In Case of Capitol Shooter, a Question of Medication

The passing of time is only a minor hindrance in Russell Weston’s cloistered dream world.

Locked in an isolated cell in North Carolina, he is far removed from the courtrooms where lawyers argue over his sanity and his life. He is in no rush to stand trial for two murders that he believes saved the world. Time, he informs visitors, can shift backward. Death is only a temporary state.

Weston is the floridly schizophrenic loner accused of gunning down two federal policemen in 1998 during a firefight in the halls of Congress. He has been kept in seclusion for two years while his criminal case has bogged down in a constitutional duel over how mentally ill defendants should be readied for trial.

At issue is whether Weston should be ordered to take mood-altering medication that might enable him to appear before a jury and understand the charges against him. A federal judge declared Weston incompetent to stand trial but has agreed with prosecutors’ requests to medicate him so that proceedings can go forward.

It is more than an argument over logistics: Some of those drawn into the debate say the court battle pits Weston’s medical needs against his legal rights.

“The struggle here,” said Richard Bonnie, director of the University of Virginia’s Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, “is between his best interests, medically speaking, and his best interests, legally.” There is even doubt, said Bonnie, who wrote a letter for the defense outlining the ethical dilemmas posed by Weston’s case, “whether with medication he can ever be restored to competence.”

Federal prosecutors contend that forced medication is the most reliable method to allow them to move the case forward.

“Antipsychotic medication is the only treatment which will render Mr. Weston competent for trial and not a danger to himself or others,” said Monty Wilkinson, a special counsel to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

But Weston’s public-appointed lawyers, who are mounting an apparent insanity defense, fear that forced treatment would start him along a path that could end in his execution. The murder charges against him carry a potential death sentence, and prosecutors have not ruled out the possibility that they may push for capital punishment.

“To make him competent to stand trial is the first link in the chain,” said A.J. Kramer, Weston’s federal public defender. “If you’re dealing with a potential capital case, you have to assume the most negative consequence every step of the way.”

If Weston is to go to trial, his lawyers want jurors to see him unfiltered, his madness in stark relief. “The problem with medication,” said Kramer, “is it might make it look to the jury that he’s OK.”

From the moment “Rusty” Weston, 45, was taken into custody on murder charges in the deaths of U.S. Capitol police officers Jacob J. Chestnut and John M. Gibson, he has appeared to have difficulty comprehending the reality of the accusations against him.

Wounded in the chest and limbs after the July 24, 1998, gun battle outside the office of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Weston was briefly treated with the antidepressant Haldol and appeared “alert and cooperative,” according to later reports.

But his bright spirits masked a convoluted personality. As he recovered, Weston began answering doctors’ queries with grandiose descriptions of the parallel world that had bloomed in his mind during decades of worsening schizophrenia.

He told psychiatrists and lawyers that he had left his cabin in Montana and gone to Washington to rid the Capitol of cannibals who had taken over the government.

Washington, Weston explained to investigators, had been infested with a disease of rot he called the “Black Heva.” His enemies had gained control of a “ruby satellite” system that ran the world from the ground floor of the Capitol. Only Weston, who alternatively described himself as a secret operative and a superhero, knew enough about the terror to take it on.

In his abandoned cabin, FBI agents recovered a cache of notes that portrayed Weston’s frayed thinking. He described himself as the “favorite son of John F. Kennedy.” He wrote of a “Lida machine that can induce a catatonic state into a mammal such as a man or cat.” He warned “about communists possibly trying to kill me.”

“The thing about Rusty is his delusional scheme is very comprehensive,” said Barry Boss, a former federal public defender who assisted in Weston’s defense.

Citing the “advice of his attorneys,” Weston began refusing to be medicated in 1999. Early that year, he was examined by Dr. Sally Johnson, a psychiatrist asked by U.S. District Judge Emmett G. Sullivan to investigate if medication might enable Weston to become competent in the “foreseeable future.”

Johnson’s report was bleak, but she indicated that Weston’s condition might improve with proper doses of antipsychotic drugs. Sullivan ordered medication. Weston’s lawyers immediately appealed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Prosecutors insist that Weston needs medication, not only to bring about a trial but to keep him from hurting himself and others.

Sullivan has agreed, ruling repeatedly that he could maintain Weston’s fair trial rights even if medication was ordered. The judge said he could inform “the jurors that Weston is being administered mind-altering medication, that his behavior in their presence is conditioned on drugs.”

Sullivan said he would also allow “experts and others to testify regarding Weston’s unmedicated condition” and the treatment’s effects. And, noting that prior Supreme Court cases limit the government’s ability to administer forced medication, the judge said he would allow it only with “clear and convincing evidence” of its necessity.

But Weston’s lawyers have no interest in compromise. They complain that if Weston is medicated, he will lose his constitutional rights. They worry too that agreeing to forced medication would make them agents for the government.

Since 1999, Weston’s case has shuttled back and forth between Sullivan’s courtroom and the appeals court, where it is again set for oral arguments on May 16. While the lawyers spar, Weston has sat alone in a cell in a federal psychiatric facility in Butner, N.C.

Weston is isolated in a locked room with only a pane of frosted glass to look out at the world, and he has had few visitors. One was Dr. David G. Daniel, a psychiatrist sent by Sullivan last fall to determine if forced medication might help him.

Daniel found Weston alone in his cell. A pair of blue slippers and a walker were the only possessions visible in the room. Weston lay on a cot, his body covered with a blue sheet and blanket. He had grown an unkempt beard.

Weston told Daniel he could not answer questions, on the advice of his lawyer. As Daniel continued asking questions, Weston picked at his skin.

“He declined to respond to me with any communicative gesture including speech,” Daniel wrote later. “He made no eye contact . . . . He appeared to attempt to focus his attention off the interviewer and at times appeared to squeeze his eyelids shut.”

Weston spoke little during his three meetings with Daniel. As Daniel left for the last time, Weston “glanced in my direction, made very brief eye contact with me, then turned his head away and closed his eyes.”