Post Mortem | The Rx Defense

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1:10Anne-Marie Green:Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green. And today we are discussing the case of 17-year-old Connor Hilton, who shot two of his friends, Ethan Reilly and Benjamin Bleak, after they arrived at his home in Texas for a scheduled hangout on December 23, 2023. Ben miraculously survived. But when Ethan died in the hospital, Connor was charged with murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. And his defense that he was on a prescription acne medication called Accutane that completely altered his thoughts and behavior. So joining me today to talk about this fascinating case is CBS News correspondent Tracy Smith.

1:56Anne-Marie Green:Tracy, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Edmarie. Thanks for having me. I want to remind the listeners, if you haven't listened to this 48 Hours episode, the audio version, head on over to your podcast feed. You can find the full audio version just below this episode in the feed. Go take a listen and then come on back for this conversation. All right, Tracy, let us get into this very unique defense strategy. Connor's defense team found an expert in Isot Retinoid, which is the generic version of Accutane. And through this expert, Conor's defense team argued that Conor was driven to kill due to the side effects of Accutane, which the expert says caused Conor to have a recurrent homicidal ideation that he simply wasn't able to control.

2:45Anne-Marie Green:Now, I know that Accutane comes with side effects and sometimes those side effects can be, you know, quite powerful. But I'd never heard of anyone being driven to kill because of it.

2:56Tracy Smith:Yeah, I hadn't heard of it either. If you look at the label, the label does warn of risk of depression, psychosis, suicide, and aggressive or violent behaviors. And there have been other homicide cases that people have tried to use Accutane as a defense, but none of those have been successful. As a mom, I know kids who've been on Accutane, and it's a wonder drug for a lot of teenagers who struggle with acne. and a lot of people are on this drug and don't suffer any severe adverse reactions. And we did reach out to J.G. Pharma about this case and they did not respond to our request for comment.

3:36Tracy Smith:They are the folks who distribute the Accutane that Connor Hilton was on at the time of the shooting.

3:42Anne-Marie Green:So then let's talk about the science that the defenses expert presented. What do we know about it?

3:48Tracy Smith:The defenses expert is Dr. Doug Bremner and he's a professor of psychiatry and radiology at Emory University School of Medicine. And Dr. Bremner says he's done extensive research on the drug ISAT retinoin, which is the generic version of Accutane. He showed these brain scans where he says you can see the difference between the brain without ISAT retinoin and then the brain when someone is on ISAT retinoin. The scans show that there's less activity in part of the brain that regulates emotions when a person is on ISAT retinoin. And according to Dr. Bremner, He believes that in Conner's case, he was suffering from a medication psychotic disorder at the time of the shooting.

4:29Tracy Smith:And it's important to note that Conner told Dr. Bremner that on the day of the shooting, he took double the prescribed dose of his acne medication.

4:39Anne-Marie Green:Okay, so here's the thing, though. He had been taking this medication for a while. You spoke to his parents and you asked them whether or not they had seen any red flags in terms of his behavior. They didn't see any. Did anyone else see red flags?

4:52Tracy Smith:Yeah, they said they didn't. But the police spoke to his friends. I spoke to Ben. And his friends said that that gun was out at the house all the time. It was not locked up where it was supposed to be. And he also said concerning things. There's one story that Detective McCandless and also Ben's mom, Shannon, told me that a week before the shooting, the 15-year-old who was hiding in the bathroom on the night of the shooting. A week before the shooting, Connor had invited all of his friends over to watch a movie, and the kids didn't want to watch a movie. And this 15-year-old was sitting with Connor, and Connor turned to him, and according to the 15-year-old, Connor said, have you ever thought about killing one of your friends?

5:38Tracy Smith:There are also social media posts that Connor had made that showed a fascination with murder. And in fact, his school received two anonymous reports from the same person about eight months before the shooting about these social media posts about murder. And they called in Connor's mother. They talked to Connor. They investigated. And they determined that there was no threat. We dug into the timeline a little bit just to try to figure out if this fascination with murder happened after Connor went on Accutane. And he did struggle with anxiety prior to going on Accutane. He didn't want to go to school.

6:20Tracy Smith:But Connor said this fascination with murder happened after he was on Accutane. Now, does that mean that there's a cause and effect here? The prosecution says absolutely not. Acne medication has nothing to do with this horrific act that Connor committed.

6:37Anne-Marie Green:You know, Tracy, as I was watching the hour, that's kind of like one of the things that I was going back and forth with. Right. I know that there can be experts to argue almost anything. But I believe this expert that, you know, perhaps Accutane could have had these dire side effects. What I wasn't sure of was whether or not that could be a defense. And the prosecution sort of basically argued that, too. In fact, they argued against the science in court. The prosecution introduced a more recent study that found that I saw retinoid, generic Accutane, that those users actually do not have increased risk of suicide or psychiatric conditions.

7:17Anne-Marie Green:And then the lead prosecutor told you that this case is simple. What she believes is that it's not a side effect from medication, that some people are just evil. You sat down with Connor for an interview. I'm curious. I mean, how did he come across to you?

7:34Tracy Smith:You know, we talked to him right before he took the plea. At that point, when we spoke to him, he thought he was going to trial. So he, at the advice of his attorneys, didn't talk a lot about what happened that night. But I feel like we really did get a sense of who he was. And one of the things that stuck out to me was he was almost unnervingly polite. He would say, yes, ma 'am, and no, ma 'am. At one point, he actually kind of stopped the interview to ask if I was feeling okay. I actually have a clip of that. I had asked him about his friends who he shot. And this is what he said. Can you tell me anything about your friends, about Ethan and Ben?

8:25Tracy Smith:I'm sorry.

8:33Tracy Smith:All I'm gonna say is that they were very good friends to me. That's all I'm gonna say. And you didn't have any disagreements with them? No. I never hated them. I never hated them. There was no argument?

8:48Anne-Marie Green:No, no, ma 'am.

8:56Tracy Smith:How do you explain what happened? I don't know. I mean, I just need a water break. Of course. Just a water break. Of course.

9:14Tracy Smith:I'm sorry. It's okay.

9:19Anne-Marie Green:Are you okay? Am I not? like freaking out or anything?

9:22Tracy Smith:No, of course not. And it's understandable why you would get emotional. I'm just worried about you. Like, are you okay? I'm fine.

9:33Anne-Marie Green:He's worried about you.

9:34Tracy Smith:Yeah, I'm just worried about you. Like, I don't know about you, Anne-Marie, but I've never had someone say that to me in an interview before.

9:41Anne-Marie Green:Absolutely not. Clearly, you're asking him a very uncomfortable question, a question that he's struggling to answer. And so I'm trying to figure out if that response is, you know, kind of authentic interest in what's going on with you or if it is a kind of a stalling tactic. But it reminds me a little bit of him in the police cruiser when he asks, like, the officer about how his Christmas is going. Yeah.

10:09Tracy Smith:Are you having a good Christmas? I mean, every time I see that, I gasp. It's just, it's so unusual. And the detective said when they brought him down to the station right after that, it was the same sort of thing, this yes, sir, no, sir, this remarkable politeness.

10:38Anne-Marie Green:Welcome back. Let's talk about the victims. After entering Connor's home, police find 18-year-old Ethan Riley and 19-year-old Benjamin Bleak. They're lying on the floor. Each of them have gunshot wounds to the head, both miraculously still alive when first responders arrive at the scene. But Ethan later dies in the hospital. It is Christmas Eve.

11:03Tracy Smith:Yeah, I mean, the timing of this is just heartbreaking. Connor was released on bond for the first time the same day that Ethan died. So it's hard to fathom what's going on here at Christmastime with these families. You have one family who has their son at home, the son who shot these two boys, and those two boys' families are in the hospital. I want to talk about Ethan just a little bit. His parents described him as handsome, athletic, bold, good-hearted. They said he could carry a conversation with anyone. And it was interesting. It struck me that both his father and Ben, in describing him, used the word light.

11:43Tracy Smith:His dad said in court that he was full of love and light. And Ben, when he was talking about Ethan to me, he said that this is the kind of guy who always looked at things in a positive light, that he was just this outstanding guy.

11:59Anne-Marie Green:And we learn, actually, this is sort of like almost the highlight in the hour, is that Ben survives. And the way he's revealed as he sort of walks around the corner, it was shocking and thrilling. And I mean, if you've got to have like something kind of positive to hang on to, there he was.

12:21Tracy Smith:Yeah. I mean, walking miracle, right? Yeah. And just, I feel so lucky to be able to sit with Ben and his mom and to see his remarkable recovery and also his sense of humor, as I'm sure you got watching this hour. He has this astonishing sense of humor. A quick story that his mom shared with me. When Ben couldn't talk, she had his friends put together a playlist of his favorite songs. And she would listen to that when she was with Ben. and a song from Toto, you know, I guess it rains down in Africa, Toto comes on and Shannon, his mom just bursts out laughing like this is ridiculous. And she looks over at Ben and he has a smile on his face and she just knows like my son is back.

13:04Tracy Smith:Like that sense of humor is intact. You know, he has no memory of what happened that night. But Ben is very crystal clear about why it happened. And he says it has nothing to do with the acne medication.

13:20Anne-Marie Green:In fact, he called it he called the defense horse. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's yeah. He doesn't mince words. It's a little bit of his humor to there. You know, I wonder if it's a blessing that she that he actually can't remember the details of that night. I wonder if it's actually helped him in terms of his recovery. Was Ben close to Connor?

13:38Tracy Smith:Ben wasn't super close to Connor, but he was friends with Connor through Ethan because Ben was super close to Ethan. And Connor's house was kind of the hangout house. So they would hang out as a group at Connor's house. Ben was a little bit older than the other guys. He was already taking college classes. And that's another part of this tragedy is that he was so independent, you know, really starting his life. And his mom said it was like having a baby again, that she just had to redo everything with him. He had to learn to walk, talk, swallow again. just starting it all over.

14:12Anne-Marie Green:So, you know, we learn about the defense that's coming, right? This side effect of this very common medication. But then two weeks before Connor Hilton is set to stand trial, he ends up taking a plea deal. Prosecutors offered him 50 years in prison if he pleaded guilty to murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because when I heard 50 years, I actually thought that didn't seem like much of a negotiation. That's, you know, it's a pretty hefty sentence. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been life. Here's the thing.

14:46Tracy Smith:When we were talking with Connor, the attorneys had gotten, had just gotten the plea deal. And so as we're, as I was leaving, they went into a conference room to talk about this plea deal. And yeah, it's a little surprising. In Texas, a defendant gets to choose if they want the jury to sentence them. And the sentencing guidelines for murder are pretty broad. They're between five and 99 years or life. So you figure if he rolled the dice and he came off as this polite, sympathetic kid, maybe he could have gotten a lighter sentence. So in this plea deal, he's eligible for parole in 25 years. If he would have rolled the dice and gotten a life sentence, he would have been eligible for parole in 30 years.