The Insanity Plea (30 page)

Wayne began. “Your name is Sarah Little.
You’re my mother and Dan’s mother.”

“That’s correct and I’m proud of both
of you boys.”

Wayne took his time with his mother. For
her part, Sarah sat very straight, hands holding a handkerchief folded in her
lap as she focused on the jury. Wayne gently walked his mother through being
raised on the island, her first marriage, the birth of Dan, her divorce,
remarriage and Wayne’s birth. He took more time emphasizing Dan’s athletic and
academic career.

“I swear I don’t know when I was the
most proud, when he threw that pass to Jimmy Ray to win the championship, or
when he graduated at the top of his UT Law class. I suppose I should say it was
his number one ranking at law school.” She hesitated a moment before turning to
the jury and said, “but that championship game was one I’ll never forget.”

Nearly every juror and Judge
Fernandez nodded in agreement. Even Dan’s face brightened at the memory.

Wayne hated to make his mother
re-live the bad times with Dan. However, he had warned her that he had no
choice if he was to save Dan’s life. Sarah understood and thought she was
prepared for it until Wayne asked the first question about Dan’s mental illness
and when she learned of it.

Sarah took off her glasses, raised
her handkerchief to her eyes and wiped tears away before she could reply. She
explained her first real knowledge of a problem was when Dan was committed for
the first time. She had no idea what paranoid schizophrenia was and assumed
that a hospitalization and some medications would make him well. Of course,
they didn’t. She got regular calls from Dan’s wife who grew more and more
concerned until she finally gave up and left Dan. Divorce soon followed. Dan
lost his job. Sarah took him in, figuring that her care and a lot of chicken
soup would get him well.

“It didn’t work,” she told the jury. She
explained the years of frustration with Dan in her house, in the hospital, on
the street and back in her house before the cycle repeated itself.

“I came home from the library one
afternoon,” Sarah said. “All of the smoke detectors in the house were hanging
by their wires and most of the light fixtures had been removed from the
ceiling. When I asked Dan what was going on, he said that he knew the FBI was
spying on him and he was looking for the hidden cameras. I tried to convince
him that no one was doing any such thing.” Sarah looked at the jury with a
hopeless expression. “He didn’t believe me. He said the voices knew what was
real. I was just a foolish old woman.”

The courtroom was quiet as Wayne
continued, “What else, Mom? I mean, Mrs. Little.”

Sarah thought for a moment and looked
down at her hands that were slowly twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. “He
spent a lot of time watching cartoons. Said that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
and Bart Simpson were talking directly to him, calling him by name and telling
him to watch out because his enemies were trying to kill him.”

 
Wayne figured that he had to cover the two
violent incidents he knew about, the one where she awoke to find him standing
over her with a butcher knife, yelling that she was the senior witch in a coven
that had been trying to kill him for weeks; then there was the one when he
tried to set fire to her house with her in it, his only explanation being that
he was directed by Satan to ignite the fires of hell. As this testimony came
out, the jury looked at Dan, not sure how anyone could do these things to his
own mother.

The testimony lasted nearly all
morning. Dan was becoming more agitated, first twisting in his chair, then
moving to the audience where there was space on the end of the bench near a
window. Judge Fernandez noticed and called Barney up beside his bench.

“Watch him, Barney. I’m not sure
what’s going to happen.”

Barney nodded and moved to the wall
in a standing position. Dan was mumbling something to himself, then rose and
returned to his seat at counsel table.

As his mother finished describing how
he set fire to the house and she escaped out the back door, Dan could take it
no more. He bolted to his feet, tears streaming down his face.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s take our
lunch recess. Would all attorneys please remain in the courtroom?”

When the jury was gone and Dan had
been returned to the holding cell, the lawyers remained. Dr. Parke looked on
with professional fascination.

“Wayne, I know you didn’t cause this,
but we can’t have another outburst. I don’t want to have to try this son of a
bitch again, and, Casey, you put those exact words in the record.”

Casey nodded.

“If it happens again, I’ll have to
get Dr. Adashek over here and have him try some other medications.”

Wayne shoved his hands in his pants
pockets and was silent at counsel table, trying to get control of his emotions.
“I understand, Judge. I’ll talk to him. I’ll even get Mom back there with me. That’s
all I can do. And, Judge, I’ll be passing this witness after lunch.”

The judge excused them until
one-thirty. Wayne and Sarah went back to the holding cell.

After lunch, the judge took the
bench. Before the jurors were escorted to their seats, Wayne said that Dan
would like to address the court. Harry Klein gestured with his hand that it was
all right.

“Your Honor, I’m deeply sorry. As you
know, I used to be a lawyer. I apologize to the Court and promise this won’t
happen again.”

The judge took off his glasses,
pulled a red bandanna from somewhere under his robe and wiped them. “Apology
accepted, Dan. Let’s move on. Wayne says he’s passing this witness. Any cross
from the prosecution?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Kate replied. “I’ll
try to make it brief and I certainly don’t want to upset Mrs. Little any more.”

When the jury was in the box and
Sarah returned to her place, Kate began softly, “Mrs. Little, I want to ask you
about those last two events you described, where I understand you feared for
your life. And I apologize in advance for having to bring them up again.”

Sarah nodded without speaking.

“After those events, the one with the
knife and the one where Mr. Little set your house on fire, did he express
regret to you for what he had done?”

Sarah’s voice was barely audible. “Yes,
Ms. Rasmussen. He did. He told me he was sorry.”

“Then, Mrs. Little, you would agree
that Dan understood what he was doing even when he was psychotic and clearly
not in his right mind?”

Wayne didn’t like where this was
leading and leaped to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor, Mrs. Little is not
trained as a psychiatrist. She’s not an expert.”

The judge stared at the ceiling and
then out the window as he thought about his ruling. “Overruled. I think a
mother knows what’s in her son’s mind. Please answer the question.”

Sarah looked at Wayne and then at Dan
before saying, “I’m only his mother, but I’d have to say that by the next day
he certainly knew what he had done was wrong.”

Kate let a little smile cross her
face and said she had no further questions. Dr. Parke was rapidly scribbling on
a yellow legal pad. His face was down and the jury could not see that he also
was smiling.

Wayne usually tried and succeeded in
maintaining a poker face during trial. No matter how bad things were going, a
juror would never see his expression change. This time, when he heard his
mother’s last answer, he buried his face in his hands while he contemplated the
effect her testimony might have as it was repeated with each witness still to
come.

The judge declared a short recess. Wayne
escorted Sarah to her seat in the audience and reassured his mother that her
testimony had been fine.

When Wayne returned to their counsel
table, the Judge asked, “Wayne, you’ve got Dr. Adashek next, right?”

Wayne had regained his composure
during the short break and replied that Dr. Adashek should be in the hall.
 
Five minutes later, Barney had the jury in the
box, walked out the door and returned with Dr. Adashek who was dressed in gray
slacks, a white coat and dark blue tie. His name tag identified him as Omar
Adashek, M. D. Most jurors concluded he had just come from the hospital or
clinic. Spotting Dr. Parke in the audience, he paused to shake his hand. He had
a manila folder about four inches thick tucked under his left arm. The label on
the folder read “Daniel Little.”

After he was sworn, he took the
stand, placed the folder in front of him and, without prompting, turned to the
jury and said, “Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen.”

Most of the jurors replied, “Afternoon,
Doctor.”

Wayne liked how this was starting. In
response to questions, Dr. Adashek described his youth and medical school and residency
in Austria. A fellowship drew him to Johns Hopkins where he met his wife, a
neurologist in residency. She was from Texas and when they were both offered
positions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, he became an
islander. That was twenty years before. Now he was a full professor. Over the
years he had assumed the role of primary psychiatrist at the state prison
system’s hospital in Galveston and had further responsibility for the mentally
ill incarcerated in the Galveston County jail.

“Why psychiatry, Doctor Adashek?” Wayne
continued.

The witness turned to the jury. “Austria
was the home of Sigmund Freud, the father of psycho-analysis. I actually began
reading his studies in high school. Freud captivated me early in my life. I’ve
been trying to unravel the mysteries of the human mind ever since.”

Wayne studied the jury briefly and
made a decision. “Doctor, let’s start at the present and then we’ll back up to
some of your early treatment of Dan. First, as I look at my brother here beside
me, he looks pretty normal, dressed appropriately, understands what is going on.
You’re his treating psychiatrist. Is he sane?”

“Mr. Little, Dan is doing very well
at the moment. After he was arrested, we tried various medications and
combinations of medications. At first none worked and then we tried some of the
second generation anti-psychotics. He responded reasonably well, only the side
effects were such that he would eventually quit taking them.
 
You may recall that after you got involved we
talked about an experimental drug that I was authorized to use by the FDA. Once
we got him on that med, he has made remarkable improvement, probably as much as
any paranoid schizophrenic I’ve seen in my entire career. So, to answer your
question, at this moment he is certainly sane.”

Dan nodded his head in agreement with
the witness. Two male jurors looked at Dan and then at the doctor, obviously
confused about what they were seeing compared to the first day of trial. Wayne
picked up on their confusion and asked, “Doctor, these jurors saw a different
personality in Dan earlier. What happened?”

Dr. Adashek crossed his legs and
folded his hands over his right knee as he shook his head. “That was probably
my fault. Dan had progressed so well in the past few months that I was only
seeing him every two weeks. When the medicine started working, Dan had asked to
be taken off it. He thought it wasn’t fair for the jury to see him as he is now
instead of how he was when he was arrested. I told him we had a court order to
keep him on his medication. I should have seen it coming. We now know that
sometime, a week or ten days before the trial started, he quit taking his
medicine. We call it cheeking the pills. The attendant watches as he puts the
pill in his mouth and then swallows water. If the patient doesn’t want the
medication, he will swallow the water and not the pill. Then, when he has to go
to the bathroom, he’ll discard the pill.”

“How do you know that is what
happened here?”

“Two ways. One is his behavior on
that first day of trial. The other is we checked his medication level through a
blood test and it was negative. After Judge Fernandez called me, we gave him an
injection of the same medication. That’s why he is doing well again. That shot should
last about a month.”

Wayne put his hand on Dan’s shoulder.
“So, which is the real Dan, the one we see now or the one on that first day?”

“They’re both Dan. The one on the
first day of trial was how he was on the streets. The one here is on a
medication that seems to be working.”

To make sure the jury was following,
Wayne rose, walked to the witness stand and hefted a thick folder. “Somewhere
in here is your evaluation of Dan on the day after he was arrested, correct?”

“Yes, sir. I could find it if you
like.”

Wayne walked over to the evidence
table and dropped the medical file with a thud loud enough to startle the
jurors on the front row. “So, Doctor, which is more like Dan’s condition on
that day of his arrest, the Dan here or the Dan of the first day of trial?”

Klein elbowed Kate to her feet and
she sputtered, “Objection, Your Honor. He didn’t see the defendant in the
courtroom. No foundation for the question.”

Felix peered over his glasses at
Kate. “Now, Ms. Rasmussen, we know that Dr. Adashek saw Dan within a couple of
hours after we recessed. I suspect he can answer the question.”