After Nan Yang, a former De Anza college student, was found guilty of second degree murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon threatening to commit a crime resulting in death or great bodily injury, and battery in 2006, Yang pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. She was sentenced to 26 years to life in state prison.

According to a leagle.com report, on Jan. 14, she tried to appeal the verdict. Yang asserted that the trial court made an error by improperly denying her motion to sever, giving confusing self-defense instructions to the jury, and excluding proposed defense evidence.

Yang also argued in regard to the sanity phase of her trial. The court erred by instructing the jury to not consider her borderline personality disorder as proof that she was legally insane at the time of the murder, and excluding proposed defense evidence.

According to the report, the court did not err in any of these areas and refused the appeal.

The appeal is related to two different incidents against two different victims. Tetsuya Ogi, another former De Anza student, and Birk McCandless who was the second victim, McCandless was a 57-year-old real estate developer and the founder of Birk’s Restaurant.

Ogi was a former boyfriend of Yang. The pair dated for less than a year when Ogi decided he wanted to break up with Yang. After the break up, Yang was said to have assaulted Ogi with a knife according to court documents. Yang testified that she was trying to commit suicide in front of Ogi.

After the break up with Ogi, Yang met McCandless while working as a waitress. The two dated on and off for approximately a year. After multiple suicide attempts and assaults from both parties, the romance turned into a fatal attraction.

Yang drove to McCandless’ Saratoga home on March 14, 2005 and after finding another woman with McCandless, broke into his home and tried to commit suicide in front of McCandless. From the testimony of Yang, the defendant only stabbed McCandless because he was suffocating her. Yang was found by the police on the third-story balcony of McCandless’ home stabbing herself multiple times in the torso, neck and arms. When the police approached her, she threatened to jump. Police were able to get Yang off of the balcony and took her to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center for treatment and then later arrested her.

Yang’s appeal was denied because a personality disorder does not qualify as a mental disease or defect for the purpose of an insanity defense. In the appeal, Yang argued the court should have not tried both Ogi’s and McCandless’ cases together because one case was weaker than the other.

The court denied that and stated that both cases were similar in circumstances enough to be tried together. Evidence from either case did not demonstrate that one of the offenses was significantly more likely to inflame the jury against the defendant than the other.

In the instance of giving confusing self-defense instructions to the jury, the court found they were not in error because they instructed the jury to dismiss this argument because it did not fit the criteria of the case and presumed the jurors followed orders. Yang also argued that she was acting in self-defense. The court concluded it was not lawful self-defense because she broke into McCandless’ home.

When it comes to excluding proposed defense evidence, the court concluded that either the evidence of McCandless’ diary entries about the relationship was weak evidence so they did not appear in court. Also, they dismissed Yang’s father’s opinion on her mental health state at the time. The court concluded this dismissal of evidence did not add to cumulative prejudice in the case.

There was also the argument that the court made an error by not admitting a chart evidence of dual diagnosis with her borderline personality disorder. The court dismissed this argument because even though the chart was not presented, the contents of the chart were given to the jury.

The information used in this article was gathered from a leagle.com report. Leagle.com documents are not used in official reports.