A Ramsey County jury has ordered Andre Duprey to pay $17 million to the family of 28-year-old St. Paul resident Phanny Phay, who was killed in 2017. The civil verdict revisits a case that previously ended with a judge finding Duprey not criminally responsible because of mental illness. For Phay’s family, the award is a formal, public acknowledgment of the loss they have carried for years.
The jury's award broke down as $9 million for loss of guidance, advice, comfort and companionship; $5 million for pain and suffering before death; and $3 million for future losses, totaling $17 million, according to the Pioneer Press. The wrongful-death suit was filed in 2024 by Phay's father, Timothy Phay, and was tried in Ramsey County District Court. Attorneys for the family told jurors that the damages reflected both the brutality of the attack and the future that Phay was in the process of building.
Case Background
Phay was found in her Highland Park apartment in November 2017 with catastrophic head injuries, a shotgun on the bed and numerous stab wounds. Officers who responded to the scene reported that Duprey was chanting that she was a "demon" and was subdued by police. In 2018, after psychiatric evaluations concluded that Duprey suffered from bipolar disorder with psychotic features, a Ramsey County judge found him not guilty by reason of mental illness and ordered him committed to the state forensic mental-health system, as reported by the Star Tribune. Those criminal findings set the stage for a civil trial that focused on responsibility and harm rather than prison time.
Family Reaction
Phay’s attorneys, Paul Applebaum and Megan Curtis of St. Paul, praised the verdict. Curtis called it "a massive verdict, and it reflects the pain that was felt by this family and more importantly the person that Phanny was," according to the Pioneer Press. The family pursued the lawsuit to seek accountability and financial damages after the criminal case resulted in psychiatric commitment instead of a prison sentence. Friends and relatives remember Phay as a high-achieving University of Minnesota graduate who planned to become a pediatrician.
Legal Context
A verdict of not guilty by reason of mental illness removes the possibility of criminal punishment but typically leads to civil-commitment proceedings, not immediate freedom. That kind of verdict does not block families from filing civil wrongful-death suits. Civil juries work under a different standard of proof than criminal courts, which is why civil outcomes can diverge sharply from criminal results. For more background on how insanity verdicts and post-verdict procedures usually operate, see Frontline.
What Happens Next
Defense attorneys may seek post-trial relief or file an appeal, and the Phay family now faces the long, technical process of trying to collect on a large civil judgment. Duprey was civilly committed to the state’s forensic mental-health program in St. Peter and later transferred to a group home, arrangements that are separate from any effort to collect the civil award, according to reporting by the Star Tribune. For the Phay family, the verdict marks the end of a major legal chapter while highlighting ongoing debates about mental-health care, public safety and accountability.
