Kaczynski Examiner Gets ‘Hardest Cases in the World’

For the past few days, a middle-aged woman bundled up for stormy weather has arrived at the Sacramento County Jail for a series of conversations with the building’s most famous occupant: accused Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.

Throughout her visits to the eight-story jailhouse, Dr. Sally Johnson--a government psychiatrist flown in from North Carolina for the special task of determining Kaczynski’s competence to stand trial--has been silent about the hours of conversation and what she thinks of the defendant’s troubled mind.

But today, Johnson must sum up her findings in a confidential report to U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. That report may hold the key to determining whether Kaczynski is found competent to stand trial and represent himself.

If anyone can quickly grasp the complexities of the tangled case and Kaczynski’s alleged delusional mind, it’s Johnson, say colleagues of the forensic psychiatrist, who is based at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C.

“They send the hardest cases in the world to Sally Johnson,” said Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. solicitor general who has jointly taught a class on criminal law with Johnson at Duke University. “It’s hard to imagine that there could be anybody better suited to do the job.”

The slightly built 44-year-old Raleigh, N.C., woman--who does have her share of critics--is accustomed to high-profile challenges, having examined such figures as televangelist Jim Bakker and at least one Mafia kingpin.

“She can draw people out,” said Roger Adelman, who as a federal attorney prosecuted John Hinckley Jr. for trying to assassinate President Reagan.

This week, Johnson is attempting to answer relatively limited questions: Does Kaczynski, a genius-level mathematician, grasp the nature of the charges against him, and can he assist his counsel in defending him?

But undoubtedly, mental health experts say, she also will form opinions about Kaczynski the man. Is he disengaged? Does he suffer from mental illness, or did he at the time of the crimes? Did he have evil intentions when he allegedly mailed deadly packages? Those are questions Johnson may be able to answer, in whole or part, the experts say.

What Burrell will do with Johnson’s report is unclear, and he has until Thursday to make up his mind. He ordered the competency examination last week amid the trial’s tumultuous proceedings--marked by on-again, off-again court sessions and Kaczynski’s apparent jailhouse suicide attempt.

It has been 16 years since Johnson first attracted the spotlight. She was the court-appointed doctor who interviewed Hinckley longer than any other psychiatrist. She found that Hinckley suffered from a mental disorder but that it didn’t interfere with his capacity to commit the crime.

“Whatever she does in this case will be objective and thorough,” Adelman said. “That’s her style. That’s what I saw in Hinckley.”

But defense attorneys whose clients Johnson has examined were critical of her, questioning both her depth of clinical experience and her ability to be impartial.

“Her work is biased,” said Washington attorney Vince Fuller, who represented Hinckley. The government, he said, “picks her when they want a certain result, and she gives it to them.”

In fact, in the Hinckley case, the jury rejected Johnson’s testimony and found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Today, Hinckley remains incarcerated at a federal psychiatric facility.

Anthony Battle experienced a different fate.

Despite his claims that prison authorities had implanted torture devices in his body--driving him to murder a guard--Battle, a federal prisoner in Atlanta, was found competent by Johnson to stand trial and was convicted.

“Some people say she’d find a ham sandwich competent,” said Battle’s attorney, Jack Martin. “I can’t say I’d disagree.’

Martin said he believes Johnson’s findings are motivated by her connection to the Bureau of Prisons, where her entire career has been spent, and her ambition to rise there in the managerial ranks.

Johnson, married with two children, has been involved in psychiatry for two decades. She received a medical degree in 1976 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, then came to Duke for an internship and residency.

The federal government has painted Kaczynski as the manipulative and elusive Unabomber, who wrote a 35,000-word anti-technology treatise published in the New York Times and Washington Post in 1995. In Sacramento, he is accused in two fatal attacks and bombings that seriously injured two men. He faces charges in New Jersey of killing an advertising executive.

Dr. Harvey Dondershine, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford Medical School, said the judge does not have to accept Johnson’s recommendation. But he said that “what’s important” to the judge will be Johnson’s analysis of Kaczynski’s thought process.

Dr. Howard Zonana, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University who knows Johnson, said the law has not distinguished greatly between competence to stand trial and competence to represent oneself; Burrell will have to decide that key point.

“One can be delusional and still be competent to stand trial,” Zonana said.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this story.