Kaczynski’s Long-Standing Isolation Cited

An attorney for Theodore Kaczynski on Tuesday drew a portrait of the Unabomber suspect as a long-troubled man whose mental abnormalities were exhibited as long ago as 1959, when he was a Harvard University sophomore.

Personality tests conducted at Harvard when Kaczynski was a teenage mathematics whiz indicated that he was showing signs of “social isolation” that presage schizophrenia, attorney Gary Sowards told U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr.

Indeed, in a hearing on mental health issues in the case, Sowards--a death penalty specialist--described Kaczynski, who entered the Ivy League school at 16, as a “high-performing schizophrenic.” His illness, said the San Francisco lawyer, is rooted in organic brain disorders that may run in the suspect’s family.

Prosecutors, who are seeking to limit testimony about Kaczynski’s mental history, said the defense had failed to demonstrate a link between Kaczynski’s alleged paranoid schizophrenia and the string of bombings for which their client is on trial.

If the defense cannot show that the illness interfered with Kaczynski’s ability to form the criminal intent to mail or place deadly bombs, Kaczynski’s mental experts should be excluded from testifying at the trial, argued lead federal prosecutor Robert J. Cleary.

After listening to both sides, Burrell handed prosecutors a partial victory, ordering that within 10 days the defense must spell out what kind of mental evidence they plan to put on in the penalty phase of the trial if Kaczynski is found guilty.

The 55-year-old Chicago native has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from four bombings, including two fatal attacks in Sacramento. A jury of nine women and three men was picked Monday to hear the case, set to begin Jan. 5.

Burrell has yet to decide whether he will force Kaczynski, who was not in the courtroom Tuesday, to submit to a mental exam by the prosecution during the first, or guilt, phase of the trial.

“This is a great chess game,” said David Dratman, a Sacramento defense attorney, after watching Tuesday’s courtroom maneuvers. “The court can’t force him [Kaczynski] to answer questions. . . . They can’t force him to move his mouth,” he said.

For months, Kaczynski’s lawyers have hinted that they are devising a defense that raises questions about Kaczynski’s state of mind but does not quite call him insane. Prosecutors have sought to have their psychiatrists evaluate the recluse who spent two decades living in a small cabin in the woods of Montana before his arrest in April 1996.

Kaczynski has refused to cooperate with the prosecution.

In writings found in his home, Kaczynski has said he feared being labeled a “sickie.”

Burrell, so far declining to either countenance Kaczynski’s refusal or strip him of his right to put on his own mental experts during the trial’s first phase, has urged the opposing sides to negotiate a compromise.

On Tuesday, Sowards surprised the courtroom by unveiling his proposal for disposition of all issues concerning Kaczynski’s schizophrenia as a way to save his client’s life. Sowards said he was prepared to drop the mental defense in the trial’s first phase, make Kaczynski available for limited psychiatric testing and allow a prosecution psychiatrist to observe the testing with Kaczynski through one-way glass.

In return, the defense would be allowed to have one of its experts who already has observed Kaczynski for about an hour testify, and have the jury hear from a social historian who has evaluated Kaczynski’s family, including its alleged mental disorders.

Cleary rejected the deal, saying that the defense was putting too many restrictive conditions on the exam--including the right to screen questions in advance for Kaczynski, who excelled academically as a child in Chicago.

At Harvard, Kaczynski’s personality tests registered a “high scale” of social isolation, Sowards said. He added that in cases like Kaczynski’s, people suffer from an “organic brain disorder” that makes them vulnerable to environmental factors that trigger the disease.

After Kaczynski’s arrest, one former Harvard classmate said he was “extremely reclusive.” The classmate said he did not recall Kaczynski having spoken more than 10 words during three years when they both lived in a Harvard dormitory.

But Sowards said Kaczynski’s superior IQ and alleged schizophrenia result in a “delusional” view of the world.

Richard Dudley, who teaches at New York University Law School, said before Tuesday’s hearing that the jury needs to be educated about what that means.

In a paranoid schizophrenic, he said, the delusional belief system of a person might seem bizarre to the rest of us, but “it’s something they believe true, and the notion that it’s somehow a mental illness is difficult to comprehend for the defendant.”