TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020392/0203104.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 134 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 17

TRIALS

Do Mad Acts a Madman Make?


When Milwaukee mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer goes on trial this
week, so will the insanity defense

By ANASTASIA TOUFEXIS -- With reporting by Georgia Pabst/
Milwaukee and Elizabeth Rudulph/New York


    Jeffrey Dahmer's deeds beggar the imagination. The
31-year-old former chocolate-factory worker, who is charged with
the murder of 15 young men, reportedly drugged some victims and
performed crude lobotomies on them in an attempt to create
zombie-like companions. He had sex with some corpses and
dismembered bodies, tossing hands in a kettle and storing a
severed head in the refrigerator as well as a heart to be eaten
later. Who doubts that Dahmer's behavior is mad? But is he
insane?

    That's the vexing question that will face 12 jurors in the
trial that opens this week in Milwaukee. Dahmer has pleaded
guilty to the killings, but contends that he cannot be held
criminally responsible because of mental illness. If found
insane, he will be sent to a state mental hospital, where after
a year he could begin petitioning for release; if judged sane,
he will go to prison for life. The sensational trial is sure to
reignite debate on the insanity defense, one of the messiest and
most controversial areas of law.

    To most Americans, the plea is a cop-out -- a too easy
alibi that could allow monsters like Dahmer to return to the
streets. In fact, the insanity defense is seldom used and rarely
successful. Experts estimate the defense is raised in fewer than
1% of the 13 million criminal cases filed annually in the U.S.
On those rare occasions where it succeeds, the offense is
usually nonviolent, and the prosecution and defense agree that
the accused is deranged. One example: a homeless person with
schizophrenia who is charged with disorderly conduct.

    Few defendants in homicides or assaults are acquitted on
the ground of mental illness. Would-be presidential assassin
John Hinckley's plea was accepted, but insanity claims by
Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi and mass murderer John Wayne
Gacy were rebuffed. Experts predict Dahmer's bid will fail as
well. "There is a point at which crimes reach such a magnitude
that people don't care why someone did something," observes San
Diego criminal attorney John Cotsirilos.

    What makes the plea so difficult is that it is inherently
confusing. "It's an attempt to explain rationally the
irrational," says William Moffitt, an Alexandria, Va., defense
attorney. The legal term insanity bears little resemblance to
common parlance or even medical usage. Generally, the legal test
is that at the time a crime was committed, the defendant was
suffering from a mental defect that made him or her incapable
of telling right from wrong. Some states also consider whether
a defendant's mental illness impaired the ability to control
one's actions. The Dahmer case is expected to hinge on this
so-called irresistible-impulse defense.

    Defendants over the years have advanced some bizarre
arguments to assert insanity. Last year, for instance, a Florida
forensic psychiatrist who was charged with bribery
unsuccessfully argued that he was driven insane by his years of
work with criminals. "Being a forensic psychiatrist for a long
time is not a mental defect," declares Dr. Park Elliott Dietz
of Newport Beach, Calif. Usually, defendants must have a defined
mental illness. Moreover, it has to be directly linked to the
crime. "Someone may have schizophrenia or manic-depressive
illness, but that doesn't mean they didn't know what they were
doing or couldn't control their conduct," explains Richard
Rosner, a forensic psychiatrist at New York University school
of medicine.

    However, determining someone's past state of mind -- or
competency to stand trial -- is an imprecise business.
Psychiatrists review the accused's history, talk to relatives
and friends and, most important, interview the defendant.
Psychiatrist Dietz, who will serve as an expert witness for
Dahmer's prosecutors, believes studying police evidence and the
crime scene is also crucial. One sign that a defendant knew
right from wrong: taking steps to avoid getting caught, such as
hiding the victims' bodies.

    Though psychiatrists claim they are adept at spotting
fakers, they concede that mistakes do occur. Bianchi fooled some
examiners into thinking he had a multiple-personality disorder
before being unmasked. David ("Son of Sam") Berkowitz conned two
psychiatrists with his tale of barking dogs conveying demonic
messages to kill. Long after his trial, he admitted fabricating
the story. Psychiatrists also note that attorneys sometimes
withhold vital information, thus leading to incorrect
conclusions about the accused's state of mind.

    Murder defendants most likely to win insanity verdicts
tend to have killed family members, often in a sudden outburst,
and have no prior rec ord of violence. "The jury identifies
with that sort of person," explains forensic psychiatrist
Emanuel Tanay of Wayne State University. Successful defendants
also tend to be well educated and well funded. And it helps to
be white: juries are more likely to send blacks to prison,
whites to hospitals.

    Such inequities outrage some experts. Psychiatrist Abraham
L. Halpern of New York Medical College would like to see the
insanity defense abolished: "It sends people who are not
mentally ill to hospitals, while people with clear-cut
psychiatric illnesses are left to deteriorate in prison without
even minimum therapy." But others believe that allowing the
defense, with all its imperfections, is preferable to sentencing
people who are mentally incapable of grasping their crimes to
prison. Says psychiatrist Phillip Resnick of Case Western
Reserve University: "By judging a person insane, we are saying
they are not blameworthy, that they are not suitable for
punishment." For Dahmer, that absolution seems remote.