By now, the photographs of flak-jacketed police officers mingling in the yellow-cordoned parking lot of a strip-mall has become a familiar image in the daily newspapers. The leftover scenes from recent sniper attacks convey the desperation that comes with trying to comprehend madness.
Faced with irrational, wanton brutality, it’s natural for people to seek cause-and-effect explanations, says William Stejskal, director of psychology at UVA’s Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. Any simple explanation of the human mind, however, is probably wrong, he says.
"You see it all the time, the talking heads who want to sum up the one or two or three reasons why this guy did this," Stejskal says. "It’s absurd."
As an expert in forensic psychology whose recent high-profile testimony was requested in connection with 9/11, Stejskal is often hired by lawyers to evaluate the "legal sanity" of defendants, or testify to the mental competence of the accused to stand trial. Calling a person "insane" may conveniently explain irrational behavior, but the label is often misapplied, he says.
"People think `insane’ means tearing through the world at 200 miles an hour with your hair on fire. But that’s not the case," says Stejskal. "There’s a tendency to oversimplify these concepts in a gross way."
Mental illness, Stejskal says, is marked by delusions – an incorrect belief firmly held despite evidence to the contrary. Severe delusions compounded by frightening, all-too-real hallucinations can cause people to react, sometimes outside the law, Stejskal says.
"People who are legally insane didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t know it was wrong, or they had an irresistible impulse," says Stejskal. "It means the court says they did it, but they can’t be held legally accountable."
Of course, defendants may act crazy to avoid extended jail time. "Like anybody, they can distort and pretend," says Stejskal. "You take everything they tell you with a good measure of compassionate skepticism."
Stejskal spends most of his time digging for background evidence that can support or discredit a defendant’s insanity plea. Friends, family or police records can provide a more well-rounded picture of a person’s mental state, he says.
This summer, Stejskal dug into the highest-profile case of his career. He and fellow expert Xavier Amador of Columbia University were hired to judge the competency of Zacharias Moussaoui – the alleged "20th hijacker" facing capital charges in Alexandria – to defend himself in court. The two met with Moussaoui’s mother and reviewed his French academic records and data from French social services.
Stejskal won’t discuss the specifics of the case, but according to an article by Seymour Hersh in the September 30 issue of The New Yorker, the records showed Moussaoui has a family history of domestic violence and mental illness. Hersh’s article quotes unnamed CIA and FBI sources describing Moussaoui as a "wanna-be" who turned to radical Islam for a source of identity late in life, but whose volatile and unstable nature made him unfit for real operations.
Dr. Raymond Patterson, a court-appointed psychiatrist, testified that Moussaoui should be allowed to defend himself in his trial. After their research, Stejskal and Amador argued Patterson’s conclusions were unfounded and Moussaoui needed more evaluation. On June 13, however, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled – without hearing any testimony – that Moussaoui met the legal standard for competency.
"The trick is to be neutral and ignore the pressures attorneys put on you to see things their way," says Stejskal.
"The legal system," he says, "simply wants to know whether a person is `guilty’ or `not guilty.’ But it’s very rare that it’s a black-and-white issue when it comes to human behavior.