Insanity Plea Expected in Clinic Deaths

Lawyers for John C. Salvi III are expected to present an insanity defense when the 24-year-old apprentice hairdresser from Hampton Beach, N.H., goes on trial in the slayings of two receptionists at a pair of women’s health clinics a year ago.

Salvi is charged with two counts of murder and five counts of assault with intent to murder in the shooting of seven people in rampages at the abortion clinics in Brookline, Mass., on Dec. 30, 1994. Jury selection is scheduled to begin today.

The icy brutality of the crimes--the most serious attacks yet on this country’s abortion providers--underlined the gulf between those who support abortion rights and those who believe abortion is an act of murder. But it also had the effect of defusing some of the more vituperative rhetoric in the debate.

“I don’t know that it really altered the shape of the big debate, but this is the case that really woke everybody up,” said Roger Evans, a staff attorney at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America headquarters in New York.

Frances Hogan, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said the Salvi case had provoked a realization that “we need to have a civil discourse.” On the one-year anniversary of the clinic killings, Hogan’s organization released a statement decrying attacks on clinic personnel as “against everything the pro-life movement represents.”

Madeline McComish, the group’s president, aimed her denunciation at Salvi. “This person is not pro-life. I don’t care what he claims to be.”

Police said Salvi entered the Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline dressed in black and carrying a black duffel bag containing a semiautomatic rifle. They allege he fatally shot 25-year-old Shannon Lowney and then turned his gun on a busy waiting room. Among those wounded were two men who had accompanied wives or girlfriends for abortions.

Salvi is accused of striking another abortion clinic on the same street 10 minutes later. Receptionist Lee Ann Nichols, 38, was the first victim. A patient felt a bullet race by her ear, but she escaped injury. A security guard who tried to subdue the gunman was shot in the chest and arm.

As Salvi’s trial drew nearer, pleas by his attorneys for a change of venue were rebuffed by a judge in Norfolk County, where the crimes occurred.

But Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara granted requests from both prosecutors and defense attorneys that television cameras be banned from the courtroom.

Salvi wears a bulletproof vest during court appearances. His occasionally disruptive behavior has brought claims from his own lawyers that he panders to television cameras.

His father has said the family had overlooked disturbing changes in the student hairdresser, describing him as “obsessed with the Catholic faith” and suffering from “serious mental health problems.”

Ann F. Osborne, executive director at the Preterm Health Services clinic where Nichols was killed, said Salvi’s mental state is not the issue. Osborne said that “it would be a very sad day” if Salvi ever sets foot outside a jail again.

In a development generated by the Salvi case, Gov. William Weld introduced legislation to replace the insanity defense in murder cases with a verdict of “guilty but insane.” The category would carry a criminal penalty.

Weld, a GOP candidate for the Senate, said families of murder victims suffer continuing torture when defendants plead not guilty by reason of insanity. His political rivals dismissed his bill as election-year grandstanding, noting that only about 1% of murder defendants pursue an insanity defense.