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A defense attorney for Brian David Mitchell on Monday said he doesn't dispute the "horrifyingly disturbing" facts of Elizabeth Smart's ordeal.
But Parker Douglas disagreed with prosecutors on what drove Mitchell's behavior. He claims it was insanity.
"The crazy person who comes in the middle of the night is exactly who we were told as children," Douglas said in his opening statement. "The crazy person is horrifying, unpredictable and insane."
Felice Viti, an assistant U.S. attorney who gave his opening statement last week, said Mitchell knew what he was doing, as shown in his calculated answers when questioned by FBI agents after his arrest.
Douglas said Mitchell, 57, showed early signs of psychosis as a teenager. He said Mitchell's grandfather was civilly committed to Utah State Hospital with paranoid schizophrenia and his father, while never diagnosed with a mental illness, wrote a 900-page manuscript as spokesman for the infinite god or goddess.
Mitchell was raised in a mainstream Mormon household but began identifying with his father's beliefs, Douglas said. After a divorce in 1976, Mitchell lived in a Hari Krishna commune in West Virginia but moved when he was pressured to convert.
"This is part of pattern we see, where Brian Mitchell is searching for a deep connection … and then makes a quick action or reaction when those beliefs are challenged," Douglas said.
His client also sampled Protestantism, Christian Science and Buddhism, then returned to Utah and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he was 27, according to Douglas.
By 2000, Douglas said, Mitchell was claiming revelations regularly, including one to restore plural marriage. A few years later, he recorded his theological system in the Book of Imannuel David Isaiah.
Mitchell went to Smart's home in June of 2002 believing that if she were to be his wife, his way to do so would be opened by the Lord, Douglas said.
"Your task is not only to determine what, but why it happened," he told jurors. "Why it happened is tied up with a tough question: What was Brian Mitchell's state of mind when it was happening?"