that sometimes go along with drug use, including familicide that one cannot undo and then bring back its murdered victims.”
