Cora Vides — the 21-year-old convicted of attempted murder in the 2021 Valentine’s Day stabbing of her Laguna Blanca classmate and friend Georgia Avery — has been ordered to serve a six-month minimum sentence in a state psychiatric facility after a Santa Barbara jury found her to be legally insane at the time of the attack.
“It is clear that Georgia Avery … is loved by so many,” said Judge Von Deroian, alluding to the continuously packed — and sometimes vocal — courtroom over the nearly two-month trial. “But I cannot help but be struck by the misinformation or misunderstanding of this situation.”
After hearing victim impact statements from Avery’s immediate family members, Von Deroian sifted through 104 letters from other family and friends close to the victim, many of them pleading with the judge to reconsider things she legally could not.
“I cannot change the law,” she said, and the court proceedings have shown that Vides’s “sanity has not been restored.”
As such, at the recommendation of the Department of State Hospitals and the court, Vides will serve an initial sentence of 180 days in a “locked forensic setting.” Vides will then be able to petition the hospital to review her sanity. The psychiatric doctors may require more time to treat Vides effectively, and can do so for life.
If instead they find her mental health to be adequate, Vides is entitled to a court hearing, during which the court must find Vides’s sanity to be fully restored to grant her release. Otherwise, she must serve another year in the psychiatric facility before petitioning again.
