"Oliver" and "Raymond": Dissociative Identity Disorder as a Psychiatric Defense to Murder: Part I
A trial lawyer must maintain whatever level of skill he (or she) has reached and hopefully improve his skills as well. In addition to whatever natural affinity for the field an advocate possesses, it is absolutely essential to constantly participate in continuing legal eduction courses and keep one's trials skills as sharp as possible by trying cases, especially before juries.
Since the most talented adversaries tend to be assistant district attorneys assigned to the Homicide Trial Bureaus of most prosecutor's office, the best way to obtain experience is to try homicides. Accordingly, one fine fall day almost two years ago, I called the administrator of assigned homicide cases to see if she had any trial cases available for me. I consider myself lucky to have been qualified by the relevant screening panel to try indigent homicide cases. Ironically, while any lawyer admitted to the bar can legally try a murder case, in order to be permitted to represent indigent defendants one has to appear before a fairly intensive and rigorous screening committee that carefully examines one's experience and knowledge. That authorizes an attorney to accept criminal cases at somewhat less than subsistence wages but at least have the challenge of facing the finest foes available in the trial bar.
She had a very challenging case indeed that day. Apparently, a day or two earlier, a man was arrested for having allegedly murdered his wife and son in a rather weird and macabre manner. The specifics of the crime were such that there had to be something quite wrong with the defendant. To make matters even more interesting, the assistant district attorney assigned to the case was an inflexible hang-em high prosecutor universally known by defense lawyers and prosecutors alike as a person who was definitely difficult to deal with.
When I finally met the defendant, Oliver (the actual names of the defendant and his alter-ego were changed to protect client confidentiality) seemed to be a very mild and reserved fellow, who actually seemed rather pathetic and sort of likeable, notwithstanding the rather vicious way his wife and son were murdered. Clearly he did not meet anybody's image of a man who had several days earlier dispatched the wife and child that he loved in a bizarre and grossly gruesome fashion. As we were talking, he started telling me that he did not kill his wife and child and that the real murderer was "Raymond." As we spoke, I realized that Raymond was an alter-ego. I met Raymond several months later.
It was time to obtain an expert. Luckily, I found and was able to retain Dr. Andrew P. Levin, a psychiatrist widely acknowledged to be one of the nation's leading experts in dissociative identity disorder (commonly known as "D.I.D."). After I gave him a rough outline of the case, he explained that real diagnoses of D.I.D. are extremely rare and my client definitely seemed to suffer from the illness. He was happy to take the case. After reviewing all of the records pertaining to the case and interviewing the defendant several times, he found that the defendant indeed suffered from D.I.D., a fairly rare psychiatric condition commonly known as "split personality syndrome," a condition made somewhat famous by a movie known as the :Three Faces of Eve."
After learning everything possible about the case and the psychiatric condition, it was now necessary to to decide whether to go to trial on a psychiatric defense or work out a plea negotiation that would be significantly less than the maximum amount of time faced if Oliver was convicted after trial, but still a fairly long amount of time. In our next blog, we will discuss what Oliver decided to do after considering my counsel.