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the death penalty if prosecutors chose to pursue it. The second-degree murder charge carries a mandatory punishment of life in prison.
• Johnson's widow and daughters declined comment after the hearing.
• To support Ericsson's plea, Bratland submitted an affidavit from psychiatrist Robert Giebink that said Ericsson has a long history of anxiety problems and suffers from "severe and recurrent depression that is, for the most part, treatment resistant."
• Giebink said he tried a number of different antidepressants, mood stabilizers and sleep medications on

Ericsson, but he often did not tolerate medicine well. Ericsson was significantly depressed and had suicidal thoughts when he came into Giebink's office in January, the doctor said.
• "Thinking was irrational. Judgment was impaired," Giebink wrote. "He made the comment that he wished each night that he would not wake up in the morning."
• Giebink added that Ericsson, at the time, was not making threats to anyone else.
• A defendant can be sentenced to the state penitentiary under South Dakota's "guilty but mentally ill" law. Treatment for the mental illness can be given in prison, or the inmate can be transferred to other facilities under the jurisdiction of the Department of Social Services for treatment and then returned to the penitentiary to complete his or her sentence.
• Ericsson's brother, Madison resident Dick Ericsson, said in an affidavit filed shortly after the shooting that his brother suffers from depression and alcoholism and that the two had last talked about six months earlier.
• Dick Ericsson said his brother was a sports manager at Madison High years ago

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