Helen L. Murray
January 30, 2013
‘The more I cut with a hacksaw, the more I saw it was real,’
January 31, 2013Although delusion does not alone qualify incompetence, alleged murderer Jeremiah Wright’s misguided belief that his decapitated 7-year-old special-needs son was “not a real person” would prevent him from properly assisting in his defense in a trial setting, a psychologist testified on Wednesday.
Neuropsychologist Joseph Sesta, who examined Wright for two hours on behalf of Wright’s defense team last October, said he doesn’t believe the suspect can make rational strategic decisions in his own defense because Wright doesn’t believe he’ll be punished for the crime he has confessed to committing.
“He doesn’t really appreciate the jeopardy he’s in,” Sesta said, adding that Wright believes he will go home without punishment because “he thinks the coroner will blow the whole thing open at the 11th hour when he holds up a plastic head.”
The testimony built on testimony offered one day earlier when a psychiatrist and psychologist who had examined Wright argued he was detached, suffering from hallucinations and hampered from a proper defense by his delusions.
District Attorney Cam Morvant II argued that there’s no way to unequivocally prove Wright is in this state of delusion.
The Capital Defense Project of Southeastern Louisiana is managing Wright’s defense. Wright was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder shortly after his son Jori Lirette was found decapitated and dismembered at their Thibodaux home in August 2011.
The state called its first witness at 5 p.m. Wednesday, and Morvant estimated he would call four or five more witnesses during the hearing.
Among those behind the state’s bench are two doctors with the East Louisiana Mental Health System’s forensics center in Jackson, La, where Wright spent nine months after District Judge John LeBlanc initially ruled him unfit to stand trial.
The doctors at the state-run system have spent the most time interacting with and examining Wright. They declared him ready to stand trial last August.
The ELMHS report has been scrutinized by the defense at times, but the neither one of the signatories have taken the stand.
Through the first two days of the hearing, the defense’s experts have said Wright has a factual understanding of the proceedings but fails to see how the justice system relates to him.
Wright has told doctors that Jori, who used a wheel chair and had cerebral palsy, was a ventriloquist’s or crash-test dummy whose “skull was made of plastic,” they said. Wright allegedly said he killed the boy because he believed he was a subject in a government-sponsored social experiment.
Wright initially told investigators he killed Jori because he was “tired of taking care of him,” and he left the child’s head near the roadside so Jesslyn Lirette, Wright’s live-in girlfriend and Jori’s mother, “could feel stupid” when she returned home, according to the arrest report.
Sesta was one of three witnesses to testify Wednesday in Wright’s competency hearing. He said Wright has active symptoms of psychotic disorder and may be schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies.
Wright does not lack intellect, Sesta said, but “there just isn’t a whole lot going on upstairs.” The suspect struggles to think abstractly and is only able to “basically regurgitate” facts about the justice system, he said.
“I think that would significantly prevent him from testifying in his own case (should he be called),” said Sesta, who called attention to Wright’s glazed demeanor and apparent lack of interest in the case. Wright appeared to nod off at times during Wednesday’s hearing.
The psychologist also said his tests revealed Wright isn’t faking his symptoms, which would rule out the more-complicated issue of “malingering,” as alleged in the ELMHS report. The word malingering and its use were heavily scrutinized over the course of Wednesday’s hearing.
On July 18, 2012, ELMHS on a discharge sheet diagnosed Wright with psychosis versus malingering with a history of marijuana dependency, according to testimony. That diagnosis was changed to history of marijuana use on the hospital’s Aug. 26 discharge form.
Richard Roberts, a notable forensic psychologist who has devised tests to gauge whether a subject is feinting mental issues, said there is no examination that determines whether a subject is malingering.
Malingering, he said, requires a gross exaggeration of physical or mental symptoms in attempt to attain an external goal ¬– or extreme faking with a motivation. Although Wright may benefit from being declared incompetent, there is no way to prove that is a reason Wright would fake ill, Roberts argued.
Roberts, who received raw test data from ELMHS, also criticized the way ELMHS doctors examined Wright and reported it, though Morvant countered that Roberts was not present when the tests were conducted and thus was offering an outsider’s opinion.
John Thompson, a psychiatrist and chief of staff at ELMHS, said the rehabilitation rate hovers around 70 percent within the state system. Thompson did not work directly with Wright, though he said he paid closer attention to Wright’s records than usual patients’ because of the case’s high profile.
Thompson acknowledged there are some facets of Wright’s rehabilitation that could have been handled better but concluded that “for the most part, all of the policies and procedures were followed.”
The chief of staff said Wright has a factual and rational understanding of the legal situation he faces.
LeBlanc, who is overseeing the hearing, will make the final determination as to whether Wright is competent to stand trial, which would resume the stalled criminal proceedings. The judge could opt to send Wright back to ELMHS for further treatment or appoint a second sanity commission to examine the suspect further.
Jeremiah Wright is escorted to his competency hearing by Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Deputies. Wright is accused of the first-degree murder of Jori Lirette, his 7-year-old disabled son.
