by Ann Rule
In all probability, Morrison would have won his case. It was for Lissa’s sake that he agreed to the plea bargain. What was important was that Debora Green was going to prison for a hard forty.
44
When unthinkable crimes are committed, the question of why? always arises. What was it about Debora Green that made her violate one of the strongest human instincts: mother love? A partial answer to that question came during her sentencing, on May 30, 1996.
Nothing that was said would make any difference in Debora’s sentence. She had agreed to serve forty years in a Kansas penitentiary rather than go to trial. She wasn’t insane; she had been interviewed and tested by psychiatrists and psychologists to determine whether she met the legal definition of insanity. Had she known the difference between right and wrong at the time of her alleged crime? Did she know the difference in the months after her children perished? The answer was yes.
Marilyn Hutchinson, the defense psychologist, had spent a great deal of time with Debora during her incarceration in the Johnson County Adult Detention Center. In large part, it was her evaluation of Debora’s state of mind that had convinced the defense to plea-bargain. Now she tried to explain what had driven Debora to arson, murder, and poisoning. Sean O’Brien, the defense lawyer who specialized in clients who faced the death penalty, questioned her.
“Have you had contact with Dr. Debora Green in this case?” O’Brien asked.
“I certainly have,” Dr. Hutchinson replied. “My first contact with her was on a court-appointed competency-to-stand-trial evaluation. I met with her for about two to two and a half hours on February 27, 1996. Subsequently, I met with her again for another two and a half hours on April 13 at the request of her private attorneys when they were asking me to evaluate her competency to plead . . . Since that time, I have met with her twice weekly conducting psychotherapy for her at her request, for a total of eighteen hours that I’ve met with her.”
Dr. Hutchinson testified that she had not had access to Debora’s medical records, but that she had spoken with Dr. Stamati of Menninger’s regarding her brief commitment there. “That had been initiated by her husband because he was concerned about the possibility of her either harming herself or her children. At the time she was admitted to Menninger’s, however, because she was not expressing anything of a verbal nature about that aggressiveness, there was not a commitment past the initial twenty-four hours. It did not meet the legal criteria for involuntary commitment.”
Dr. Hutchinson said that in assessing Debora’s competency she administered a number of tests, including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and subscales from the Wechsler Memory Scale. Debora, of course, had scored almost off the scale on intelligence. “I also used the competencies as defined by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,” Dr. Hutchinson testified, “to determine what her competency to stand trial was. I did that through both verbal and paper and pencil instruments.”
The DHEW definition of competency included thirteen factors. The person being evaluated has to: “realistically consider possible defenses to the crime charged; manage his/her own behavior at a trial setting; be able to relate to his/her attorney; be able to participate with his/her attorney in planning a defense; understand the roles of the participants in the trial (know who the judge, jury, prosecutor, witnesses, defense attorney, etc., are); understand typical court procedures; appreciate the charges that he/she faces; appreciate the nature and range of possible penalties; perceive realistically the likely outcome of a trial; provide his/her attorney with available pertinent facts; be able to testify relevantly; and be motivated toward self-defense.”
“Can you briefly describe your findings as a result of that first competency evaluation?” O’Brien asked.
“About fifty percent of those criteria are really cognitive tasks,” Dr. Hutchinson said. “What does a judge do? What happens after you get a direct examination? The kind of thing that people pick up from watching television and reading accounts in the newspaper—just a common working knowledge of what is a trial like.”
Dr. Hutchinson explained that some competency questions are “purely emotional. Can the person manage their behavior during the trial? Are they likely to get up and scream or are they going to be unable to stop crying[?] . . . The other one that I see as purely emotional is: Is the person motivated toward self-defense? And I found that in both of those purely emotional ones and in the ones that were purely cognitive, she was competent.”
However, some aspects of Debora’s personality disturbed Dr. Hutchinson during the assessment of her competency to stand trial. All these troubling areas came back to a level of emotional capability that Debora seemed to lack. “When I asked an emotional question, she was never able to give more than a minimal yes or no response, without any kind of elaboration. She described to me that when she begins to get emotional, her long-term strategy is to shut down or tune out—really not even to listen to what is being said—so that she wouldn’t become overwhelmed with emotion.”
Would Debora be able to participate in planning legal strategy? If she “shut down” her mind while they were testifying, could she challenge prosecution witnesses? In the same vein, could she herself testify with any relevance? Although the vast majority of murder defendants never take the stand—to avoid probing questions from the prosecution—Dr. Hutchinson wondered what would happen if Debora was faced with questions that evoked feelings she wanted to shut out.
In the end, she had concluded that Debora was competent to stand trial, within the prescribed parameters. Later, when Dennis Moore, Kevin Moriarty, and Sean O’Brien were discussing the possibility of a no-contest plea with Debora, they asked Dr. Hutchinson to examine her again. “They needed another opinion about whether she was emotionally getting this—well enough to make such a plea.”
And so Dr. Hutchinson had come back into Debora’s life. “I met with her again for about two and a half hours, and we talked about the consequences that she saw to her relationship with Lissa [if she pled no contest]. About the consequences of it [her plea], really meaning that her life as she had known it, as she had thought about her life in the future, would be coming to an end. I observed that she was still very emotionally blunted, emotionally flat, that during the entire time there were only . . . ten to fifteen seconds of breakthrough crying. That was pretty minimal considering the topic. . . . However, she was intellectually understanding it, and, to the best of her ability, she was processing it emotionally.”
By the time of this second evaluation, Dr. Hutchinson had an affidavit from Dr. Stamati at Menninger’s, along with Debora’s records from her brief stay there. “I found that she was admitted to Menninger’s with a diagnosis of either major depression or possibly bipolar depression, with suicidal impulses. It was noted that she was doing a great deal of binge drinking. . . . She was given medicine for gastrointestinal problems that were the result of the intense drinking she had done.”
Debora had told Dr. Stamati that the violence between her son and her husband had made life very difficult for her. But probably the most compelling information to come from Dr. Hutchinson’s testimony was about Debora’s score on a GAF (Global Assessment Function), a test of an individual’s ability to exist, interact, cope with the world he or she lives in.
“It was noted,” Dr. Hutchinson said, “that she had a Global Assessment Function of 35. And this is on a scale of 1 to 100. Short of normal, walking-around functioning for most people is 80 to 85. And she was given a rating of 35. That kind of rating [indicates] there were either gross reality disturbances [or] gross impairment in communication and/or most aspects of functioning. . . .” That meant that at the time of Debora’s brief sojourn at Menninger’s in late September, a month before she set fire to her own home, she was functioning “minimally” on a daily basis.
But why? She was not the first—or the last—woman whose husband wanted a divorce. She was assured of an income with which she could maintain an upscale lifesty
le, even if she didn’t go back to work. She had a medical degree, her children were all in school, and she had the ability, seemingly, to make a handsome living on her own. She could even have made the mortgage payments on the Canterbury Court home.
Sean O’Brien asked Dr. Hutchinson what her psychological findings about Debora were. “I find that Debora has a very limited internal self—or ego,” she said. “Whatever it is inside that makes us a person, who we are—that comes from her childhood and comes from our genetics, that really is the driving force of our personality—I found that ego or self within Debora is a very, very, immature person. She is really quite unable to handle most emotional experiences, or to handle those things that require emotional responses. So she has the emotional capabilities of a very young child—even younger than a toddler, perhaps—in her ability to process or sustain emotion.”
That was a shocker. Could a woman with an IQ of 165 and a biting, facetious wit, a woman who had zipped through college and medical school, be a child emotionally?
Hutchinson’s diagnosis was that Debora had a “schizoid personality. And it’s really the ‘empty inside’ diagnosis,” she explained. “There is no self in there. And consequently, people learn to imitate what it’s like to be a human being. They imitate what it’s like to have relationships. They imitate or pretend to be like the people they see around them.
“I also learned that because of some life experiences that happened to her as a preadolescent, that at that age, her ability to imitate became further compromised,” Dr. Hutchinson further testified. “So, overall, although she was pretending to be an adult, really she had the sort of outside social skills of a ten-year-old, and the inside emotional capability of a one-year-old. And we have those two trying to walk around and pretend to be a grown-up.
“Unfortunately and fortunately both,” Dr. Hutchinson continued, “because of her intellect, she was able to mask and able to get along in the world. She was not a troublemaker. People didn’t recognize . . . the intense amount of emotional difficulty she was having.”
When O’Brien asked what external factors had affected Debora’s mental condition, Dr. Hutchinson cited the problems in the marriage, the “violence” between Mike and Tim, and the fact that Mike was leaving her. “It was her understanding that Dr. Farrar had promised he would never leave again the last time that he had left the marriage. And so when he began coming back and then leaving again . . . she became extremely distressed. . . . Her emotions about the end of that marriage were more than she could handle.”
“In performing your evaluation of Debora’s competence, did you discuss her decision to enter a plea of no contest?” O’Brien asked.
“I did.”
“And what did you find her motivation to be?”
“Predominantly, her motivation was to end the trauma and drama for her daughter, Lissa. She felt that things needed to settle down so Lissa could have her life again. Secondly, I think she had given a great deal of thought about what it would be like if she were convicted to a death sentence—what that would be like for her daughter. I think she had some information about other children whose parents were in that situation and how difficult it was for them. And,” Dr. Hutchinson continued, “I also saw some healthy self-preservation operating, which is the fear of facing a death penalty for herself. She was aware that there were certainly some mental health defenses that could have been advanced . . . and she also understood that juries don’t usually listen or respond favorably to mental health defenses regarding the killing of children.”
“Doctor, in your examination of Debora, did you uncover any factor that would cause you to believe that she couldn’t knowingly and voluntarily enter into this agreement?”
“I certainly had some concerns when I first met her—that were mitigated a bit at the time of my second evaluation,” Dr. Hutchinson said. “For the first several months after the fire, it was her fairly standard coping mechanism to pretend the fire hadn’t ever existed. And I find that on some occasions, she still copes with this tragedy that way. So she was pretty numb—and although not fully catatonic, was close to that state prior to some of our regular contacts.”
“What do you mean by ‘catatonic’?”
“Catatonic [catatonia] is a defense an individual will use where they become deaf and dumb and are literally unable to respond to the world externally because the . . . situation they’re in is just too overwhelming for them. Debora, at times, had that kind of feel about her, although she was minimally responsive.
“Since then . . . I find that she is able to express some very brief moments of emotions. She is experiencing emotions of profound grief. She was terribly confused about how this all happened. She’s very remorseful about her daughter’s suffering and about the loss of her other two children in this tragedy. And she’s very guilty that she wasn’t somehow able to stop the terrible downward spiral that her family was in—to predict how it might end up.”
Marilyn Hutchinson, like Ellen Ryan, perceived Debora as a nearly helpless “child.” She ended her testimony by saying that Debora was as healthy at that moment as she had been at any time in the last year. “It’s clear to me that she is not sociopathic and it’s certainly clear to me that she’s not an evil person. I see her struggling . . . to come to terms with her emotions and that she’s moved from a time of being out of control prior to the fire to being numb and disconnected after the fire, and now she’s in a very profound state of remorse and grief, trying to deal with what all happened.”
O’Brien thanked Dr. Hutchinson for her diagnosis of what had gone wrong in Debora’s life, or rather, for her diagnosis of the result of some early trauma.
At that moment, Dennis Moore rose to say that Debora had a statement that she wanted to read at an “appropriate time” before her sentence was pronounced.
“You’re welcome to go ahead,” Judge Peter Ruddick said.
All eyes in the courtroom were focused on Debora as she began to read her statement. She looked twenty years older than she had five months earlier. “The death of a child,” she began. “any child, under any circumstances, is a terrible human tragedy. The death of these children under these circumstances is a tragedy almost too great to bear. It is nevertheless a tragedy that I must bear for the rest of my life, and one for which I also must bear responsibility. Nothing that I can do or that can be done to me can bring my children back. In accepting responsibility for this crime, I recognize that I must face and accept the punishment as judged by the court and must also face the sorrow of the loss of my children and the reality of my role in their deaths.
“For many, the administration of punishment for crimes is the primary role of the criminal court system. Others see deterrence of future crimes as the most important result of criminal punishment. I ask that you look beyond even this basic aspect of deterrence and somehow the lesson that can be learned from this tragedy is that these deaths might well have been prevented.
“Alcohol, psychiatric illness and, even more, basic communications failure that were in our family set the stage for this tragedy. I do not seek to use this fact to escape my personal responsibility. I do hope—I do hope, however, that the recognition of these problems and the fact that the signs of these problems could have led to earlier intervention will be a lesson learned from these tragic deaths.
“Alcohol abuse and the psychiatric problems that both lead to alcohol abuse, and spring from it, are treatable diseases. They are not, however, diseases for which the afflicted person will readily seek help on their own. Many of you know in your own lives of persons in danger from these illnesses.
“It is never easy to intervene in the life of another. I would ask that you look at these opportunities for intervention in your own lives and take the steps that must be taken to salvage those lives in danger before it is too late—as it has become for me and my family.
“My desire in taking this course of action is to spare Lissa and the rest of my family any further trauma.
Two members of my family are gone forever and those who survive will never be the same. It is my hope that today marks a new beginning for all, and, as I said, that we can all begin the process of healing.”
Debora was crying as she finished her statement, and she brought her hand up to cover her face. It was an important statement, and a beautifully written one. She had not, however, written it herself; it was a product of a collaboration, not with Ellen Ryan, but with another attorney whose philosophies were in line with Ellen’s. Only time would tell if Debora truly believed in the sentiments she had expressed.
Judge Ruddick was now ready to sentence Debora. He ordered her to serve two forty-year prison terms, to run concurrently but without possibility of parole. He added an “aggravating circumstances” clause: “I specifically find that the defendant knowingly or purposely killed or created a great risk of death to more than one person and that the defendant committed the crime in an especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manner.” He also added two sentences of ninety-seven months each, and one of forty-nine months for the crimes against Lissa and Mike, which were moot because they would run concurrently with the “hard forty.”
Judge Ruddick subtracted 191 days for time Debora had already spent in jail. That meant she now faced imprisonment of thirty-nine years, five months, and nineteen days. She was ordered into the custody of the Kansas Department of Corrections and would soon be transferred to the Topeka Correctional Institute in Topeka, Kansas, to begin the rest of her life.
45
Mike was in the courtroom the day Debora was sentenced to prison. His eye was no longer discolored, but he had a deep scar on the right side of his forehead and his shaved head was just beginning to show a bit of stubble. He, too, had prepared a statement—one he had written himself—but in the end, he decided not to read it. It had been cathartic enough for him to write it, and he didn’t want to “pile on” Debora. Listening to Dr. Hutchinson’s evaluation of her personality, seeing her so diminished, he folded his statement and put it away. But he kept it; in a way, it was his own memorial to his lost children.