-Caveat Lector- What's happening in the Carolinas? They sure seem to have a *lot* of "paranoid schizophrenics"...
====== MENTALLY ILL OR READY FOR TRIAL? MAN MIGHT BE TRIED IN MOTHER'S KILLING CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, SUNDAY May 15, 1988 by GARY L. WRIGHT, Staff Writer Page number 1A (CHARLOTTE) - In a Dec. 1, 1984, letter to Mecklenburg mental health officials, Emily Cannon described her frustration in trying to get help for her mentally disturbed and often violent 20-year-old son. Four days later the 40-year-old South Mecklenburg High School history teacher was dead - beaten with a blunt object, cut with a butcher knife and dumped in a patch of woods in northwest Charlotte. For 3 1/2 years since, her son and accused killer, Bobby Cannon, has lived in state mental hospitals, judged mentally ill and unable to stand trial. Now, however, a state psychiatrist reports improvement in the man who once said God told him to kill his mother. Bobby Cannon, says Dr. Patricio Lara, is capable of standing trial. Lara's report has touched off a fight over releasing Cannon from Broughton Hospital in Morganton for return to face murder charges in Mecklenburg County. Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorney Gentry Caudill wants to try Cannon this summer, and has announced he'll seek the death penalty. Cannon's attorneys, Mecklenburg Public Defender Isabel Day and Harold Bender, believe Cannon, now 23, is still mentally ill. They have asked that the trial be delayed until another hearing to determine whether Cannon is competent. In an interview last week, Robert Cannon said his son should not be held accountable for his former wife's slaying. "The boy is not well," said the 47-year-old principal at Huntingtowne Farms Elementary School. "I doubt if he ever will be. He knows his mother is dead. He has an understanding that he took his mother's life. "As to why it happened, I doubt he will ever understand." Bobby Cannon, who once said he "hears voices of trillions of other people" telling him what to do, was first declared mentally ill and committed to Broughton following a competency hearing in April 1985. Cannon had received psychiatric care since he was a senior at West Charlotte High School in 1981. Once a model student, his grades suddenly dropped off and his teachers said he seemed a different person. In September 1982 he attacked his mother for the first time, threatening her with a screwdriver. The next day he was voluntarily committed to the Mecklenburg County Mental Health Center. Psychiatrists, however, said Bobby Cannon was not mentally ill at the time and discharged him. Less than a month later, he attacked both his parents with a board. Robert Cannon required emergency medical treatment and stitches. Emily Cannon was knocked unconscious and hospitalized for a week. Bobby Cannon's psychiatric treatment continued off and on until Emily Cannon was killed in December 1984. During the 1985 competency hearing, Cannon was described by psychiatrists as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic and a danger to himself and others. In court documents filed at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, Day said Cannon was unable to differentiate between reality and delusion. ===== PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS SHOOTING SUSPECT IS SCHIZOPHRENIC CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, FRIDAY April 7, 1989 Associated Press Page number 5D WINSTON-SALEM - A psychologist testified Thursday that Michael Charles Hayes is a paranoid schizophrenic who was suffering delusions the night four people were killed and five were wounded by gunfire. Dr. Jerry Wayne Noble, who spent about 12 hours testing and interviewing Hayes after the shootings, found that the 25-year-old moped mechanic was operating under a variety of misbeliefs July 17, including that he was on a mission from God to rid the world of demons. In interviews with Noble, Hayes said God spoke to him at least three times before the shootings and told him he would know the demons by their "glazed eyes, fixed stares, the odor of their breath and by their not knowing their way around." Hayes of Davidson County is charged with four counts of murder and eight counts of assault stemming from a rampage in which a .22-caliber rifle was fired at motorists passing through a Forsyth County neighborhood. Noble's statements followed testimony by acquaintances and family members that they had noticed drastic changes in Hayes' behavior. The defendant's wife of four years, Karen Hayes, testified Thursday that she had left her husband days before the incident because he had been acting strangely and had failed to come home nights. Judge James Beaty Jr. disallowed some of her testimony. Still, the judge allowed Noble to relate statements she made while Noble was gathering her husband's medical history. In the week before the shootings, she told Noble, Hayes had become unusually irritable. On the Wednesday before the killings - the day she left him - she said, he called her demon-possessed. By Friday, he told her, he had found seven or eight new girlfriends, had wealth in the millions of dollars and would soon be going on tour with the rock group Van Halen. Hayes' attorneys, Gregory Davis and Michael Grace, argue that the defendant was insane when the shootings occurred. Noble said he found the defendant able to stand trial. But the psychologist said he did not think Hayes understood that he had killed four people. ----- MAN SEEKS TO LEAVE MENTAL HOSPITAL CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, THURSDAY July 13, 1989 Associated Press Page number 3B WINSTON-SALEM - Three months after being found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting deaths of four people, Michael Charles Hayes is trying to win his release from a state mental hospital, a prosecutor says. "I think he has a hearing next week," said Eric Saunders, an assistant district attorney who helped prosecute Hayes. "That's what I've been informed. At this point, it's being contested. That means that the attorney who is representing Michael Hayes is contesting his confinement." Hayes was found not guilty April 14 of killing four people and wounding five others the night of July 17, 1988. He told investigators he was killing "demons." He was ordered committed to Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh but can be released under state law when a doctor rules that he is no longer a danger to himself or others. ===== WOMAN GETS LIFE FOR MURDERING SCHIZOPHRENIC BROTHER CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, THURSDAY May 25, 1989 by DIANE SUCHETKA, Staff Writer Page number 1A CHESTER, S.C. - Lothell Tate sobbed Wednesday as 6th Circuit Judge Don Rushing told her the way she murdered her schizophrenic brother "truly was horrible" and then sentenced her to life in prison. "It was as brutal and dispassionate a murder as I've had a chance to see as a trial judge," Rushing told Tate, 32, in Chester County General Sessions Court. "The law of the state is clear . . . that you be committed to life in prison." Tate, of Gastonia, cried softly, wiped her nose with a tissue and made no comment as officers led her from the courtroom after the guilty verdict was announced at 2:30 p.m. Her mother, Pauline Wilkerson, crying afterward, refused to comment. She was the only family member in the courtroom when the two-day trial ended. Jurors had deliberated for about an hour. Tate must serve a minimum of 20 years, but public defender Tyre Lee told the judge he will appeal. He could not be reached for comment after the trial. Tate, who confessed to police and jurors that she shot her brother Malcoum Tate 13 times in December, said she did it because she loved him, and life with him "was a living hell." "I was scared that Malcoum was going to come in the house and hurt somebody or kill somebody . . . ," she told the jury during 45 minutes of testimony Tuesday. "I was scared. I was scared for my daughter." According to testimony, Lothell Tate and Wilkerson drove Malcoum Tate from Gastonia to Chester County late Dec. 18. When Malcoum Tate stepped onto the roadside to relieve himself, Lothell shot him, reloaded her mother's .25-caliber semi-automatic gun and shot him again. When she felt no pulse, Lothell Tate and her mother rolled Malcoum Tate's body into a gully, covered it with leaves and a dog food bag and drove home. "I said to Malcoum, I said, Malcoum, I love you, and I only want what's best for you, and I'm sorry,' and I shot him . . . ," Lothell Tate said Tuesday between sobs. "And I told him again, Malcoum, I love you, and I'm sorry,' and I shot him again until he quit moving." Wilkerson, 62, of Gastonia, also has been charged with murder. Her trial will likely begin in July, and Justice has said charges against her could be reduced. Malcoum Tate, 34, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at least as early as 1977. He had been hospitalized five times. Lothell and other family members have said Malcoum threatened them and said he believed God was telling him to kill Lothell Tate's daughter, now 8, and other family members. He kicked down their apartment door one morning last fall, and the family was evicted, Lothell Tate said. ======= SUSPECT IN KILLING RULED INCOMPETENT CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, WEDNESDAY July 19, 1989 by ED MARTIN, Staff Writer Page number 4B (CHARLOTTE) - A man who was in and out of the mental health system for a decade before he was accused of killing a Charlotte businessman was ruled incompetent to stand trial Tuesday. Tony Harrison, 36, is a chronic schizophrenic who couldn't tell right from wrong when George Kaloudis was shot to death on June 1, says the report of Dr. Bob Rollins, state forensic psychiatrist. In his report to Mecklenburg County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Griffin, Rollins says Harrison does not understand the murder charge against him and cannot help his attorney prepare his defense. Police say Harrison walked into Kaloudis's home, either by mistake or in search of food, and shot Kaloudis when confronted. Kaloudis, 59, was a Greek immigrant who often talked about his love for America. He had operated several restaurants. Harrison had been committed to state mental hospitals four times, dating to the early 1980s. Harrison's Glenwood Drive neighbors in northwest Charlotte say his behavior became increasingly strange before Kaloudis's death. They said they often saw him kneeling in his driveway or in their yards, laughing, talking to himself and praying. In March, three months before the shooting, Harrison told his sister that "devils and angels" were telling him to kill someone. Family members tried to have him involuntarily committed to a state hospital. ===== SUMTER MAN GETS LIFE TERMS: SUSPECT ENTERS GUILTY BUT MENTALLY ILL PLEA The State (Columbia, SC), TUESDAY November 22, 1988 by JAN TUTEN, Camden Bureau Page number 1C A Sumter man charged with a string of crimes that included four murders and assaults on two other people pleaded guilty but mentally ill Monday. Circuit Judge James M. Morris sentenced Phillip Johnson, 28, to eight consecutive life terms plus an additional 141 years during a hearing that initially was scheduled for pretrial motions. The guilty but mentally ill plea means Johnson will receive psychiatric counseling before he becomes a member of the main prison population. Prosecutors had intended to seek the death penalty against Johnson. His trial had been set for Dec. 5. Third Circuit Solicitor Wade S. Kolb Jr. said prosecutors and defense attorneys had been discussing a plea ''for some time'' and reached an agreement Monday. The investigating officers and the victims' families agreed to the plea arrangement, Kolb said. ''That and the factor of his mental illness and the Limmie Arthur decision ,made us decide not to go forward with seeking the death penalty,'' Kolb said. The South Carolina Supreme Court in October reversed a death penalty conviction for Arthur, a Richland County man with an IQ of 65 and the mental capacity of a 10-year-old. The high court ruled in that case that a trial judge must go to great lengths in determining if a defendant fully understands his rights. Johnson, who also is mentally retarded with an IQ of 62, had been found competent to stand trial, Kolb said, but also was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Kolb said the state's sole evidence in the four murders was a confession, during which Johnson claimed ''evil spirits'' told him to commit the crimes. ===== S.C. KILLER SCHIZOPHRENIC, HIS BEHAVIOR 'BIZARRE,' PSYCHIATRIST TESTIFIES CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, FRIDAY June 1, 1990 Associated Press Page number 3D COLUMBIA, SC - Death row inmate Larry Gene Bell is a lunatic who believes he is Jesus Christ, smears himself with excrement and urinates in drinks, his lawyers and a psychiatrist say. At a court hearing, Dr. Jonas Rappeport, a Baltimore forensic psychiatrist, said Bell, formerly of Charlotte, is a paranoid schizophrenic whose inability to perceive reality has gotten worse as he has gotten older. He said Bell hears voices, including that of the sister of one of his murder victims, and often falls into trances. "He thinks people know his thoughts and ideas around the world," Rappeport said. "This is an individual who goes off into bizarre, unusual behavior for reasons that are not obvious to anyone else." Rappeport testified Wednesday at a hearing before Special Circuit Judge Walter Bristow, who is being asked to overturn Bell's death sentence and conviction for the 1985 murder of Shari Smith, 17, of Lexington County. Bell was sentenced to die in the electric chair for the 1985 murder of 9-year-old Debra May Helmick, who was kidnapped from her home in Richland County. And Charlotte police have considered Bell a suspect in the Nov. 18, 1984, disappearance of Sandee Cornett. Bell, 41, a former Gilbert electrician, was convicted of the two murders in separate trials in Berkeley and Pickens counties. One of Bell's court-appointed lawyers, Stephen Morrison, said Bell has smeared food and his excrement on himself and urinated in tea given him in his cell. Prosecutors contend Bell's behavior is an act designed to help him avoid the electric chair. The state Supreme Court upheld Bell's conviction and death sentence in 1988, ruling there were no legal flaws in Bell's 1986 trial for Shari's murder. Bell is appealing his conviction and death sentence for Debra's murder. The U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled whether it will consider hearing the appeal in that case. ===== RIMERT WILL GO TO PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL BEFORE PRISON Charlotte Observer, THURSDAY September 19, 1991 by LOLO PENDERGRAST and DAN HUNTLEY, Staff Writers Page number 1Y Doctors said Wednesday that Gary Allen Rimert suffers from paranoid schizophrenia - an incurable "thought disease" that probably will keep him in a state mental hospital or prison for life. Rimert, 22, of Lafayette, Ind., was found guilty but mentally ill Wednesday on charges of murdering his grandmother, her husband and two next-door neighbors in River Hills in July 1990. He was sentenced to four life terms, which he will serve in a psychiatric hospital until he is deemed ready to join the general prison population in a maximum-security facility. The guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict is a relatively recent addition to the S.C. Code of Laws. "I don't believe any states had guilty-but-mentally-ill verdicts before the late 1970s, and South Carolina didn't have it until about 1984," said USC law professor William McAninch, the author of Criminal Law of South Carolina. Dr. Donald Morgan, a USC psychiatry professor and former Walter Reed Army Medical Center chief psychiatrist, told the court he examined the cases of 100 schizophrenic prisoners in S.C. prisons. He said the 24 who were found guilty but mentally ill received no more treatment than the 76 who were found guilty. During this week's trial, Morgan testified Rimert showed classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. He suffered illogical thoughts, staid emotions and command hallucinations - outside voices that order a person to do things. Records showed Rimert was treated for a psychotic episode a month before the killings. He was taking Loxitane, an anti-psychotic drug that softens the symptoms of schizophrenia, court records showed. Generally diagnosed when its victims are teenagers, the illness is biological, traced in recent years to the brain's inability to metabolize nutrients. Rimert also suffered the accompanying paranoia, feelings that police or other people wanted to hurt him and could read or inject thoughts into his mind. He suffered a sensation that his skin was crawling or burning, common among paranoid schizophrenics, Morgan said. Dr. Larry Montgomery, a forensic psychiatrist at the William S. Hall Institute in Columbia, testified Rimert followed orders to kill the two couples or burn in hell. Forty percent of paranoid schizophrenics hear and follow command hallucinations, according to medical studies. Rimert didn't fully realize he'd killed his grandparents - and he didn't cry about it - until months later, said Montgomery, who testified for both the defense and the prosecution. He told a nurse, "I scared my grandparents" and was segregated from other patients because he fought over the phone. "He said he had to call his grandparents," Montgomery testified. Morgan, who testified for the defense, said the disease stopped Rimert from making the right moral choices. "The key thing is that he was obeying voices that gave him no option," Morgan testified. "I don't believe there was any possibility he could tell right from wrong." ----- HOSPITAL RELEASED MAN BEFORE 4 WERE KILLED The State (Columbia, SC)-- TUESDAY September 17, 1991 ASSOCIATED PRESS Page number 4B YORK - A 22-year-old man accused of killing his grandparents and another elderly couple was released from an Indiana hospital days before the slayings because his insurance coverage expired, a defense lawyer said Monday during opening arguments in the murder trial. Gary Rimert of Lafayette, Ind., is accused of killing his grandparents, 81-year-old Henry and 82-year-old Alice Rohrs, and their River Hills neighbors, 71-year-old Ralph and 69-year-old Dee Petersen. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the four murder charges Monday and to four charges of the use of a knife in the commission of a murder. Earlier in the day, Circuit Court Judge Paul Short found Rimert competent to stand trial. Rimert faces four life terms in prison or an indefinite term in a psychiatric hospital if convicted. Two days before the July 14, 1990, killings in the posh Lake Wylie community, Rimert was released from a hospital in Lafayette where he spent less than a month for psychiatric treatment. ''He (Rimert) was admitted to Home Hospital for 30 days and he was kicked out of the hospital on the 27th day,'' defense lawyer David Belser said Monday. ''The administrator of the hospital sent his mother a memorandum reminding her that he only had three days left on his hospital coverage,'' Belser said. Home Hospital officials in Lafayette could not be reached Monday night for comment. Two days after his release, Rimert hopped in his car for what Belser described as an imaginary journey,'that lasted until the morning of July 14, 1990. ''The original plan was to go to Florida to save his girlfriend from being a prostitute. But he ran out of money and decided to visit his grandparents in River Hills,'' Belser said. ''He arrived at 8 o'clock that morning and within 2 hours four people were dead.'' Authorities said Rimert was hallucinating during the stabbings and did not have his medication. The murdered couples all had been stabbed several times with a 14-inch carving knife, and Rimert told police he killed them, according to arrest warrants. In late December, psychiatrists at the State Hospital in Columbia declared that Rimert was insane at the time of the slayings. He was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is thought to be caused by an organic or biological deficiency that can be controlled by medication. At the request of York-area Solicitor Larry Grant, Rimert has spent the past 14 months in the State Hospital undergoing psychiatric treatment and evaluation. He told jurors details about Rimert to bolster the insanity defense. ''The voices were urging him to kill his grandparents and their neighbors or burn in hell. And he fought a losing battle with these voices,'' Belser said. ===== HORNSBY GUILTY BUT MENTALLY ILL IN 1992 SLAYING, JURY DECIDES The State (Columbia, SC) FRIDAY September 2, 1994 by LISA GREENE, Staff Writer Page number B3 A jury found a Richland County man guilty but mentally ill Thursday in the 1992 murder of a 73-year-old man. Brent Hornsby, 39, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for murder and first-degree burglary. He will be eligible for parole in 20 years. Hornsby stabbed Calvin Henry, 73, in the chest with a 14-inch bayonet knife in November 1992. Henry had just returned home from choir practice to care for his invalid wife, who had multiple sclerosis. Both sides agreed that Hornsby, a paranoid schizophrenic, has mental problems. But his lawyer said Hornsby should be found not guilty because he is insane. The prosecutor said Hornsby was guilty but mentally ill. If Hornsby had been found not guilty by reason of insanity, he would have gone to the state hospital, spending anywhere from four months to life there. A court hearing would have been required to release him. Instead, Hornsby will go a psychiatric unit in the Department of Corrections, then be imprisoned with other inmates. Prosecutors believe Hornsby was the first Richland County defendant to use an insanity defense in a murder case in about 15 years. Hornsby's lawyer, chief public defender Jeff Bloom, said he was satisfied with the verdict. He said he achieved his main goal before the trial, when prosecutors decided not to seek a death sentence against Hornsby. But Bloom said he still is worried that Hornsby won't get the help he needs. ''My concern is that mentally ill defendants are not getting the type of treatment they need in prison,'' he said. Psychiatrists testified that Hornsby, who has had mental problems since 1973, has hallucinations, sometimes thinks he can communicate with people telepathically, has irrational fears that others may harm or kill him, and sometimes thinks that inanimate objects, such as furniture, can speak to him. ===== MAN MIGHT FACE TRIAL IN 2 SLAYINGS COMPETENCY HEARING TODAY The State (Columbia, SC )-- Monday, September 8, 1997 by MICHELLE R. DAVIS Staff Writer Page number B1 Four years ago, police say, Allen Johnson killed his girlfriend's two children, watched television, then pedaled his bicycle to a convenience store to report the crimes. But Johnson, who could face the death penalty, has never come before a jury. Three years ago, evaluators at the state Department of Mental Health found he was not competent to stand trial, and he has been hospitalized ever since. Today, Circuit Judge Gary Clary will hold a hearing in a Richland County courtroom to determine if Johnson, 29, is well enough to be tried. A recent evaluation by a different psychiatrist found that Johnson was able to understand court proceedings and assist in his defense. Normally, when defendants are found incompetent to stand trial, the charges pending against them are nullified but can be reinstated later. In this case, prosecutors with the 5th Circuit solicitor's office, left the charges - including notification they would seek the death penalty - pending, Solicitor Barney Giese said. Johnson is accused of killing the 4-year-old son and 8-month-old daughter of Sylvia Gilmore on Aug. 22, 1993. Johnson had been living with Gilmore at her Saxon Homes apartment. Johnson's attorney, Richland County Chief Public Defender Jeff Bloom, said he questions whether his client can really help with his case after years of medication. "Competence is something that can change rapidly," Bloom said. While Johnson may be found competent today, on the day a trial is scheduled he may be unable to help in his defense, Bloom said. Johnson has failed at least six competency evaluations in the last three years. The reports say Johnson often hears voices telling him to do things, including choking and killing other people. He also has hallucinations, sometimes imagining that the dead children are clinging to his back as he tries to rub them off, the reports say. ====== MARtin F. ABErnathy --- [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] --- 03/21/02 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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