Date With the Devil (33 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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C
HAPTER
37
S
WORDPLAY ON A
P
SYCHIATRIST
Dr. Samuel Miles came forward at one forty-five that afternoon to answer questions. He would fit most casting directors' idea of a psychiatrist. With a high forehead, receding gray hair, a matching goatee, deep-set eyes, and wearing a gray suit, with a dark tie, he looked the part.
Jurors appeared particularly interested. This testimony could be crucial in deciding the verdict.
Larry Young asked, “Dr. Miles, what is your occupation?”
“I'm a physician. I specialize in the evaluation and treatment of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse disorders.”
Young said, “We called you now, out of order, and you were able to cancel your appointments and duties you had for today?”
“Yes.”
“As a matter of fact, sir, are you under appointment to examine the defendant, David Mahler?”
“Yes.” Following that answer, the witness spelled out his education and work history, called a curriculum vitae, or CV.
“Can you tell the jury what procedures you used to render an opinion or diagnosis?”
“In general, I rely on history, observations, and tests. In a case like this one, I obtain information from interviewing the defendant and from records provided to me. I may also ask for some testing.” He had requested some psychological and neuropsychological tests to confirm impressions gained through examinations. In addition, said Dr. Miles, he had tried to obtain hospital records from David Mahler being “psychiatrically hospitalized” when he was seventeen years old. Unfortunately, they had been destroyed.
“Did you have a chance to review police reports on the incident for which he has been accused?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In going over the testing and your observations, did you find that there was any type of mental disorder that you would characterize as being present in this gentleman?”
Spectators, lawyers, and jurors leaned forward, determined not to miss a single important word.
“Yes,” said Dr. Miles. “His presentation is consistent with bipolar disorder.”
No one on the prosecution team wanted to hear those words. The statement could undermine all of the investigation, accumulation of evidence, and testimony up to this point.
The witness continued, “It used to be called manic-depressive illness. It is also consistent with cocaine dependence, which at the time of the examination was in remission in a controlled environment... . He did not have cocaine and didn't have access to it. He had cognitive deficits. His ability to think and reason and planning was impaired because of his chronic use of drugs.”
Observers thought that Larry Young must be ecstatic. This witness had placed a golden crown in the defense case—exactly what Young had needed. The defender asked, “Did you find any type of mental deficit due to what you say is the chronic use of drugs?”
“Yes, the deficit is in the ability to plan and reason. He is easily derailed by impulsiveness and by emotion... . On his IQ test ... he did very, very well on the verbal parts. On the performance parts, he did really not very well. This is significant. It's the kind of difference we see in people who have difficulty with brain functioning, with planning and figuring out what to do. He's able to talk well, but not able to do very well.”
Mahler watched and listened with rapt attention. A pink band encircled his left wrist to signify the new jail cell location.
Asked to explain bipolar disorder for the jury, Dr. Miles replied, “It is what we call a new disorder. It's a major mental illness. It's chronic, can be episodic, where a person suffers from changes in mood that are not related to the environment. The changes for bipolar disorder are different from straight depression in that there's at least one episode of mania.
“Mania is sometimes thought of as the opposite of depression. Instead of feeling real bad, someone can feel real good for no good reason. But more often, there's a kind of irritation that goes with mania. So there can be lack of a need for sleep. There can be a feeling of being on top of the world, or a feeling that one is better than everybody else. The person can be speaking more rapidly, maybe thinking so fast that they can't keep up with themselves, easily distracted. In an extreme, we get to a kind of a speech that we call a word salad, where someone can't finish a whole sentence because they get distracted by things around them.”
The doctor's words seemed almost to be a picture-perfect biography of David Mahler. Was he really the poster definition of the mental illness?
Continuing his riveting definition, Dr. Miles said, “So, if someone has at least one episode of that, we call it bipolar disorder.” Observers wondered about that statement. Most people can recall having at least one episode of feeling terrific, followed by a period of depression. Did that make them bipolar?
Obviously delighted with the doctor's definition, which appeared to be a mirror image of the defendant, Larry Young asked, “The irritability you mentioned—can you explain what that is?”
Dr. Miles explained that the condition is a defense against depression encompassing a feeling of being all powerful, denial of vulnerability to being hurt, and a need to attack any threatening event or person.
Young wanted even more. “In a rage attack, can that be a momentary thing, or is it something that goes on for a period of time?”
Rage, said the expert, will generally burn out in a short period of time, while irritability might last for days or weeks.
“When it burns out, does the person realize what they said or did?”
“Sometimes, if they've got the evidence in front of them, they might realize that they've broken something they valued.”
“What if you add to that episode the use of cocaine?”
“Stimulants make mania worse. Drugs like cocaine and amphetamines, on their own, cause irritability. Alcohol impairs judgment... . People who are bipolar, in the course of their lifetime, about two-thirds of them, will at some point suffer from substance use disorder ... to the point of losing control either periodically in a binge of abuse.”
“And you state that Mr. Mahler has been doing that since he was seventeen?”
“Yes.”
“How old is he now? Do you recall?”
“In his midforties.” (Mahler would be forty-five on his next birthday, in March.)
“If someone is in such a rage, could they be doing a gibberish-type vocalization?”
“That might happen, yes.”
“And could they also be screaming?”
“Yes.” The exchange brought to mind descriptions from Donnie Van Develde and Karl Norvik of David Mahler screaming at Kristin Baldwin shortly before her death.
Young elicited from the witness statements that he had studied a personal history of the defendant and had collected information from his childhood onward. Dr. Miles said, “He had a troubled childhood. His parents were divorced. He was kept from his father for a while, but he felt a close relationship with him. He had behavioral problems in school and started using quaaludes in his teens.”
Mahler's relationship with his father had been portrayed differently by other sources who knew him. They had portrayed it as strained and full of anger.
“In your examination of Mr. Mahler, did you go into his remembrances or impressions of what happened in this incident?”
“Yes. His description was consistent with a period of being out of control. He explained that he had some interactions that evening—actually, he'd been kind of in an altered state for a while up to that point. But somebody had come by who wanted some money from him, and he was irritated by that and also threatened. He went to an ATM machine and got the money and this was around eleven thirty at night. He came back to the room and found Kristi with one of the tenants.” The witness presumably referred to Donnie Van Develde but did not use the tenant's name. Jurors would have to decide the meaning of his words. “He was irritated by that and told the tenant to leave. He said he later realized the tenant wanted some drugs.”
“Did he indicate what the money was for?”
“He had asked this [other] person to help him scare a woman by planting some drugs on her and have a corrupt police officer make like he was arresting her. Mr. Mahler had decided not to go through with that and told the guy to call it off, but the guy was now wanting money and saying he had gotten other people involved and needed to pay them off. He was irritated by that. He felt threatened—like if he did not give the guy the money, that he would be injured.”
At the defense table, Detective Vicki Bynum glanced at Bobby Grace with a skeptical look. This alleged trip to an ATM had never been brought up in any of the previous statements. The entire story sounded to her like more of Mahler's duplicity.
Young asked, “What happened then as he explained it to you?”
Dr. Miles's continued account left out any reference to the individual allegedly at Cole Crest who was there demanding money. He seemed to have vanished. “Well, Mr. Mahler asked the tenant, you know, ‘Why are you here with the door shut?' And then he argued a little with Kristi. Donnie left and then the argument was over. He was calmed down and he was naked in bed doing some cocaine. And he felt it was time for Kristi to do her thing.”
“Did he mention whether or not he had been screaming or yelling at any point that evening?”
“He did not. He called Donnie back to find out what he had been there for, and it turned out Donnie wanted drugs. He asked Kristi if she had any with her, but she didn't respond. He asked her eight or ten times, and she still didn't answer. He felt irritated. He snapped. He picked up the gun thinking, you know, this is—this will scare her and him into, you know, answering the question. And then he doesn't know what happened next, but the gun went off. He doesn't know if it went off when Donnie was trying to get it from him or whatever. He had not shot a gun since he was ten years old in camp.”
Urged by Larry Young to continue, Dr. Miles said, “Well, at the point the gun went off, Donnie left and [Mahler] doesn't remember what he did next. But eventually he put his suit on because he wanted to get into the frame of being more organized—that, if he had a suit on, then he's a lawyer and he's organized and he can think. Without the suit on, he's a drug addict and he's all over the place and can't think.”
To Vicki Bynum and several spectators, the story seemed increasingly bizarre, too pat, and hard to believe. A case could be made that David Mahler had taken bits and pieces from testimony at the preliminary hearing and built a patchwork narrative for the doctor. He had woven self-serving, made-up details around verifiable facts to create this scenario of an unfortunate man driven by bipolar disorder.
Young seemed to like the image of him donning a suit. “Boy, that's almost like Clark Kent putting on a Superman suit, isn't it?” The psychiatrist agreed. Young asked, “Now, was this consistent with your diagnosis of a bipolar individual?”
The answer may not have been what the defender expected. “It was, and it wasn't. It was, I think, something very unusual about him.”
“Wasn't it somewhat of a grandiose fantasy?”
“I don't think of it in those terms, because, in fact, he was a lawyer. I thought it represented his insight into the fact that he wasn't thinking clearly and needed to, because he was confronted by something awful.”
Young followed up with a few more questions to reaffirm the manic and the depressive aspects of Mahler's behavior, plus the possibility that Mahler felt remorse about the event.
If Las Vegas had put odds on a verdict of murder versus manslaughter at that moment, there would have been a long line of gamblers placing tons of money on the latter.
With that, Larry Young turned the witness over to Bobby Grace.
The prosecutor first established that the evaluation by Dr. Miles had been developed after conversations with the defendant. Then he asked, “When was the first time you spoke to him?”

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