Читать книгу The Measure of Madness: - Katherine Ramsland - Страница 12

It was 8:00 a.m. when the police officer finished his shift and signed out to go home. On his way out, he passed a thin, young man wearing a sweatshirt and sneakers. Something told him to look back. He turned around to get a better look, and at that moment the young man pulled out a gun. “I want to kill a cop,” he said, and aimed at two other officers standing in front of the precinct. He pulled the trigger twice, and the gun misfired. The officers pulled out their guns and started shooting. The man fell to the ground, apparently wounded. When the commotion died down, it was discovered that not a single bullet had hit him.

Mr. Bailey was brought to the precinct in Queens, New York, where he signed a waiver of his Miranda rights. In a few scribbled paragraphs he explained that he had wanted to kill himself because he was infected with HIV. He had found a gun two weeks earlier and saw it as a sign from God. The night before the shooting he got on the subway and rode around in a loop for miles, thinking of ways to kill himself. When he got off the train near the precinct, he saw some policemen and thought, “I’ll let them shoot me.” He pointed the gun at the officers, aiming high so as not to hurt them, and yelled “Shoot me!” He heard gun shots, and, thinking he was hit, fell to the ground.

His confession concluded, “I didn’t want anyone to die but me.”

Mr. Bailey was taken to a psychiatric hospital immediately after his arrest. He told the staff that he was infected with AIDS and wanted to die, but could not bring himself to commit suicide. He was charged with six counts of attempted murder in the first degree, attempted assault, and criminal possession of a weapon.

Almost five months later I got a phone call from Mr. Bailey’s defense attorney. He wanted me to assess his client for an insanity defense. After he filled me in on the details of the case, he told me a surprising fact—his client’s HIV test was negative. The defendant had never been infected in the first place.

“Could this be a case of ‘suicide by cop’?” he asked.

“It certainly seems so,” I said.

“Suicide by cop” is a desperate act that is difficult for most people to understand. One of the earliest researchers of this phenomenon was Marvin Wolfgang. Of the 588 deaths he studied, he concluded that 26 percent could be classified as victim-precipitated suicide.¹ Daniel Kennedy and associates conducted a study in 1998 based on newspaper articles of 240 police shootings of which they determined nine were definitely suicide by police and another 28 could possibly be classified as such.²

Why commit suicide in this way? Some people want to go out in a blaze of glory, others lack the nerve to carry out the suicide act. Some want their families to collect on their insurance policy or even to create community unrest by provoking police violence. Many tell hostages they want to die, saying they prefer death over prison. Some even make religious references to resurrection.³

One of the earliest recorded examples of this behavior occurred in England in 1800, when James Hadfield entered the Haymarket Theater armed with a loaded pistol and shot at the king. One witness testified at the trial that Hadfield had told him, “I am a man tired of life; my plan is not to take away my own life, I sought therefore to get rid of it by other means; I did not mean to take away the life of the king, but I thought this attempt would answer my purpose as well.” A judge later found that he was insane and ordered him confined to a psychiatric hospital.⁴

Mr. Bailey’s attorney sent me a packet of legal and medical records to review. I picked up the grand jury minutes first. The grand jury is a group of people who hear evidence presented by the prosecution and vote whether there is enough evidence to indict the defendant for trial.

Five officers had testified in the grand jury. I read through their testimony and imagined how those officers must have felt when Mr. Bailey aimed a gun at them. One testified that the suspect “stopped about ten feet away from me and my partner, turned, pointed it at me and my partner, and pulled the trigger again. I heard the gun click…after I heard him pull the trigger, I heard another round go off on my side, which I assume was my partner’s. I ducked for cover.”⁵

His partner testified that he fired at the suspect and saw him fall. A third officer testified that he saw the suspect clench his stomach and collapse. A fourth recalled that he yelled, “Police, stop! Drop the gun!” He described the clicking sound of the suspect’s gun. “At this time I thought he was shooting at me,” the officer said. “I just let off a couple of rounds ’cause I thought he was going to kill another cop. I thought he was going to kill me…I had no choice but to try to neutralize the threat…. [I felt] scared, scared that I was going to get shot or killed.”⁶

How did all the officers miss when they shot at Mr. Bailey? I wondered.

I tried to imagine how the policemen felt when they made that split-second decision to fire. I understood from personal experience how the police might have panicked and shot wildly. In 1981, my husband and I were held hostage in a bank’s automatic teller lobby. It was early evening when we walked in. A man pointed a gun at us and told my husband to take out money from the cash machine. Looking around the small vestibule, I realized that there were a few other people being held hostage by a second gunman. The minutes seemed to pass unnaturally slow as more customers walked in, unaware of the robbery in progress. Each one looked horrified as soon as they realized what was going on.

Whether it was because I was young, naïve, or in shock, I did not understand the gravity of the situation. I felt strangely calm as the room filled with hostages. Eventually there were about fifteen of us crowded together. Fortunately, someone had a friend waiting outside who, after a long wait, became alarmed and called the police.

That’s when the situation devolved into chaos. It seemed to me that almost fifty police officers were waiting outside as the gunmen started out the door, using two hostages as human shields. As soon as they opened the door, I heard dozens of gun shots being fired. We dropped to the floor as glass broke over our heads and bullets ricocheted off the walls. The shooting seemed to last forever, although in reality, it was just a few minutes. Luckily, one of the hostages was an off-duty police officer. He threw his badge out the open door and the barrage of bullets stopped. Miraculously, none of the hostages was injured. I heard the police whispering to each other afterwards, “Who started shooting?” they all asked.

My memory of this terrifying experience made me wonder if the police who shot wildly at Mr. Bailey were also in a panic. I heard from another attorney that they actually shot into a store behind the suspect, barely missing the owner.

The next day, I went to interview the defendant. When I arrived at the Supreme Court building, I took the elevator to the third floor and knocked on the door labeled “Corrections Department.” The plate covering the small viewing window slid aside and the officer peered at me, then looked down at the I.D. badge I held up. The key turned and the heavy metal door opened. Once inside, I stopped to chat with the officers sitting behind the high desk in the front office, who invited me to help myself to some coffee. I grabbed a cup and headed toward the back where the cells and interview offices were located. I felt the familiar stab of guilt as I walked past the row of cells.

“Are you an attorney?” one defendant called out to me. “Do you know when I’m going to court?” I kept my head down, trying to avoid eye contact. The last thing I wanted was to be pulled into conversations with the desperate men waiting there.

I left my bags in a locker outside the offices, said a brief hello to the on-duty officer, and gulped down the rest of my coffee. Then I took a seat in the largest interview room available. I did not have to wait long.

I have given up any preconceptions about defendants’ appearances, but when Mr. Bailey walked into the interview room, I was struck by how young and shy he was. He was 20 years old, and at 5-feet 5-inches tall, weighed only about 145 pounds. I would never have pegged him as a man charged with the attempted murder of police officers.

Mr. Bailey grew up in Jamaica. His parents were unmarried and both moved separately to the United States, leaving him to be raised by his maternal grandmother. His early life was unremarkable; he had no history of developmental delays, medical problems, or abuse. He told me that he never liked school and dropped out when he was 15 years old.

“What kind of grades did you get?”

“I was an average student, not perfect.”

“And your reading?”

“I could read, just not as good as everyone,” he admitted. He sounded defensive.

Mr. Bailey’s hair was in dreadlocks and I was not surprised when he told me he became a “Rasta” (Rastafarian) at age sixteen. I knew only a little about the Rastafarian movement and Mr. Bailey willingly gave me a brief history. The movement emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s and currently 5–10 percent of the Jamaican population identify themselves as Rastas. They accept the former leader of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, as the Messiah and God incarnate. They have prohibitions against cutting their hair and avoid eating meat, smoking tobacco, and drinking alcohol. The Rasta movement emphasizes the spiritual use of marijuana. Mr. Bailey told me he smoked marijuana every day and did not consider it a problem for him. I, of course, had a different opinion.

Mr. Bailey left home when he was nineteen and came to New York City to strike out on his own. He found a place to live with a few other young men from the Caribbean. He worked six days a week in a furniture store, yet he was barely able to support himself.

“Did you ask your family for help?” I asked. “No,” he said, “I was too embarrassed.”

Mr. Bailey was lonely and wanted a girlfriend, but was too shy to approach women. He turned to the Internet and arranged to meet a woman he contacted through a chat room.

“At the time, when I sleep with her, I didn’t trust her and my condom break,” he mumbled and looked down at the floor. “And I thought about it all the time.”

“Thought about what?”

“I start thinking that she had some disease. I didn’t trust her. That same night I start worrying. I heard on the radio that the Bronx has the most HIV. She was from the Bronx.”

“Did you get tested?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I was too scared. Everything was building up in my mind. I start getting skinny. I got so depressed and I could feel my nerves jump all over my body.”

Mr. Bailey told me he started having frequent and debilitating “attacks” a few weeks after this sexual encounter.

“The attacks come most times at night, when I’m alone,” he said. “My heart be racing and I feel like I’m out of breath.”

“How often did this happen?”

“It be like every night,” he recalled. “I be afraid to stay by myself. I was afraid I’d take my life.”

Mr. Bailey told me that a few months after the sexual encounter he became convinced he was infected and fell into a deep depression.

“Did you ever hear voices when no one was there?” I asked.

“Yes, sometimes.”

“What did the voices say?”

“They be telling me I got the HIV.”

“Did you believe the voices?” I asked

“Yes. I start having diarrhea a month before I was arrested. I be thinking I have AIDS,” he said, now in tears. “I’d get muscle cramps, aches and pains, joint pains, I thought it had something to do with HIV. I didn’t think it could be anything else.”

It might be surprising in this day of “infomercials” and media that someone would know so little about HIV infection that he could reach such an erroneous conclusion. But Mr. Bailey relied on a strange mix of medical jargon and superstition to explain why he was convinced he was infected.

I noticed that Mr. Bailey paused before answering my questions and spoke in short, simple sentences. I began to wonder if he was mentally slow. I administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test and Mr. Bailey scored a 72, placing him at the low end of the borderline intellectual range.⁷ The average I.Q. score ranges from 90 to 110; a score of 69 or less typically indicates mental retardation. Mr. Bailey’s low I.Q. explained his inaccurate understanding of HIV symptoms and was probably a factor in his inability to find any solution to his supposed illness. He thought suicide was his only way out.

I asked why he did not call his family for help. He started tearing up again. “I figured I couldn’t tell them I had HIV.”

“Why not?” I gently pressed.

“I was afraid they’d close the door in my face,” he replied, his voice cracking. “I thought they would tell me I wouldn’t amount to nothing. My grandmother be nice, but I don’t know how she’d act in a situation like this.”

“Did you try to tell her?”

“No,” he admitted. “Every time I thought about it, I worried. I don’t want to be around my little brother and sister, especially with a disease that strong. I was thinking I don’t want to be around people if I got HIV.”

“Why not?”

“I think it’s a total sin. A Rasta shouldn’t carry this disease. If you have HIV you can’t have kids or family. You don’t get to marry. If you got HIV no one want to marry you.”

Mr. Bailey told me that he was afraid to kill himself. He said, “I always hear if you kill yourself, you go to hell. Sometimes I’d think I didn’t want anyone to know what was happening to me. If I just pass, no one will know.”

“What happened during the weeks before the shooting?” I asked.

“I found a gun in a trash can. I thought everything was matching up. I got the gun now. God was working on a way for me to go home.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I was thinking God wanted me to go to heaven, that’s why he put the gun in my hand. I was thinking everything was matching up. There was no need for me to stay here anymore.”

I asked him how he spent the night before the shooting. He told me that he was riding the subway because he had no place to sleep. He dozed fitfully until the idea came to him, as if sent by God.

“All I could think of was dying,” he remembered. “I didn’t want to live. I realized that if the police saw me with a pistol, they’d try to kill me.”

“What happened next?” I asked.

“It was very early in the morning.” He spoke softly, as if lost in a dream state. “I get off the train and start walking. I saw the precinct and I knew I got the pistol. I start waving it. The cops see me. I knew they are going to shoot me. I was trying to get killed. I wasn’t trying to hide. I was standing up to take the bullet.”

He paused, and I waited for him to continue.

“One shot was very loud and I thought it hit me. I went down. Then they start to hit me. I tell them to kill me and just get it over with.”

Mr. Bailey insisted that he never had any intention of shooting the police officers. He never loaded the gun and did not think the gun could fire. A police ballistics expert who later examined the gun found it loaded with eight bullets. It was a 9 mm Luger which held ten bullets. No one knew what had happened to the two missing bullets. It was never determined whether Mr. Bailey fired the gun or not.

After the second session with Mr. Bailey, I was nearly convinced that his was a case of “suicide by cop,” but I needed to be sure that he was not lying or faking. Malingerers—those who exaggerate or fake mental illness—often have trouble keeping their stories straight. I needed to reexamine Mr. Bailey’s police and medical records to see if the story he told me matched the story he told everyone else.

Mr. Bailey’s stories were consistent. Two days after his arrest, he told a psychiatrist that he wanted to die but saw no way out. He also told hospital staff that he had been hearing voices before the shooting. They diagnosed him with major depressive disorder with psychotic features and marijuana abuse.

I called Mr. Bailey’s grandmother to get a clearer picture of his childhood and mental state before his arrest. She seemed to be a caring, well-intentioned woman, and I felt tempted to console her when I heard the guilt and self-reproach in her voice. “His friends told me he messed around with a girl and he thought he had AIDS,” she recalled. “They told me he was very depressed and talked about suicide a lot.”

“Did you speak to him around the time of the shooting?” I asked.

“No, but later, a friend told me that the night before everything happened, my grandson was depressed and talked about suicide. He told them to give me all his music CDs after he died. He told them there has to be a better place, a place without pain. And said he wanted to go home.”

It was clear that, for Mr. Bailey and his grandmother, home meant heaven.

Mr. Bailey was the only defendant I have ever evaluated who provoked the police this way. It was an unusual case because he lived to tell his story. There have been other cases, however, that have not ended so well. Suicidal shooters more often than not get their wish; they are killed by police.

Suicide in any form is a tragedy; suicide by cop is doubly so. The officers are forced to live with the knowledge that they were unwilling participants in what amounts to an assisted suicide. It made me doubly relieved that no one was hurt in the case of Mr. Bailey. What truly amazed me was that the police had shot at him and missed. I have always wondered, on some unconscious level, did they miss on purpose, somehow aware that he was mentally ill and not truly dangerous?

My evaluation was complete. All the clinical and legal information was consistent with the defendant’s own story. I believed that Mr. Bailey was depressed and psychotic when he aimed his gun at the police officers.

I was convinced that Mr. Bailey was delusional and could not appreciate the nature and consequences of his actions or their wrongfulness. He felt trapped and believed that suicide would lead to “burning in hell forever.” When he found a gun disposed in a trash can he psychotically concluded, “God had given me a way; he wanted me to do it.” His only salvation was to provoke the police to kill him. His solution was to pretend to shoot at them.

I wrote and submitted a report explaining my conclusions.

Now the ball was in the prosecutor’s court. Months passed while I waited to hear who the assistant district attorney would hire to assess Mr. Bailey. Would he choose a “hired gun,” someone who was more likely to view the defendant as guilty? I was more than ready to testify about my opinion, but juries are unpredictable, and I knew it was likely they would find him guilty. There would be no need for a trial if the prosecution-retained expert also believed that Mr. Bailey was not responsible for the crime.

I was relieved to hear that the prosecution’s psychiatrist agreed with my diagnosis and opinion. He, too, concluded that this was a classic case of suicide by cop. Since we both found Mr. Bailey not responsible, the case never went to trial. He was one of very few defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity. Assistant District Attorney David Kelly once told me that, since 1965, there have been only one hundred and thirty-three such cases in Brooklyn, a county with a population that would make it one of the largest cities in the United States.⁸

Insanity acquitees, the legal term for individuals in his situation, are regularly evaluated to determine whether they are still dangerous and need to remain in a secure forensic hospital. Many individuals found not responsible are kept in secure forensic hospitals because they remain psychotic, even when medicated. They often spend more time in a hospital than they would have served in prison if they had pleaded guilty.

I recently heard from Mr. Bailey’s attorney. His client was stable in the forensic hospital and his depression had not returned. His treatment was successful but his future remained uncertain. We chatted a bit about whether he would be transferred to a less secure state hospital. Would he then be released to the community?

The last I heard, Mr. Bailey was still a patient in the forensic hospital, four years after he was admitted.