Skepticism on the Disorder in the Court

His crimes were repugnant and the evidence against Howard Davis Jr. of Woodland Hills was so overwhelming that neither his attorney nor his family ever disputed his involvement in sexual assaults on five females, including a 10-year-old girl.

But before and after the portly son of a retired cop was sentenced to 338 years in prison, those who stood by him still maintained he was innocent.

He may have been involved in the attacks, they said. But he didn’t commit them.

Davis’ case, which is being appealed, is one in a growing number of criminal proceedings involving the diagnosis of split personality--a disorder at the heart of several fascinating trials in recent years.

And even in a city accustomed to bizarre courtroom dramas, this area of criminal law is one in which debate seems to grow, not diminish, with each new case.

“The insanity defense says a defendant is insane if he didn’t know the nature or wrongfulness of his act,” said USC law professor Elyn Saks, who has been retained as an expert witness by Davis’ counsel. “But who is ‘he’ if it is a multiple personality? Is it the alter in control at the time of the act? Is it the host personality? Is it any and every alter?

“Many courts fail to step up to the plate and tell experts and juries how to consider this question,” said Saks, author of a book on criminal law and split personality, a diagnosis known as dissociative identity disorder.

Saks and some others argue that the unique nature of the disorder makes it unfair to handle such defendants like those with other mental illnesses. Changes in the law are needed, they say, to overcome the impossibly difficult burden of proving innocence by reason of insanity in these cases.

Others disagree.

“The law should apply the standard tests we already have for criminal responsibility,” said Stephen H. Behnke, a lawyer and psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who collaborated on the book with Saks.

“My concern is that these proposals will literally divide criminal defendants up into many people . . . and good clinical practice and good law both require that we keep in mind a criminal defendant is a single individual,” he said.

Although the concept of not guilty by reason of insanity has long been recognized by the courts, the tests for its application were established well before the American Psychiatric Assn. first recognized multiple personality as a disorder in 1980.

And even today, some experts in the field of psychiatry suggest that dissociative identity disorder is a diagnosis that has become an almost faddish defense for those convicted of crimes, many of them incomprehensible in their horror.

Before he was executed for slaying 33 young men and teenage boys, John Wayne Gacy of Chicago maintained that his spree was the result of his multiple personalities--a claim dismissed as hogwash by one Cook County psychiatrist.

Kenneth Bianchi, who with his cousin Angelo Buono was found responsible for the Hillside Strangler murders that terrorized Los Angeles, also claimed to suffer from the disorder. But his claim was ultimately rejected.

“It was all an act,” recalled former Deputy Atty. Gen. Mike Nash, who co-prosecuted Bianchi and is now supervising judge of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court.

Although two of a half-dozen experts evaluated Bianchi as a multiple personality, Nash said authorities showed that Bianchi’s attempt to prove he had the disorder--by constantly changing his story--was no more than a self-serving alibi.

Even as some experts question the validity of the diagnosis, or its place in criminal defense, there is no mistaking the fact that most believe in the existence of dissociative identity disorder--a condition that is almost always linked to childhood trauma.

And although estimates on the number of people with multiple personalities range from one in 100 to one in 10,000, experts say the number of instances in which the disorder has been invoked in a defense is growing.

USC’s Saks said her research into news coverage showed that from 1991 to 1996, about 40 criminal cases involved defendants claiming to have multiple personalities.

Before 1991, she said, she found references to only about 20 cases dating back to the first days of the American judicial system.

“I think there have been quantum leaps in understanding and research of multiple personality, how it works, how to test for it and how to treat for it,” said Sacramento defense attorney Michael Sands, who won a groundbreaking case in 1981 when his client, who had the disorder, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the slaying of his wife.

Generally, courts have concluded that a defendant with the disorder can be found guilty as long as the controlling personality intended to commit a crime. So even when the defense of not guilty by reason of insanity has been invoked, it has been insufficient to win acquittals of such defendants. And that is where the debate over how to handle multiple personality defendants is mired.

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Dr. Richard Loewenstein sees nothing wrong with such accountability. Loewenstein, medical director of the trauma disorder program at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, said it is illogical to hold those with multiple personalities to a lower standard legally than clinically.

“The notion that they cannot be held criminally responsible unless every last one of their personalities is found responsible is nuts,” he said. “If you took that to its ultimate conclusion, you could say the person should not be held responsible for any action . . . and that would be ridiculous.”

The wrenching nature of the debate is clear in the Davis case.

Dubbed the “Valley pickup truck rapist,” Davis was convicted in May 1994 of 41 counts of rape, kidnapping and other crimes involving four women and one girl.

“There was no way we could deny the allegations because of the multiple witnesses and the scientific evidence,” said Peter L. Knecht, a former deputy district attorney who served as Davis’ defense counsel. “So we defended the case basically on the issue of his sanity, and we had two solid witnesses who testified he was psychotic and had [dissociative identity disorder].”

Knecht told jurors that Davis was a gentle man who had a dark and violent alternate personality, “Leo.” Davis’ alternate personality, Knecht said, came into being after a series of traumas including a severe beating during a carjacking. Ultimately, Knecht said, “something snapped” in Davis, prompting his disorder and leading “Leo” on a rampage.

“Everybody agreed he was mentally ill,” the attorney said. “The issue was whether he was legally insane within the meaning of California law. The law in California is that if you know the difference between right and wrong, you are sane. In a nutshell, that is it.”

The jury found him guilty.

“The whole case was messy,” Knecht said. “I think the jury was afraid if they let him out, he might do this again. Our position was he did not have any memory of these acts and was shocked at what they testified he had done.”

Two years ago, that also was the issue in a Washington courtroom, when a therapist sought leniency for a patient who assaulted her.

Before he was sentenced to life in prison, 41-year-old William Greene apologized and said he was devastated that he had attacked his therapist when she--fearing he was suicidal--went to his apartment on the night of April 29, 1994.

Although convinced he should be confined, his therapist believed that because he could not control his actions, he did not deserve life in prison. During years of treating Greene, she said, she learned he had harbored 23 personalities.

“I was the victim in the case and because I was also the clinician . . . I was aware of what was taking place on a whole different level,” MaryAlyce Stamatiou recalled. “He was not in his right mind when he assaulted me . . . and my position was that he doesn’t need prison, he needs a mental hospital.”

Yet that option is hardly foolproof, because those sentenced to state hospitals for anything short of life terms can apply for outpatient status in six months, said Los Angeles County prosecutor Kent C. Cahill. And after a year of outpatient status, patients are eligible to go free, said Cahill, who heads the district attorney’s psychiatric case unit.

“So you don’t want to expand the envelope for cases that involve an . . . insanity defense because, I don’t care what anybody says, there is no guarantee you’ll be sending someone away to a mental hospital for life,” Cahill said.

For that and other reasons, some attorneys and doctors argue, there is no reason to tamper with existing laws to cover the cases of multiple personality defendants.

“I believe in [dissociative identity disorder]. I have no question about that. I believe those who have it suffer enormously,” said Harvard’s Behnke. “But I don’t believe having it, in and of itself, should excuse one from responsibility.”

Counters Saks: “Imagine a pair of [conjoined] twins, one of whom impulsively commits a murder in which the other was in no way complicit. Would we put the twins in prison for the rest of their lives? I think not.”

Times researcher William Holmes contributed to this story.