Many court-watchers may find Alvaro Castillo’s mother pathetic and compelling. I’m afraid that this former juror has a slightly different reaction – a very complex response.

The history of her marriage is tragic, no doubt about it. Vicky Castillo said that at one time she returned to her family in Spain and begged them to take her in, but they rejected her. This is particularly ironic and sad, since most abused wives don’t have the courage to take the kids and return to their families. Many probably have no family to which to turn, of course. But in the case of Mrs. Castillo, she had a family, and she managed to get tickets and to fly to Spain. This could not have been an easy thing to accomplish.

Mrs. Castillo also comes across as a very nice, gentle person. Some jurors may like her.

Mrs. Castillo appears to have some difficulty speaking and understanding English. But this is where I begin to question her “appearance.” As a linguist, I find her to be choosing her words extremely carefully. She clearly does understand the nuances of the English language. The prosecutor’s ongoing cross-examination is demonstrating this to me. Mrs. Castillo several times revised her written statements to authorities. She claims she had to make the changes because someone else wrote them down, and, while she signed the pages after her words were transcribed, she later realized the statement did not reflect the truth.

In addition, at least once in her direct testimony she referred to what her daughter had said on the stand (she must have been watching on TV).

So, it seems to me that Mrs. Castillo understands this case is all about a quibble over the meaning of the words “knew right from wrong.”

I also feel her testimony is “all about her,” instead of about her son. Admittedly, the defense attorney asked her more questions about her marriage than about her son’s relationship with his father. I could not tell whether this was strategic or whether the mother is simply narcissistic. Still, a truly loving mother would be obsessing over her son’s plight not her own in such a moment, it seems to me.

Most objectionable to me is the mother’s statement that she told her son to stand up to his father and protect her and his sister. She called her son a coward in front of his sister. How emasculating, how terribly twisted. Think about this. The mother claims to have protected her son from his father’s belt when he was young. He had grown up in fear and isolation, totally dominated by his father. Then her son grows up, joins the National Guard and “flunks” basic training, and returns home, where his mother abjures him to save her from herself, essentially.

Finally, I find her claims to ignorance of her son’s obsession with Columbine entirely incredible.

Sidebar: I don’t know what to make of this fact. Apparently the high school where Alvaro Castillo sprayed bullets into the student body, Orange High School, was not only his alma mater, but also his autistic sister was a student there and presumably in attendance that day.

But I am not a psychologist or an expert in battered-woman syndrome. I’m just a fiction writer. I am also a person who knows that some people don’t know when they are skirting the truth on the witness stand, and I’m inclined to believe that every witness in a criminal trial does so.

I will listen carefully to the upcoming testimony of the expert forensic psychiatrists. (I wonder whether they made an assessment of Mrs. Castillo.)

TruTV/CNN’s “Thirteenth Juror” question today seems to indicate that most court-watchers are not buying the mother’s story.

My question to the jury in the courtroom is: Can you live with yourself if you send this troubled, tortured, and manipulated young man to prison for a life? He needs to be institutionalized, but not in a prison.