Police Shooting of Mentally Ill Recluse Questioned by Sister
Associated Press, 3/1/2002

SOMERVILLE, Maine -- Michael Buchanan's older sister questions why police shot and killed the mentally ill recluse instead of disabling him with pepper spray or a less deadly shot. ''I finally stopped crying last night. I just wish his life did not have to end that way,'' Marilyn Browning said. ''I wish the police had maced him or tried to wing him instead of shooting him. But, I also don't understand what was going on in Michael's mind that day.''
    Chief Deputy Daniel Bradford of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department said Deputy Kenneth Hatch followed standard procedure when he fired at Buchanan when he attacked Hatch's partner with a knife. ''This thing happened so fast that there wasn't time to use pepper spray,'' Bradford said. Buchanan, 61, was shot in his remote cabin after deputies responded to a call Monday from a neighbor who complained that he had set fire to the family's woodpile. The Attorney General's Office is investigating to determine if the use of deadly force was justified. Browning and several other family members were in Maine on Thursday to make arrangements at a Waldoboro funeral home.
    Browning, who last saw Buchanan 18 months ago, conceded that her brother often behaved erratically. His mental health case worker told her that he was suffering from schizophrenia, she said. Browning said Buchanan grew up in Beverly, Mass., played varsity football in high school and went on to graduate from Tufts University in 1962 with an associate's degree in mechanical engineering. Buchanan told numerous people in Somerville that he served in the Vietnam War, but his sister said he was never in the military. After college, he went to work for Magnavox and was stationed in Saudi Arabia for a number of years. He returned to the United States in the early 1980s. Residents say he showed up in Somerville around 1982 where he began to build a home off the Valley Road. ''He took to the woods,'' Browning said. ''It was his dream house, but I think it turned out to be too much for him to take care of.''
    His family visited him frequently over the years, helping him with home repairs and taxes, but Browning said Buchanan pulled away, rarely answering letters and making it plain he preferred solitude. Browning attributes his growing isolation to his illness. But she said he seemed happy when she and her husband took him out to dinner the last time they were together. ''He was so delighted that someone came to visit him,'' she said. ''I didn't think he should be living alone, but Michael had the right to choose and he chose to be alone. He could not have lived in an institution. To him that would have been punishment, like being put in jail.''

Witness Tracked Lack of Care of Yates
Carol Christian, Houston Chronicle- 3/1/2002

Andrea Pia Yates' best friend testified Thursday that she became so concerned about the lack of care shown to Yates' rapidly declining mental health last year that she began to document it. Debbie Holmes, who met Yates 16 years ago when they were nurses at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said she started a journal at the suggestion of her sister. "I was calling my sister and my family constantly, crying and telling them, `I don't know what to do,' " Holmes said during questioning by Yates' attorney, George Parnham. "I was frustrated at the lack of care she was receiving. My sister said, `You need to write this down in case something bad happens.' " Holmes broke into tears when Parnham asked her about her reaction to the children's drownings. "I fell on the floor. I fell on the floor and just cried," she said. "I was screaming, `It can't be my Andrea. It can't be my Andrea.' My little girl collapsed. Those children were her best friends."
    Today marks the end of the second week of Yates' trial, and the defense is expected to call Dr. Philip Resnick to testify. Resnick, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, has studied mothers who kill their children and is expected to testify that Yates was legally insane when she drowned her children.
    Holmes testified Thursday that she begged Yates' husband, Russell Yates, to take his wife to the doctor in the weeks preceding her first hospitalization last year at Devereux Texas Treatment Network. "I called him three times," Holmes testified. "The first time, before spring break, I told him what I was seeing. He said, `No, it's anticipatory grieving over her father.' I disagreed." After spring break, Holmes said, she again told Russell Yates she thought his wife was going back into the dark depression with which she wrestled in 1999. "I said, `I think she needs to see a doctor.' He said, `She's just sad over her dad ... I'll look into it.' " Yates' father, Andrew Kennedy, was ill for some time before his death March 12. Holmes said she asked Russell Yates one weekend whether his wife had an appointment to see a psychiatrist soon. He told Holmes she had an appointment for the following Tuesday. "I said, `She's not going to make it through the weekend,' " Holmes recalled.
    Holmes said she visited Yates five or six times in the three weeks between her father's death and her first admission to Devereux last March. She said she was appalled by her friend's worsening physical and mental condition. She said Yates wandered aimlessly through the house, was inattentive to her children, could barely speak and had grown increasingly thin. When Holmes visited her friend after her week-long stay at Devereux, Yates looked even worse. "I couldn't believe how much weight she had lost," she said. "She looked like a cancer patient. Her shoulders were hunched, she walked with slow steps holding her arms, and her face was expressionless."
    Holmes said she was astonished when Yates was released from Devereux on April 13. "I was walking into the house, and Andrea came out of the bedroom," Holmes recalled. "I didn't even say hello. I said, `What in the world is she doing here?' I couldn't believe it." Yates' personal hygiene also declined, Holmes said. One day, she asked Russell Yates' mother, Dora Yates, when Andrea Yates had last bathed.
    Dora Yates, who visited the Yates' home each day to help with the children, replied that she assumed Andrea Yates had been washing at the sink, Holmes testified. "I said, `No she hasn't. She stinks,' " Holmes testified. "Her hair was matted." Holmes said she offered to get in the shower with Yates to help bathe her, but that Dora Yates told her, "Rusty and I will try to get her cleaned up tonight."
    Prosecutor Kaylynn Williford questioned Holmes about a conversation in which Holmes and Yates discussed the Yates' decision to have more children after Paul was born in September 1997. Holmes said she could see that Yates, who had begun home schooling Noah and preschool activities with John, was stressed. She asked Yates if her husband was helping more, to which Yates responded, "You know how Rusty is." Holmes said she took that to mean he was not.
    Russell Yates took the stand for the second day earlier Thursday and testified that his wife had never told him about the voices and visions she later said led her to drown the children. Yates said his wife was eating cereal from a box as he left for work at NASA on the day of the drownings. "At the time, I didn't think she was dangerous," he said. "None of us did." He said the family had a traditional division of labor. "Man is the breadwinner, and woman is the homemaker," he said. "It's the way it's been for years."

Yates Says He and Wife Made Joint Decisions
Paul Duggan, Washington Post- 3/1/2002

HOUSTON -- Russell E. Yates today fended off a prosecutor's apparent attempt to portray him as a domineering husband, saying he and Andrea Pia Yates were partners in all major decisions in their marriage. "Certain things Andrea did, and certain things I did," Russell Yates said, as prosecutor Joseph S. Owmby pressed him with questions about his and his wife's household responsibilities. "But when there was a decision to be made, we discussed it."
    On the ninth day of Andrea Yates's murder trial in the deaths of their five children, her husband kept a calm demeanor under cross-examination, just as he did through most of his direct testimony. In that testimony Wednesday, he offered support for the defense contention that Andrea Yates, 37, was in the throes of a psychotic episode when she drowned the youngsters in the family bathtub on June 20, that she could not distinguish right from wrong and that she should be acquitted by reason of insanity.
    Today, lawyers familiar with the case said Owmby's line of questioning appeared intended to elicit testimony that he could use in his closing argument -- asserting that Andrea Yates drowned the children, ages 6 months to 7 years, not because she was delusional but because she was frustrated and wanted to punish her husband after years of domination. But Russell Yates repeatedly described the couple's lifestyle choices as joint decisions.
    He was asked about his wife's giving birth to their four sons and daughter without pain medication, about her quitting her job as a nurse after their first child was born, about home-schooling the children, about the family living in recreational vehicles for several months and about the couple's views on the societal roles of men and women. None of the decisions was his alone, said Russell Yates, a NASA computer engineer. As for the couple's opinions on gender roles, he said, "We wanted a traditional family." Asked what he meant by "traditional," he replied, "The man's the breadwinner and the woman's a homemaker." Asked specifically about his wife quitting her job, he said, "We decided before we ever married that that's what we're going to do. That was our plan."

Washington State Jury Listens to Psychiatric Interview
Tracy Johnson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer- 3/1/2002

Kevin Cruz says he is convinced an intricate network of cops and their relatives are spying on him, that people tamper with his belongings, and that whether he should be executed has already been decided. Cruz's tape-recorded interview with a psychiatrist, played yesterday in his sentencing hearing, let jurors hear the 32-year-old convicted murderer's own angry, often nonsensical words. His attorneys hoped it would give jurors some insight into Cruz's mind -- and a good reason to spare his life. They say he endured an abusive childhood and has been paranoid and delusional for years.
    But King County prosecutors contend Cruz's mental problems, whether real or exaggerated, didn't drive him to shoot four men, killing two, at the Northlake Shipyard in November 1999. They say it was a carefully planned attack and are seeking to have him executed.
    In the interview last month, Cruz told Dr. Mark McClung that police would follow him around and spy, "trying to be incognito in their vehicles." He said he was convinced that many of the people he encountered were relatives of King County sheriff's deputies, trying to mess with him. He also said he suspected they had listening devices -- which he tried to block by lining his bedroom with tinfoil -- and was "sure they got cameras posted someplace." McClung told jurors he'd concluded that Cruz suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia -- and that he was likely trying to downplay his mental problems when asked about them.
    Cruz acknowledged that he often felt imaginary people touching him, but snapped, "it's been bugging me ever since I can remember, so it doesn't matter." He also said he hadn't heard any voices inside his head, "not lately." He talked tough and was clearly annoyed with McClung's questions, punctuating his sentences with the same expletive. He scoffed at being analyzed "like I'm some paranoid delusion" and implied the doctor was in on a conspiracy to ensure he was given the death penalty. "There's no ... deal about getting life in prison or none. The deal's already been made," said Cruz, unwilling to explain. But he later said, "I ain't looking forward to life in prison. It's either the death penalty or let me go."
    McClung said Cruz's schizophrenia was apparent in the way he would talk about one thing, then inexplicably slip to a completely unrelated topic. He talked about a work-related injury, for example, then veered onto a tangent about seeing a football player having dinner at a restaurant. A recollection about hallucinating on his friend's appearance turned into a rant about an ex-girlfriend who was sleeping around. McClung said people with schizophrenia have trouble organizing their thoughts and explain bizarre things as if the person listening will know just what they mean. But McClung said Cruz's mental state wouldn't cause anger, violence, or some mistaken idea of what's right and what's wrong. He said it didn't make Cruz walk into the Northlake Shipyard and open fire.
    "Does chronic paranoid schizophrenia render Mr. Cruz incapable of free choice?" asked deputy prosecutor Tim Bradshaw. "No," replied McClung, who said he believed Cruz "was aware that his actions were illegal." Killed were shipyard employees Peter Giles, 27, and Russell Brisendine, 43. Cruz's sentencing hearing could wrap up next week. Anything less than a unanimous death sentence would put him in prison for life.

New Witness Challenges Yates' Sanity
Carol Christian, Houston Chronicle- 3/2/2002

A nationally renowned psychiatrist testified Friday that Andrea Pia Yates was legally insane when she drowned her five children in their bathtub last year. Dr. Phillip Resnick, the director of the division of Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, has studied filicide -- the killing of children by their parents -- for more than 30 years. He was hired by Yates' attorneys and interviewed Yates about three weeks after she killed the children in their Clear Lake home June 20.
    Resnick said he based his conclusion that Yates was insane on four factors -- that she had an unwavering and delusional belief that she was not raising her children correctly, that she believed Satan was within her, that she made no effort to hide her crime and that she had no rational alternative motive.
    "She faced a cruel dilemma," Resnick said. "If she did nothing, because the children were not being raised righteously, they would burn in hell. She could allow them to end up in hell burning for eternity or take their lives on Earth. It was a horrible dilemma for any mother to have." Resnick said Yates showed her love for the children in her willingness to be executed and go to hell to save them. She also believed her execution would rid the world of Satan, he said.
    Resnick, who interviewed Yates for seven hours July 14 and Nov. 3, told jurors that a severe mental disease prevented her from knowing right from wrong when she drowned the children -- the legal definition of insanity under Texas law. Yates knew her actions were illegal, he said, but she firmly believed that killing her children was the best thing to do.
    After four months of taking anti-psychotic medication, Yates had improved enough that her answers in the November interview were more rational, Resnick said. For example, Resnick said, Yates said in July that her children were doomed to burn in hell because they were not being brought up righteously. By November, she said her fear was that the children would have ended up getting in trouble with the law and be a burden to society.
    Jurors ended the trial's second week Friday by getting their first chance to see and hear Yates talk about why she drowned the children. They were shown a 14-minute video of Resnick's July interview with her at the Harris County Jail. The video shows Yates without her glasses, her eyes with dark circles around them. She appeared to be grinding her teeth. Her face bore the vacant stare described in earlier testimony by eight medical professionals. Yates watched the video on a computer monitor at her table, but it was difficult to gauge her reaction.
    In the video, Yates answers Resnick's questions in a clipped monotone, similar to that heard in an audiotape of her statement to police several hours after the drownings. Yates said she killed Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months, because they were not "righteous" and "doomed to perish in the fires of hell." Yates told Resnick that her children "were not developing right, in an academic sense and a righteous sense." "They did a lot of silly stuff. They didn't obey ... Rusty's mom would visit and they would not treat her well. They would call her names," said Yates, referring to her mother-in-law.
    Another psychiatrist who interviewed Yates five days after she drowned her children testified Friday morning that although she said she knew she had done wrong, she was "clearly hallucinating" during the interview. Dr. Steven Rosenblatt, a psychiatrist in private practice in The Woodlands, said he interviewed Yates for just over an hour at the Harris County Jail on June 25. Rosenblatt said Yates' answers were delayed, sometimes by several minutes, and she often had to be reminded of the question. Based on the interview, Rosenblatt said he thought Yates' beliefs were based on a delusional system and that she did not know right from wrong. Prosecutors will have a chance to question Resnick on Monday. Later next week, they are expected to call Dr. Park Dietz, another well-known forensic psychiatrist, to rebut Resnick's finding that Yates was insane when she drowned her children.

Group Stirs Debate Over Schizophrenia
Ellen Barry, Boston Globe- 3/3/2002

LAWRENCE - From the exposed-brick office where he hands out his business cards, Daniel Fisher can describe how reality dissolved around him and how it swam back into focus. Fisher represents a category of people that psychiatrists long believed did not exist -- those who are diagnosed with schizophrenia and then, for some reason, completely recover. At an adjoining desk sits codirector Laurie Ahern, who was certain for years that she was Alice in Wonderland. Another desk belongs to Judi Chamberlin, who used to scream when she spoke because no one could hear her in outer space. At their Lawrence nonprofit, the National Empowerment Center, they have been spreading a controversial gospel, telling mentally ill people and their families that the psychiatric establishment is lying to them about their condition.
    The notion that some schizophrenics do recover, and can live out their lives without medication, is increasingly accepted. That inspiring story drew millions of Americans to the recent film ''A Beautiful Mind,'' in which the mathematician John Nash emerges slowly from a fog of delusion. But psychiatrists complain that Fisher has planted dangerous hopes by telling people that their suffering is emotional and temporary. And so this small group has found itself at the center of a debate coursing through the national mental health community.
    The conservative scholar Sally Satel singled out the center for criticism in her book excoriating liberal politics in mental health care. Last month, Fisher and Ahern were informed that President Bush's proposed 2003 budget would terminate the National Empowerment Center's annual $400,000 in funding, which makes up 80 percent of its budget, possibly jeopardizing the organization's future. ''There clearly is a struggle going on between the two ideologies,'' Fisher said. ''The system wants to use it as a rehabilitation model, using the analogy of a person with spinal cord injury -- they can learn to function in spite of their illness. We feel from our own experience that it's possible to completely recover. It's not a permanent defect.''
    For decades, people diagnosed with schizophrenia have been told they will most likely be sick for the rest of their lives. The American Psychiatric Association describes it as ''one of the most debilitating and baffling mental illnesses known,'' and recommends long-term use of antipsychotic medications. Fisher and his group of ''consumer-survivors'' offer themselves as living contradictions to the medical orthodoxy: balanced high achievers who are reintegrated into society.
    Fisher was 25, balancing a buttoned-down job as a researcher at the National Institute of Health with an after-hours immersion in Washington, D.C.'s late-'60s counterculture. It was around that time he noticed the scientists peering in the window, scribbling notes about his bad behavior. He detected terrible rents in the force of gravity. He picked up Einstein's autobiography and concluded he had written it. In a psychiatric ward at Johns Hopkins University, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which most psychiatrists believe is caused by over-sensitivity to a brain chemical called dopamine.
    But more than 30 years later, Fisher argues that what overtook him was an emotional cataclysm, not a chemical one. ''I had to let go of who I had been,'' he said. ''I really hadn't valued human relations. I really believed that the answers were to be found in microscopes and test tubes. I had to leave the day-to-day drone of NIH to my other life -- I did inhale, I was part of the antiwar movement, and I was in a modern dance troupe -- then I was back at work at the bench.'' He was prescribed Thorazine during his first two-week hospitalization, and Haldol for a year after his second, in 1970. Although he was hospitalized for two weeks in 1974, his last delusional episode was in 1979.
    According to Fisher, it was resolving the conflict in his personal life -- and not the medication -- that made the difference. He looks back at certain moments that set him on a path to recovery: one day when a psychiatrist knelt down and got his own suit wet coaxing Fisher out of the shower; one day when he ''blacked out'' in solitary confinement and woke up with a grim resolve to maneuver his way out of the hospital. Since then, he has married, received a medical degree, and become a practicing psychiatrist. That story is the lifeblood of the National Empowerment Center, whose staff of seven former patients tell their narratives repeatedly, speaking at 50 conferences a year and answering questions on a hotline. They reject the term ''mental illness,'' describing psychotic episodes as ''anguish'' or `distress.''
    Last week, Ahern spoke to the parents of two young men just diagnosed with schizophrenia, and, as always, heard the joy in their voices when she said their children could get better. ''They said, `You had schizophrenia? You and Dr. Fisher? And you recovered? I mean, you're not on medication? I mean, you're not just in remission?''' she said. ''That alone is very helpful. Then I try to reframe these problems as not being medical.''
    Gradually, the phenomenon of recovery was also being aired in mainstream medicine. Courtenay Harding, then a researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, observed 269 chronically ill schizophrenic patients from Vermont State Hospital for an average of 32 years. In 1987, she reported that 45 percent had no psychiatric symptoms after three decades, and 23 percent had symptoms of less serious mental illnesses, but not schizophrenia. Many more patients would recover if our mental health system allowed for that possibility, she said. ''There are many, many models of recovery, and Dan has one of them. There is a small number of people that we just don't understand, who can go through schizophrenia and come out the other end without medication,'' she said.
    But psychiatrists interviewed took issue with Fisher's argument that there is no such thing as chronic mental illness. Several complained that Fisher has used his own inspiring story to exaggerate the hope for patients and their families. ''I think Daniel represents the roughly 25 percent of people who get one or two episodes of what is diagnosed as schizophrenia and who recover no matter what you do,'' said E. Fuller Torrey, a Washington, D.C., research psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia. ''You can treat 'em with psychoanalysis or jelly beans, or whatever.''
    Fisher's kind of recovery, he said, is possible only for a limited number of people -- who may even suffer from a distinct disease, such as viral encephalitis. But most Americans with schizophrenia need to invest their hopes in medication, and risk homelessness and other dangers if they go off it, he said. ''I think Daniel Fisher has done damage,'' Torrey said. ''I think the center has done damage by implying -- by saying quite explicitly -- that medications are not necessary, that if you just provide community support and housing that everyone can live like Daniel Fisher. I think it's false.''
    The National Empowerment Center's ideas have sparked a lively debate on Internet sites like MindFreedom (''defending the human rights of people in the psychiatric system'') and at the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, where patients and former patients variously celebrate or scoff at the idea that taking medication should be a matter of choice. ''As having been hospitalized seven times, two times involuntarily because of schizophrenia, I say without meds I would be in jail or worse!'' wrote one irate man.
    Satel, a psychiatrist and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, singled out Fisher's organization as an example of patients' rights run amok in her 2000 book ''PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine.'' When she first encountered Fisher at a hearing, Satel said she was ''stunned that they would be getting federal funding.'' ''These are people who really don't represent the severely mentally ill,'' she said. Fisher says it's the same criticism he's heard since he began. ''The idea of hope,'' he said, ''I know they think it's cruel.''

Study Suggests Link Between Sleep Problems & ADHD
Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press- 3/4/2002

CHICAGO -- New research suggests children who snore face nearly double the risk of being inattentive and hyperactive, providing fresh evidence of an intriguing link between sleep problems and attention deficit disorders. While the study doesn't answer whether one condition causes the other, the researchers believe snoring and other sleep problems may be the culprit in some cases because children often express sleepiness by being inattentive and ''hyper.''
    If it turns out to be true, this theory could help explain the paradox over why stimulants such as Ritalin can effectively treat children with conditions like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder who already seem over-stimulated, said Dr. Ronald Chervin, a University of Michigan neurologist and sleep researcher, and the study's lead author. ''If there is indeed a cause-and-effect link, sleep problems in children could represent a major public health issue,'' Chervin said. ''It's conceivable that by better identifying and treating children's snoring and other nighttime breathing problems, we could help address some of the most common and challenging childhood behavioral issues.''
    ADHD is the most common neurobehavioral disorder in childhood, affecting between 4 percent and 12 percent of school-age children or as many as 3.8 million youngsters. Data cited by Chervin suggest that between 7 percent and 12 percent of children snore frequently, with apnea brief breathing lapses during sleep that can cause snoring present in up to 3 percent of school-age children.
    Numerous other studies have found a link between sleep problems and ADHD, but many sleep specialists and psychiatrists are divided over which condition might cause the other. ''There's absolutely a connection,'' said Dr. Stephen Sheldon, a sleep specialist at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. ''There is a proportion of youngsters that have sleep pathology causing their daytime symptoms that appear virtually identical to ADHD.''
    Dr. Timothy Wilens, a child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is more skeptical. ''I would say the verdict is still out,'' said Wilens. ADHD is thought to have a genetic cause and runs in families, Wilens said. The sleep disturbances his research has found in ADHD children, including restlessness and difficulty falling asleep, are likely the result of behavioral problems, not vice versa, he said.
    Chervin's study involving 866 children aged 2 through 13 is published in the March issue of Pediatrics. It is based on surveys of parents about their children's behavior and sleep patterns. Parents rated their children's behavior based on a list of psychiatric criteria for ADHD, which includes impulsiveness, inability to pay attention and excessive activity. Parents weren't asked if their children had been diagnosed with ADHD, which Chervin acknowledged limits being able to generalize the results. Overall, 16 percent were frequent snorers and 13 percent scored high on the ADHD scale. Among frequent snorers, 22 percent had high ADHD scores, compared with only 12 percent among infrequent snorers. Since snoring is often caused by apnea, which in turn is frequently caused by large tonsils, removing the tonsils might in some cases improve behavior, Chervin said.
    On the Net:
Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org
National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke: http://www.ninds.nih.gov

Yates' Fate Hinges on Which Psychiatrist Can Sway Jury
Lisa Teachey, Houston Chronicle- 3/4/2002

After studying Andrea Pia Yates' medical history and behavior, two of the nation's top psychiatric experts arrived at opposing conclusions. One will tell jurors this week that Yates was legally insane when she drowned her five children in a bathtub last year; the other will say she was not. Yates' fate may lie in which expert jurors believe and in how their conclusions are presented to the jury.
    Experts in forensic psychiatry and jury selection say that clashing scientific experts often leave jurors more confused than convinced. "When you have dueling experts, they tend to cancel each other out," said trial consultant Robert Hirschhorn. "The jury is left saying, `OK, where else can we look?' If both experts appear to be equally qualified, they will look at whatever other evidence supports either view." In the Yates case, the experts are two of the country's most respected.
    The prosecution has hired Dr. Park Dietz, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine and the forensic psychiatrist for the FBI's Profiling and Behavioral Assessment Unit and the New York State Police Forensic Sciences Unit. The defense team has Dr. Phillip Resnick, a professor of psychiatry and the director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. He also is a lecturer in law and psychiatry at Case Western's School of Law and has studied mothers who kill their children. Resnick, who began testifying Friday and will take the stand again today, gets the first opportunity to make his case to the jury. Dietz is expected to be called as a rebuttal witness for the prosecution after the defense rests its case.
    Although Resnick and Dietz have been friends for some 20 years and worked together on cases involving serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the Yates case won't be the first time they have gone head-to-head. They were consultants on opposite sides in the trial of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother convicted of drowning her two sons, although neither testified. They also disagreed in the trial of John du Pont, a chemical fortune heir convicted of third-degree murder in the shooting of a man at his home.
    "If everybody agreed, there wouldn't need to be a trial," said Dr. Neil Kaye, a fellow forensic psychiatrist from Delaware who also has testified in several high-profile cases. "Two very bright people can evaluate the same information and come to different conclusions. It happens in everyday life, and it happens in other scientific fields." Kaye said psychiatry is a science, and science is sometimes inexact. "If you have a bulging disc, one doctor might say you need surgery and another might say to continue with physical therapy," Kaye said. "In economics, there are different opinions on how to fix the economy. Some say raise taxes, others say lower spending."
    For Yates' insanity defense to be successful, Texas law requires the defense to prove that a severe mental disease or defect prevented Yates from knowing that her conduct was wrong. Both sides agree that Yates suffers from a mental illness, but they disagree on whether she knew her conduct was wrong. "So it becomes a question of to what degree are they disagreeing," Kaye said.
    During his opening statement, prosecutor Joe Owmby told the jury there was no question that Yates had "some form of mental illness." Where Owmby and co-prosecutor Kaylynn Williford disagree with Yates' attorneys, George Parnham and Wendell Odom, is on whether she knew it was wrong to kill her children. Owmby noted that Yates called police immediately after drowning the last child. He also pointed out that she had resisted earlier "voices" she believed belonged to Satan that told her to get a knife and kill someone. "She knew this was a sin," Owmby said. "She knew this was wrong."
    By contrast, Parnham told jurors in his opening statement that Yates' psychosis was so severe it caused her to see danger where there was none. "Doctors will tell you that not only on June 20 she did not know what she was doing was wrong, but that she thought it was the right thing to do," he said. Dietz is expected to argue that Yates clearly knew her actions were wrong.
    "Park Dietz will stick to an easy story there," Kaye said. "He can demonstrate purposeful behavior, because she had to get the first child in the bathroom, then the second, then the third, then the fourth and she chased down the fifth. That looks like she knew what she was doing." Kaye said he expects Dietz to focus on the facts in the case and to remind jurors that Yates had been able to resist earlier hallucinations telling her to harm her children.
    Resnick spent part of the day Friday trying to explain to jurors why Yates acted as she did. "Phillip Resnick will argue just because she knows what she did was wrong, that doesn't explain the psychological drive behind it," Kaye said. "Even though it looks like she knew what she was doing, the drive to do it came from a psychotic thought process. She didn't have any choice."
    Kaye and Hirschhorn agree that it will boil down to which expert jurors believe and what they want to happen to Yates. "What we know from research is the definition of the law doesn't always matter," Kaye said. "Jurors usually do what they think in their minds is the right thing to do." Hirschhorn said that's why both sides will present as much information as possible to the jury. "The sicker the defense makes her prior to the tragedy, the jury will be more inclined to believe their experts," Hirschhorn said. "On the other hand, the more rational the prosecution can make her up until the time of this tragedy, the jury is more likely to believe their expert."

Yates Lacked Signs of Psychosis, Doctor Testifies
Carol Christian, Houston Chronicle- 3/5/2002

Despite intense grilling by one of Andrea Pia Yates' defense attorneys, the psychiatrist who treated Yates in the days before she drowned her five children testified Monday that he saw no evidence she was psychotic. Dr. Mohammad Saeed was the last psychiatrist to treat Yates before she drowned her children June 20, seeing her during her two hospitalizations at Devereux Texas Treatment Network in League City last year.
    Saeed, a former medical director at Devereux, insisted to defense lawyer George Parnham that Yates showed no signs of psychosis. "Are you telling this jury that you don't believe this woman was psychotic before June 20?" Parnham demanded. Saeed said that was correct. "I assume, based on your evaluation of her, that you would be astounded to know she is on 15 milligrams of Haldol (a powerful anti-psychotic drug) as she sits here today," Parnham said. "Are you surprised?" "I'm not surprised," Saeed answered.
    Parnham suggested in his questioning that Saeed had later altered records of his June 18 treatment of Yates to add the phrase, "Patient denied any psychotic symptoms." Parnham asked Saeed whether he agreed the phrase appeared to be in smaller handwriting than the rest of the record. "I don't know what you want me to say," Saeed said. "It's my handwriting." Parnham asked him whether he saw any difference in the type of ink; Saeed said he did not. "I take it this is not an afterthought after the children drowned," Parnham said. "No sir," Saeed responded.
    Prosecutor Joe Owmby asked Saeed why he had prescribed Haldol for Yates during her second hospitalization at Devereux from May 4 to May 14. Saeed said Yates had a history of using the drug and that her husband, Russell Yates, told him it had been helpful. He said antipsychotic drugs can sometimes help patients suffering from depression with psychotic features, in addition to helping those with psychosis itself.
    Owmby then asked Saeed why he advised Yates to taper off Haldol in early June, just a month after prescribing it. "I believe I had advised discontinuing Haldol because, so far during the course of the treatment, there was no definitive indication of psychosis from my observation, from other trained staff and from Mr. Yates," he said. Saeed testified he thought the Haldol could be hindering the antidepressants Yates also was taking at the time. "You weren't sure that Haldol was the magic bullet that was going to cure her," Owmby said. "That's correct," Saeed answered.
    Parnham also questioned Saeed about his decision to discharge Yates from Devereux on May 14. Although Saeed's notes say Yates was sleeping and eating better, nurses' notes presented in court indicate she had a poor appetite, was not speaking and had impaired judgment. Saeed said the nurses' notes could have referred to a different time than when he observed Yates that day. Parnham asked him if the nurses' checklist indicating Yates was "mute" was correct. "I don't know," he answered. But later he said, "It's not fair to draw parallels between psychosis and not being able to speak."
    In other testimony Monday, the psychiatrist who first admitted Yates to Devereux testified that Yates was "nearly catatonic" when she arrived for her first hospitalization there March 31. Dr. Ellen Allbritton said she was upset about Yates' condition that day, noting that she appeared gaunt and unkempt. "The patient was so ill and had obviously been ill for some time -- longer than I was being given a history for," she said. Allbritton said she was not told that Yates had been diagnosed as psychotic in 1999, after two suicide attempts. She said that, although Andrea and Russell Yates were hesitant about the hospitalization, she signed an emergency detention order to hold Yates at the hospital for 24 hours until she could be evaluated by another doctor. "When I walked in and saw her, I decided she looked like someone who had declined to the point of non-functioning," Allbritton said. "She was just there, a shell. ... I couldn't get enough information to tell if she was psychotic or non-psychotic."

Study: Gamblers May Have Other Addictions
Detroit Free Press, 3/5/2002

People who are addicted to gambling also may be addicted to alcohol or have other mental disorders, according to a report in February's American Journal of Psychiatry. A study of 69 pathological gamblers found that 62.3 percent had a personality disorder, alcohol dependence or adjustment disorder, said Dr. Angela Ibanez of Alcala University in Madrid, Spain. "Our findings underscore the need to conduct comprehensive evaluations of pathological gamblers and to devise treatment plans" that address their illnesses, she said.

Schizophrenic Man Doesn't Know He Killed His Father
Associated Press, 3/5/2002

KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- Family members say Brian and Clifford Kragt were as close as any father and son could be. They say the 35-year-old Brian Kragt would have never knowingly hurt his 61-year-old father. But when Clifford Kragt died Saturday, he had been hospitalized after a severe beating by his youngest son, whom Kragt had visited in Kalamazoo County's Cooper Township on Feb. 18. After the beating, Kragt was dumped in the driveway of a home in nearby Comstock Township.
    Family say Brian Kragt does not understand the repercussions of the beating because, like his father, he has paranoid schizophrenia, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported Monday. Brian Kragt is being evaluated at the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital. To this day, he believes the man he met on the night of Feb. 18 was a substitute for his father, family members say. They say he thinks the person was placed in his home by a government agency. Brian Kragt could face an assault charge for the beating or a murder charge if an autopsy shows Clifford Kragt died from the beating, said county Undersheriff Michael Anderson.
    Clifford Kragt, who lived in rural Iowa, wanted to take care of his son, and the two stayed in touch through regular visits and phone calls. "They had a good relationship," said Polly Kragt, Brian Kragt's sister-in-law. "They were perfect for each other." The pair used to go on long fishing trips together. Clifford Kragt also loved sailing and sports and, as a young parent, was involved in the Boy Scouts with his sons. The elder Kragt was a former professor at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Medicine. He was a published author and writing a book on cancer research.
    Clifford Kragt came to Kalamazoo with his former wife and children during the 1970s to work as a research scientist with The Upjohn Co. When he was 36, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His son Mark was 13 at the time. "He deteriorated quickly," Mark Kragt said. "He went out to Iowa and his parents took care of him. He was a functioning schizophrenic." Clifford Kragt was able to gain some control over the disease. He could balance a checkbook and drive a car, for example.
    It was more difficult for Brian Kragt, who was diagnosed at the age of 19. "The first few years he was able to keep the disease in check," said Mark Kragt. But as the disease grew worse, Brian Kragt's family had to take him in and out of hospitals and group homes. "He has never been violent until recently," Mark Kragt said. He said the family knew the mental health system and its professionals well and used them regularly.
    But neither family nor professionals could make Brian Kragt stay on his medicine, Mark Kragt said. He said his brother was not taking his medication at the time of the attack on their father. "It wasn't like some little spat they had," Mark Kragt said. "Brian truly feels he didn't do this to Clifford. He did not think it was Clifford. "He's pulling the pieces together. Like a schizophrenic, he thought it was somebody else. He was afraid that person was going to hurt him."

Michigan Drug Court Aims to Help Addicts, Not Punish Them
Nancy Youssef, Detroit Free Press- 3/6/2002

Alan Dale McBride, 31, hated crack cocaine, but his addiction made him do just about anything for it. According to court documents, he broke into his neighbor's house and stole from his family to support his addiction, prompting Macomb County Circuit Judge Deborah Servitto to give him a 29-month jail sentence last month. But Servitto said jail time might not be the best way to help McBride, or to reduce the county's crime rate. So she and a handful of Macomb County court officials are developing a court they say will reduce the county's 80-percent recidivism rate and help keep defendants like McBride out of the court system.
    The court, which the county plans to open in January, would handle adults who are repeat substance abusers. Such courts exist in Oakland and Wayne counties. "We kept seeing the same faces whether they are sent to jail or are put on probation," said Servitto, who is leading the effort in Macomb along with Judge Pat Donofrio. "We knew that something had to happen."
    Drug-treatment courts combine the judicial process with a long-term treatment program. Instead of sending defendants to jail or an independent intervention program, judges become directly involved in their recovery. They meet with the defendant regularly, usually weekly. During those meetings, the judges are joined by graduates of the program who volunteer their time to encourage participants to stay with the program. The judge asks about the defendant's progress in the program and in their lives. Everyone in the judge's chambers applauds when participants have a successful week. "It requires judges to become psychologists," said Duke University pharmacology professor Wilkie Wilson, who has written about drug courts and helped North Carolina develop its system.
    This type of court is sweeping the nation as the newest means to treat repeat drug offenders. Officials began considering the courts in the 1980s, when repeat drug offenders like McBride began crowding jails. McBride's mother, Tiney McBride, 61, of St. Clair Shores, said his repeated trips to jail haven't "done anything in years."
    According to the Justice Department, more than 74,000 people nationwide have graduated from drug courts. And the recidivism rates for each jurisdiction vary from 2 to 24 percent, compared with a national average of 75 percent, according to the department.
    Visiting Oakland County Circuit Judge David Breck came out of retirement to run that county's drug court, where 11 participants enrolled in the 18-month program. Among them is a 45-year-old man whose drug habit cost him about $500 a day. "Imagine the amount of crime he committed to support that habit," Breck said.
Macomb County officials plan to apply for federal funding for the court. In 2000, the county applied for a 3-year grant of $488,471 in federal funding for the court and approved $162,826 more in county funds. But the county did not receive that funding.   Macomb County judges Servitto and Donofrio are traveling to similar courts in Dallas, Los Angeles and Jacksonville, Fla., to determine how the county's court would work. They are also learning about topics like pharmacology so that they can best counsel the participants.
    Among the program's national critics are county prosecutors who say the court intervention is a means for jurisdictions to soften the laws. But Macomb County prosecutor Carl Marlinga said he embraces the program. "The individual is saved . . . and the rest of us are saved from the crimes they commit," he said.

Doctor: Yates Was in 'Severe' State of Psychosis
Carol Christian, Houston Chronicle- 3/6/2002

The psychiatrist treating Andrea Pia Yates in jail for the past eight months testified Tuesday that it took more than a month for Yates to stop hallucinating. Dr. Debra Osterman, a psychiatrist at the Harris County Jail, said she began seeing Yates on July 2, Yates' 37th birthday. By July 23, her notes showed, Yates continued to see visions of men, children and horses on the jail walls. "I just try not to look," Osterman quoted Yates as saying. Osterman told jurors that Yates "took longer than is usual" to emerge from her "very severe" psychotic state and that Yates described it as similar to coming out of a fog.
    Yates' mother, Jutta Karin Kennedy, also testified Tuesday, weeping during her brief appearance on the witness stand. "She's my baby daughter," Kennedy said of the youngest of her five children. Under questioning by Yates' attorney, George Parnham, Kennedy told jurors her daughter had been a wonderful mother and that she couldn't believe it when she heard of her grandchildren's drownings. Prosecutors asked no questions of Kennedy.
    Osterman told jurors there was no life in Yates' eyes during the first month she saw her. But by Aug. 10, she said, Yates had begun showing appropriate emotional responses in their conversations. "If we talked about something sad, she looked sad," she said. Osterman testified she decided Aug. 3 to lower Yates' daily dose of Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic drug, from 15 milligrams to 10. While on the lower dosage, Yates showed "definite changes" that "set off alarm bells." By mid-December, she said, she raised Yates' medication back to 15 milligrams. "She's been doing really well at this (higher) dosage for right now," she said.
    Because Yates has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, prosecutors and defense attorneys have been detailed in their questioning about her mental state in the months before and after she drowned her children. Prosecutor Joe Owmby questioned Osterman about her statement that Yates was given a paper gown, rather than the standard orange jumpsuit, as a precaution against suicide when she arrived at the jail. Owmby showed Osterman a nurse's note from June 21 that described Yates lying nude on her bed, with her knees to her chest. "I'm surprised at that," said Osterman, who said she was on leave the first week of Yates' incarceration. "Where's the gown?" Owmby asked. "I'm not so sure she was given one now," Osterman answered, adding that the nurse who made the note is very reliable. "If it says nude, I believe she was nude." During questioning by Yates' lawyer Wendell Odom, Osterman had said that clothes are taken away from patients thought to be suicidal because inmates could use them to hang or strangle themselves. In earlier testimony, a psychiatric nurse treating Yates said she had been given a "suicide blanket" of heavy material nearly impossible to tear after her clothes were confiscated.
    In other testimony Tuesday, a nationally renowned psychiatrist maintained under cross-examination that Yates was legally insane when she drowned her children -- that her severe mental illness prevented her from knowing her conduct was wrong. Dr. Phillip Resnick, the director of the division of Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, testified for the defense Friday. Because he was unavailable Monday, he took the stand again Tuesday to be cross-examined by Owmby. Resnick has studied filicide -- the killing of children by their parents -- for more than 30 years. He was hired by Yates' attorneys and interviewed her on July 14 and Nov. 3.
    Ownby continued his line of questioning from Friday, when Resnick told jurors Yates faced a "horrible dilemma," believing that her children would burn in hell if she didn't do something. Owmby said the dilemma described by Resnick presents a societal problem, given that large numbers of people believe in heaven and hell. "If you allow this type of act, everyone would be better off to send their children to a better place," he said. Resnick disagreed, saying that the Judeo-Christian culture views homicide as a sin. "One wouldn't take the lives of one's children unless one believed that it was guaranteeing them eternal damnation to let them live," he said. "It's not a common view, except by someone who is ... psychotic." Owmby noted that Yates had not taken alternative steps like turning to her best friend, a priest or Children's Protective Services. Resnick agreed, but pointed out that Yates' delusions left her thinking she had no alternative to killing her children while they were still innocent.

Heavy Pot Use Impairs Brain, New Study Finds
David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle- 3/6/2002

A three-city study of heavy marijuana users has found that long-term pot smoking impairs brain function, scientists report today. In an elaborate study of more than 150 men and women being treated for dependence on the weed, the researchers concluded that even many hours after the subjects' last joint, their memory proved defective, and so was their ability to concentrate, to solve problems involving numbers and words, and to resist distraction.
    An estimated 7 million Americans now smoke marijuana with at least some frequency, according to government figures. And ever since pot smoking aroused nationwide concern four decades ago, mental health specialists have debated whether, or how much, brain damage might result from heavy use. Although most experts have agreed that the drug is by no means "the devil's weed," leading inevitably to hopeless addiction and damaged brain cells, study after inconclusive study has indicated at least some mental impairment.
    The newest research, being reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is by far the most ambitious yet conducted. A team of eight American psychiatrists, psychologists and drug treatment experts with Connecticut's national Marijuana Treatment Project Research Group conducted the study. It involved a battery of nine widely accepted psychological tests of brain function. All the data were analyzed by Nadia Solowij, a leading psychologist at Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sidney, who also wrote the report and helped design the project. "These results confirm that long-term heavy cannabis users show impairments in memory and attention that endure beyond the period of intoxication and worsen with increasing years of regular cannabis use," the team concluded.
    But Solowij cautioned strongly in an e-mail to The Chronicle that the study does not suggest in any way that pot causes serious brain damage. "The long-term consequences of marijuana on memory function are not so tragic," she added. "Memory is impaired in very long-term heavy users, and that may affect their functioning in daily life," but the effects generally appeared to be modest.
    The pot users in the study had been smoking an average of two joints a day for an average of 24 years and all had already enrolled in treatment programs for dependence in Seattle, Miami or Farmington, Conn. A small control group of volunteers had either never or rarely smoked pot or hadn't smoked in years. The researchers gave the psychological tests to the heavy smokers an average of 17 hours after they had last smoked, although in some cases the time lag was only seven hours, while in others it was 10 days.
    In her e-mail message, Solowij said the researchers had already tested the same group of subjects four months after they entirely stopped using the drug to see how long their memory functions were impaired. "It is probably unlikely that the impairments would be permanent, but we just don't know that," she said.
    Although Solowij said the research subjects were not dependent on any other drugs and were "generally fairly representative of long-term heavy cannabis users," a noted psychiatrist and marijuana expert at Harvard, Dr. Harrison Pope Jr., maintained that even moderate use of other drugs could be one of many "confounding variables" likely to make the study's conclusions less certain. In an editorial in today's issue of the medical journal, and in comments yesterday, Pope maintained that many of those variable could have affected the study conclusions: Some of the subjects might already have had impaired memory; some might have used other drugs now or in the past; and some might have been taking prescription medications or had psychiatric problems such as anxiety or depression. "The safest thing to say at this point is that the jury is still out on the question of whether long-term marijuana use causes lasting impairment in brain function," Pope said.

New Mexico to Allow Non-Physicians to Prescribe Psychotropic Drugs
Richard Benke, Associated Press- 3/6/2002

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- New Mexico has become the first state to let psychologists prescribe drugs for mental illness, a move lamented by some physicians. Supporters of the legislation, signed Tuesday by Gov. Gary Johnson, argued the change would help expand mental health services, particularly in rural areas of New Mexico.
    In many states, only physicians that is, those holding a medical degree and nurse practitioners with special training can prescribe drugs. Psychiatrists hold medical degrees. Psychologists generally hold Ph.D.'s or master's degrees, not medical degrees. There are only 95 psychiatrists in all of New Mexico, with a population of 1.8 million, according to the New Mexico Psychological Association.
    The American Psychiatric Association contended the measure ''threatens quality of medical care and could result in an incalculable cost in human life and health care dollars.'' The American Medical Association has also come out against allowing psychologists to prescribe medication. ''We believe that the Legislature and the governor in New Mexico have placed patient health and safety at risk,'' said Richard Harding, president of the American Psychiatric Association.
    But the governor's office said safeguards are built into the measure. Among other things, psychologists who want to prescribe drugs would have to get a state license to do so. The state Board of Medical Examiners would establish the guidelines for training programs for those seeking a license and would likely help oversee their drug licensing, doctors said Wednesday. Dr. C. Grant La Farge, secretary-treasurer of the board, said it's too soon to say exactly what role the board will have in licensing and that the issue will be taken up at its meeting in May.

Psychological Study of Columbine Killers to Air
Howard Pankratz, Denver Post- 3/7/2002

The A&E cable network will air a "psychiatric autopsy" of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on April 15, five days before the third anniversary of the nation's deadliest school shootings. The study, performed by some of the country's top forensic psychiatrists and criminal profilers, was sought by Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas in August 1999. Thomas asked the Threat Assessment Group of Newport Beach, Calif., to conduct it.
    To finish the project, the group is seeking court approval to view the so-called "basement tapes" that Harris and Klebold made in the weeks before the killings, which left 15 people dead. The profilers don't want to broadcast portions of the videotapes, during which Harris and Klebold describe their plans. They just want to review them for the report, said Bob McAllister, the Denver lawyer representing the group. Nor do the profilers want the tapes made available to the general public, McAllister said. The tapes, made with a camcorder mostly in Harris' basement, were shown to the media in December 1999. They have since been sealed while the Harris and Klebold families and Jefferson County fight in federal court over who controls the copyright. McAllister said the group also hopes to interview the parents of Harris and Klebold, who have never spoken publicly about their sons.
    On Monday, McAllister met with the lawyers for the Harris and Klebold families and allowed them to review four hours of tape. Dr. Steven Pitt, who heads the group's "Columbine Psychiatric Autopsy Project," and a district attorney's spokeswoman said the psychiatric autopsy was done in hopes of learning the killers' motivation. "When this happened, it was almost incomprehensible to most people -- it was so well thought out, so well planned, so well orchestrated -- that a war zone could actually be created in a school in this community," said DA spokeswoman Pam Russell.
    The district attorney sought out the project to determine "what could we learn from this? Were there warning signs? What led to this? What do we need to know?" Russell said. Another key question that Thomas, who announced his bid for Congress on Wednesday, wanted answered: Can a repeat be prevented? Russell said the DA's office did not have the funding for the project and that the profiling group sought financing on its own. The group hooked up with A&E and documentary producer Bill Kurtis. Neither Kurtis nor officials at the arts-and-entertainment cable network could be reached for comment. McAllister said A&E spent $70,000 on the project and secured exclusive rights to air the results of the psychiatric autopsy. Total cost of the project could exceed $250,000. The group intends to present its findings to the Jefferson County community, but nothing has been scheduled, Pitt said.
    Brad Bernall, father of slain Columbine student Cassie Bernall, said Wednesday that he doesn't believe the psychiatric autopsy will help his family because it won't bring back Cassie. But he added that the research may help identify "kids ready to snap." For months, the psychiatrists and profilers interviewed dozens of Columbine students, anybody who knew Harris and Klebold in any capacity, teachers and law-enforcement officers. Kurtis' A&E crew taped the interviews.
    McAllister said that on Feb. 4, Kurtis and the group presented four hours of tape to Thomas; Bill Erickson, the retired chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court and head of the Governor's Columbine Commission; and numerous civic and law-enforcement officials. It's unclear how long the final product that airs on A&E will be. "This study was really done at Thomas' request, so they felt that they should report back to Thomas," McAllister said.
    Although the report is essentially completed, McAllister said there are still two deficiencies in the study - the inability to view the basement tapes and the refusal thus far of the Harris and Klebold families to be interviewed. "We think those tapes could assist us in understanding why this happened and how to prevent future tragedies," McAllister said. The interviews with the Harris and Klebold families are more critical because they can shed light on the childhoods of the teenagers, McAllister said.

Courts Often Can't Stop Nearby Domestic Attacks
Associated Press, 3/7/2002

PONTIAC, Mich. -- Despite two recent shootings outside Michigan courthouses related to domestic violence, security officials who patrol the facilities say they cannot do much more to safeguard visitors. The open space between guarded courthouse doors and a waiting car is one of the most volatile stretches of pavement for domestic violence victims, says Susan Woodard of HAVEN, a Pontiac shelter and counseling center for women. Deputies break up hallway spats, escort frightened women to their cars and walk the parking lot beat.
    In Oakland County, Friend of the Court referees who handle family cases have panic buttons under their desks and divorce lawyers drive nervous clients to their cars after a hearing, the Detroit Free Press said Thursday. Shuttling to and from court for hearings on personal protection orders or divorce proceedings is often a time when tensions flare, domestic violence experts said. "I've been around here long enough to know that these things happen," said Macomb County sheriff's Lt. Daniel Heythaler.
    The outbursts are so common that Heythaler coined the term FOC-to-DVA, for Friend of the Court cases that turn into domestic violence arguments. Violence inside and outside courtrooms almost always is tied to domestic cases, said Brenda Uekert, a senior research associate at the National Center for State Courts in Virginia. On Wednesday, Thomas Wendt, 51, was arraigned in Isabella County on three counts of open murder and three counts of felony firearm possession in connection with the killings of his ex-wife and two others who accompanied her to the courthouse Tuesday.

Yates on Video: 'Psychosis Seems to Have Left Me'
Carol Christian, Houston Chronicle- 3/7/2002

The jury Wednesday saw a month-old videotape in which a well-groomed, coherent Andrea Pia Yates told a psychiatrist that her condition was greatly improved. "The psychosis seems to have left me," Yates told Dr. Lucy Puryear on Feb. 4 at the Harris County Jail. "I'm calmer and more aware of what's going on." In stark contrast to Yates' disheveled appearance in two videos made in July, the tape showed her neatly dressed in a skirt and gray paisley blouse. Her hair looked cleaner. She sat calmly and spoke in a modulated voice, rather than the staccato monotone of earlier tapes.
    When Puryear, a defense witness, asked the defendant how she spent her time, Yates said she had been reading, exercising, playing dominoes and attending classes on topics such as relapse prevention and self-image. After Puryear commented that relapse prevention was geared toward drug addiction and alcoholism, Yates said, "I have to adapt relapse to taking my meds." Since her incarceration June 20, the day she drowned her five children in their bathtub, Yates has been taking four medications, including Haldol, a strong antipsychotic.
    Puryear, a psychiatrist in private practice and former director of the Baylor Psychiatry Clinic at Baylor College of Medicine, said the interview last month was an important indicator of Yates' condition under adequate treatment. "There was a marked difference, even from November -- certainly from the first time I saw her," said Puryear, who specializes in women's psychiatric problems related to giving birth. Puryear said she concluded, after months of reviewing records and interviewing Yates' family and friends, that Yates has a "baseline psychiatric disorder, probably schizophrenia." On top of that, Puryear said, she had a major depressive disorder.
    Both disorders are exacerbated after childbirth, Puryear said. She noted that Yates was pregnant or breast-feeding for most of the time between the birth of her first child in 1994 and the deaths of the children. Puryear said she first met Yates on July 3 and made an initial videotape on July 27, when Yates told her that she had a troubling vision of a knife and "lots of blood" after the birth of her first child. Yates said she told no one about it, Puryear testified, because she feared Satan would hear her and cause her to carry out the vision. Yates said she attempted suicide twice in 1999 so she wouldn't harm the children. By Feb. 4, after more than seven months of treatment with Haldol and two antidepressants, Yates said her thoughts were clear.
    Echoing the testimony of other psychiatrists, Puryear said that when Yates drowned her children, she did not understand that her conduct was wrong. "She was incapable of knowing that what she did was wrong," Puryear said. "She thought it was right." During cross-examination of Puryear, prosecutor Joe Owmby replayed the tape of Yates' 911 call in which she repeatedly told a dispatcher she wanted the police to come to her house but would not explain why. "Did you find an explanation of why she wouldn't tell the operator she killed her kids?" Owmby asked. "She wouldn't tell me why," Puryear answered.
    Owmby then replayed part of Yates' statement to a homicide detective a few hours after drowning her children. He stopped the tape where Sgt. Eric Mehl asked Yates if she had killed her children because she wanted to be punished by the criminal justice system. "This is the first time she talks about the criminal justice system," Owmby said. "She doesn't," Puryear responded. "Sgt. Mehl does."
    Owmby also presented a brief segment of a home video of Yates' son Noah's seventh birthday Feb. 26, 2001, in an attempt to counter Puryear's statement about the onset of Yates' most recent depression. Puryear said Yates' best friend, Debbie Holmes, had told her she noticed changes in Yates while she was pregnant with her last child, Mary, born Nov. 30, 2000. "She was disheveled, didn't remember things and was wringing her hand," Puryear said Holmes told her. On the tape, Yates sounds happy, although she is not shown. Owmby asked Puryear if seeing the birthday video didn't make her want to reconsider her opinion that Yates had begun to decline even before Mary was born. Puryear said no. "With depression, you have good days and bad days," she said. "This was a child's birthday. She was able to be appropriately happy."
    Defense lawyers George Parnham and Wendell Odom rested Wednesday, midway through the trial's third week, and prosecutors Owmby and Kaylynn Williford will begin calling rebuttal witnesses today. Dr. Park Dietz, a nationally known forensic psychiatrist, is expected to testify today that Yates was sane when she drowned her children.

Key to Yates' Defense Disputed
Carol Christian, Houston Chronicle- 3/8/2002

The prosecution's star witness testified Thursday that he saw no evidence that Andrea Pia Yates had hallucinations at any time before she drowned her children last summer. Dr. Park Dietz, whose testimony 10 years ago helped convince a jury that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sane, took the stand Thursday afternoon as Yates' capital murder trial neared the end of its third week. Dietz said he interviewed Yates for six to eight hours on Nov. 6 and 7.
    The only suggestion that Yates was having hallucinations, Dietz testified, occurred in August 1999 when she was hospitalized at the former Memorial Spring Shadows Glen after her second suicide attempt. Yates told a psychologist that she had a vision of a person being stabbed and heard a voice saying, "Get a knife, get a knife." Yates said she feared she would hurt somebody and thought it was better to end her own life, psychologist James Thompson testified earlier in the trial. "This is the only thing in the entire record that suggests that Mrs. Yates ever gave a basis for saying she had hallucinations," Dietz said. While there were nurses' notes suggesting she might have had hallucinations, Thompson's report was the only one supported with data, Dietz testified. The psychiatrist, called by the prosecution to rebut the testimony of defense witnesses, described the knife vision as an "obsessional intrusive thought," rather than a hallucination.
    Part of the videotape of Dietz's interviews with Yates was shown to the jury Thursday. In the video, Yates told Dietz that she drowned the children because she didn't want them tormented by Satan. By dying, Yates said, the children would go to heaven, be with God and be safe. When Dietz asked who told her to do that, Yates said, "Satan. He just put the thoughts in my head." Later in the same conversation, Dietz asked if the idea was hers or Satan's, and she answered, "My idea."
    Dietz testified that, although Yates may have believed the children were being tormented by Satan or were destined to go to hell, she never mentioned this until the day after killing them and did not try nonlethal ways of protecting them. "She may have believed Satan was in her, but she didn't seek help for the problem," he said.
    Dietz, who returns to the stand today, showed his formidable preparation skills. When asked by prosecutor Joe Owmby what records he had reviewed, Dietz rattled off an exhaustive list of documents as diverse as Yates' high school yearbook and autopsies of the five children. Owmby asked Dietz if it were possible to make an evaluation of a defendant's sanity without reading offense reports. "It's not a good idea," Dietz said. "How bad an idea it is depends on the facts of the case. Sometimes you can miss what really happened. You're left taking the defendant's word." That was an apparent reference to Dr. Lucy Puryear, the final defense witness who testified that, although she spent months on Yates' case, she had not seen police reports, autopsies or the crime scene video. Puryear said Yates was incapable of understanding that her actions were wrong when she drowned her children, meaning that she was legally insane.
    Dietz said that the decline in Yates' mental health should be viewed in the context of her living conditions at the time. Yates made two suicide attempts in the summer of 1999, he said, while she and her husband, Russell Yates, were living in a converted bus with four small children. She had also started homeschooling her children. "To be homeschooling in a bus is something anyone would find quite stressful," said Dietz, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine.
    Other factors that contributed to Yates' condition, Dietz said, included not getting medical attention until only after taking an overdose of sedatives, refusing to take medication because she didn't want to be considered psychotic, refusing electroshock therapy and getting pregnant against her psychiatrist's advice.
    In December, Russell Yates' lawyer filed a motion deriding Dietz -- also founder and head of two consulting firms, Park Dietz & Associates and Threat Assessment Group -- as "the so-called state's expert" who is not a "treating physician." "He is a `testifying doctor' (and television personality), who lives in California," stated the motion, in which Russell Yates asked to be released from state District Judge Belinda Hill's order not to discuss the case. Hill denied the request.
    The psychiatrist testified Thursday that he had asked Russell Yates and his mother, Dora Yates, for interviews but they refused. Earlier Thursday, a bookstore owner who first met Yates a few months before the drownings testified that Yates was open and friendly until she asked her if she planned to have more children. Terry Arnold said Yates had laughed when she complimented her on being thin even after giving birth five times. But when Arnold asked about plans for more children, a sudden wave of sadness washed over Yates, she said. "I felt like I had hit a sore subject," Arnold said. "There was a change in her demeanor ... I thought she was going to cry."

Psychiatrist Can't Say Whether Yates Was Legally Insane
Associated Press, 3/8/2002

The prosecution's expert witness in the capital murder trial of a Houston mother who drowned her five children testified today that he could not say whether she met the definition of legal insanity. Psychiatrist Park Dietz said Andrea Yates called police immediately afterward because she knew her actions were wrong. Yates told Dietz in videotaped interviews that she decided to kill the children the night before the June 20 drownings. "I needed to go ahead and do it," Yates told Dietz during the interview, conducted Nov. 7.
    Yates said she believed her children were regressing behaviorally. All of them struggled during the drownings, she told the psychiatrist, except the baby, Mary. "She wasn't strong enough," Yates said. The oldest, Noah, said something to her, she told Dietz. "I don't know if it was 'I'm sorry' or not," Yates said.
    Dietz was on the stand for a second day of rebuttal testimony for the prosecution, which is attempting to show Yates was legally sane when she killed her children. While Dietz said Yates knew her actions were wrong in the eyes of the law, society and God, he would not give an opinion whether she met the definition of legal insanity.
    Dietz told jurors Thursday that Yates didn't act like someone who believed Satan ordered her to kill her children to save them from eternal damnation. Defense witnesses said delusions and psychosis drove Yates to kill. "I was pretty determined to do what (Satan) told me to do," Yates told Dietz during the November interview. "The fact that she regards it as coming from Satan is the first indication that she knows this is wrong," Dietz said. "She doesn't think this is a good idea that comes from God. She thinks it is an evil idea that comes from Satan." Dietz said Yates didn't seek out a priest or minister, call the police, send her children to a safe place or attempt suicide to try to save her children. "I do expect people with delusions of imminent harm to act as if that is true and protect the ones they love," Dietz said.
    Dietz has worked on other high profile cases including that of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and South Carolina child killer Susan Smith. He was called as a rebuttal witness by prosecutors after the defense rested its case. Dietz said Yates kept thoughts about killing her children a secret because she feared she would be stopped. "Ordinarily when someone keeps a criminal plan secret they do it because it's wrong," he said.
    On the interview with Yates, Dietz asked her why Satan would want her to do something that would save her children from Hell's fires. She said the deaths would result in her being condemned. "You saw it as a sin you were going to commit?" Dietz asked Yates. "Yes," she replied. "Did you struggle against doing it?" the psychiatrist asked. "No," Yates told him. Dietz said Yates became confused and sometimes changed her story during the interview. He thought the changes came because Yates was still depressed and likely suffers from schizophrenia.
    Dietz said a note in Yates' medical records showed Dr. Mohammad Saeed told her husband, Russell, in April that she should not be left alone. "When you have a mother who is this severely impaired, someone has to be with her at all times," Dietz said. "It isn't safe to leave her with the children."

MIT Cites Parents As Issue in Suicide Case
Patrick Healy, Boston Globe- 3/9/2002

Elizabeth Shin, a sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, killed herself two years ago as a result of longstanding emotional problems that were compounded by her parents' disappointment that she was depressed and suicidal, lawyers for MIT argued in court documents filed late yesterday. The documents mark MIT's first detailed response to a $27 million wrongful-death lawsuit that Shin's parents filed against the school in January. The lawsuit alleges gross negligence and medical malpractice, saying at least 10 MIT doctors, officials, and students knew Shin was cutting herself with broken glass and openly threatening suicide, yet never notified her family about her increasingly self-destructive behavior.
    MIT said for the first time yesterday that it kept quiet for fear that involving Shin's parents would only deepen her emotional distress because, the lawyers said, her family had reacted badly to an earlier suicide attempt. But a lawyer for the parents yesterday called the school's response ''outrageous'' and an attempt to shift blame to a family that was still suffering from the loss of their oldest child. Shin, 19, set herself on fire on April 10, 2000, in her Cambridge dormitory room and died of those injuries four days later.
    The university has previously denied responsibility for Shin's death in broad terms and defended itself by saying that telling Shin's parents about her behavior would have violated student-privacy rules. Yesterday the MIT lawyers admitted that doctors and officials knew Shin was depressed and had cut herself and that one of the doctors had diagnosed her as depressed with a possible borderline personality disorder. But while Shin talked to some MIT students and one professor about suicide during the five months before her death, MIT doctors did not hear Shin making such threats and did not consider her in imminent danger, the lawyers said in MIT's 26-page filing in Middlesex Superior Court.

MIT contends problems started in high school
In a preview of the school's likely legal defense, MIT challenged the Shins' argument that their daughter developed a psychiatric disorder during her freshman year at MIT and that school officials subsequently erred by keeping quiet about her suicidal outbursts. The MIT lawyers pointed out that Shin began experiencing emotional problems, including self-mutiliating behavior in the face of stress, during her senior year of high school -- a fact the Shin family has acknowledged.
    In addition, the lawyers briefly implied that Shin's parents were unsympathetic to her troubles, indicating the reason why MIT doctors did not notify her parents about her emotional troubles. At various points in the court documents, MIT officials expressed concern about alienating Shin and their desire to guard her privacy and keep her in therapy. After Shin overdosed on Tylenol her freshman year, MIT lawyers argued, Shin's mother ''considered it a suicide attempt and was reported to be angry at Ms. Shin, disappointed, and sad because of it, and that Ms. Shin's father was reported to be surprised and saddened by her actions.'' At another point, Shin told an MIT psychiarist that she was affected by pressure she felt from her parents to stay and succeed at MIT, despite the academic difficulties she was having. The Shins did not return a phone message seeking comment last night, but their lawyer, David DeLuca, criticized MIT for putting responsibility on the parents.
    ''It's a typical strategy of blame the victim, and if she's not available to blame, then blame her parents,'' he said. ''It's a further tragedy that MIT would seek to damage Mr. and Mrs. Shin further and suggest that Elizabeth was somehow forced into this distress.'' During three separate interviews in January, Shin's parents said they had a close, caring relationship with their daughter but were unaware of her emotional problems. ''Life at MIT wasn't pleasing to her, but she didn't want to worry us,'' said her father, Cho Hyun Shin.
    It was only 10 days before Shin killed herself that an MIT official first saw a clear sign of Shin's suicidal tendencies, according to yesterday's filing. On March 31, MIT acknowledges, Shin told student-life associate dean Arnold Henderson she had not eaten in 48 hours and wondered about making long-term plans when she ''might just end it all one day.'' Henderson chose not to contact Shin's parents because he knew she was seeing MIT psychiatrists regularly and was ''not in a position to determine whether to make such disclosures to Ms. Shin's parents.'' Four days later, on April 4, however, an MIT psychiatrist treating Shin observed no evidence of suicidal ideas or plans. Rather, she said she felt confused and was anxious about her Spanish class.
    Shin's condition had apparently worsened by April 8, when she told an MIT dormmate that she had wanted to kill herself earlier that evening by sticking a knife through her chest, according to the MIT papers. She then talked by phone to an on-call MIT psychiatrist, who was aware of her medical history and who also spoke to a close friend of hers. Based on those conversations, the psychiatrist, Anthony Van Niel, decided against committing her to the mental health infirmary because, MIT said, he felt that she was not a danger to herself and that she would feel punished and alienated if he forced her to stay.
    Early on April 10, Shin told two student friends that she planned to kill herself by taking an overdose of pills with alcohol, and asked one of them to erase her computer files if she went through with it. The students contacted the dorm housemaster, who talked to Van Niel. The doctor decided again that Shin should not be involuntarily committed, however, believing that other intensive treatment options would be more effective, MIT lawyers said. Later that day, Van Niel and the MIT Mental Health Services chief, Peter Reich, made an appointment for Shin to meet on April 11 with doctors working for a partial-hospitalization program. But the evening of April 10, Shin set herself on fire.

Number of suicides at MIT in dispute
   The MIT lawyers also rebutted another central argument in the Shin lawsuit: that the school has failed to deal with student suicide on campus adequately and that the problem is greater at MIT than at many other schools. While acknowledging that a number of MIT students killed themselves between 1990 and 2000, the lawyers rebutted the specific allegation that nine had done so, since the cause of death in some cases was listed as uncertain. The Shins' lawyers have cited medical documents, newspaper clippings, and family information.
    MIT lawyers also rebutted allegations that the Mental Health Services office lacked proper staffing and appropriate procedures. Last year, however, Reich told the Globe that the office was ''straining'' under a skyrocketing caseload of student patients who complained of stress, anxiety, and depression. Between 1995 and 2000, Reich estimated, the number of cases handled by Mental Health increased by 60 percent. Yet he said he had not requested money to hire additional therapists because he felt his staff was doing ''an adequate job.''
    After MIT students complained about a spate of suicides on campus, however, the administration created a mental health task force to examine student health services, which issued a report late last year. The task force called for significantly expanding the staff in the Mental Health office, keeping it open late, reducing the amount of time students must wait to see a clinician, and undertaking a broad awareness campaign on campus. A February 2001 Globe study on suicide at MIT found that 11 students had killed themselves since 1990, a higher rate than at several other elite schools with a science and engineering focus.

Physician Group Claims Unlimited Forced Drugging OK'd by Court
U.S. Newswire, 3/8/2002

WASHINGTON-- Defendants can be forcibly drugged even though they haven't been convicted of any charges and pose no danger to themselves or others. That's the ruling issued yesterday by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in the case of United States vs. Charles Thomas Sell. (see http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/02/03/011862P.pdf ) The 2-1 split decision establishes government power to forcibly medicate a person with mind-altering drugs even before trial.
    ''It's a shocking, inhumane decision. Now, all the government needs are allegations and a cooperative psychiatrist to forcibly drug any citizen,'' said Andrew Schlafly, general counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). That group filed an amicus brief opposing the government drugging. ''It's unprecedented to allow prosecutors to drug peaceful defendants presumed to be innocent. Government cannot force citizens to pledge allegiance to the flag, but now can forcibly medicate them with mind-altering drugs,'' said Schlafly.
    Dr. Sell, a St. Louis dentist, has been imprisoned for more than 4 years, including 1-1/2-half years in solitary confinement after being charged with Medicaid fraud. He has never been brought to trial. While acknowledging that ''the evidence does not support a finding that Sell posed a danger to himself or others'' the majority opinion still found that ''charges of fraud'' alone are ''serious'' enough to justify forced medication. Further, the Court held that there are no limits on the quantity or type of drugs. ''There's no good reason why Dr. Sell has been held so long without trial, and this decision will most likely prolong his imprisonment with no end in sight,'' said Schlafly. The dissenting judge pointed out that even if Dr. Sell were to be found guilty, his sentence would be no more than 41 months -- one year less than he's already served.
    A similar case is pending before the same court to allow the state to forcibly medicate a convicted murderer for execution. ''It's appalling that the court will drug a man presumed to be innocent, even if it's illegal to do the same thing to a convicted killer,'' Schlafly said. He said that AAPS will seek to overturn the ruling. AAPS is a non-partisan, dues-supported professional association of physicians in all practices and specialties, dedicated since 1943 to protecting the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship from third-party interference. For more information on Dr. Sell's case, see http://www.aapsonline.org and click on ''Court Okays Forced Drugging''