by Donald West
In the event the Norris plea was dismissed and that judgement was upheld on appeal to the Supreme Court in 1983. Undeterred, Norris referred the issue of breach of his rights of privacy to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court confirmed that the law penalising consensual homosexual acts in private amounted to a breach, and dismissed the Irish government’s pleas of necessity for the preservation of morals. The Irish government finally acknowledged the decision and reformed the law. I cannot claim to have made much contribution to the process, but at least I supported it and possess a fine Waterford jug given in return for my trouble.
It was usually defence lawyers who asked me for an opinion. After seeing an offender in prison, my opinion was not necessarily what they were hoping for, in which case, as in the following example, I would not be asked to testify. The offender was a persistent confidence trickster and imposter whose grandiose manner and plausible misrepresentations had deceived his numerous, mostly elderly, victims over many years. Previous imprisonments had done nothing to deter him. Here are some quotations from my report.
“He insisted that he had been told several times that he needed treatment, but he had never received any help … He denies all incidents of wrongdoing save for those established by legal process. He talks as if he were the injured party … He thinks his wife has been manipulated by others to reject him … The history of persistent offences of ‘conning’ and dishonesty is a sad pattern which has shown no sign of changing over the years …
“He is not psychotic, but he has manifested from an early age grossly deviant attitudes and behaviour, which could justify a diagnosis of psychopathy. His condition is of such doubtful treatability, however, that a hospital order would not be feasible. He is so unconfiding and defensive, so insistent on denying responsibility, and blaming others, that psychotherapy would be unlikely to work…”
A report from another psychiatrist gave essentially similar opinions.
“There is no evidence in the history, or on examination, of any formal psychiatric disorder. He is fit to plead and stand trial. He is capable of managing his affairs… It is acceptable to describe him as suffering from psychopathic disorder, but this terminology contributes nothing to our understanding of the case. There are no grounds for dealing with him under the Mental Health Act.”
Although already in late middle age, this offender was given an unusually long sentence of imprisonment. One has some sympathy for such men. They are fundamentally unhappy and incapable of adjusting to normal living, but they are uncomfortably challenging to psychiatrists. He could nowadays be recommended for detention as a psychopath who is a danger to society, but he would be viewed as an unenviable and perhaps unending commitment.
As a writer on homosexuality I was asked to supply opinions on a number of cases of suspected ‘homosexual panic’. The term comes from the psychological theory that some homosexual men repress their inclinations so strongly that, when presented with a situation of temptation, they have an outburst of uncontrollable rage and panic in which they attack and may murder the man they deem responsible. This is a possible explanation of cases in which, having been approached in a public convenience or a gay cruising ground, a man allows some sexual activity, but afterwards turns on his erstwhile partner with curses and blows. Incidents of this kind featured in a survey questioning homosexual men about experiences of assaults (West, (Ed.) Sexual Victimisation, Gower, 1985). Most serious assaults on gay men, however, are the work of youthful gangs who pick on men they consider justifiable targets for the practice of enjoyable violence, or by criminals who offer themselves for gay sex as a means to gain entry into the victim’s home for robbery, if necessary with violence.
Claims for sudden and uncontrollable homosexual panic have been used as a defence argument in some murder cases in order to reduce the charge to one of manslaughter by virtue of diminished responsibility, thereby avoiding a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. False claims of this kind are often instigated with no reasonable justification. One young killer I was asked to examine in prison, while he was awaiting trial, was a case in point. He had a history of juvenile delinquency, educational retardation and substance abuse. He was heterosexually promiscuous, but admitted to earning cash from homosexuals met in public lavatories. His victim was an older man who had previously taken him home for sex and given him money. A further visit was arranged. The offender went armed with a suitable, borrowed knife with which he stabbed the victim many times, driving away with his car and cash. He claimed that when anal intercourse was proposed he acted in panic. In reality he was more powerful than his victim and could have left at any time. The knife suggested premeditated robbery and the panic, if any, was more likely due to fear of the consequences of discovery. He was foolish enough to boast of his murderous exploit to fellow prisoners. Needless to say, in view of my sceptical opinion, I was not called to give evidence and the law took its normal course.
Sometimes it is unclear whether a frenzied overkill is triggered by the aggressor’s panic reaction to a homosexual situation or to violent tendencies triggered in other ways. One man, in his mid-twenties, had killed a somewhat older friend with repeated knife stabbing, stomping and slashing with broken glass, continuing after his victim was already dead and including cutting the penis. The pathologist who carried out the autopsy described the attack as maniacal. The offender had been seriously anti-social since boyhood. After his father left and his mother remarried he had fights with his stepfather. He hated school, truanted persistently, ran away from home and was soon in trouble with the police for thieving. He also started drinking at fourteen. It was not long before his drinking got out of control: he gained a reputation for violence when intoxicated and had a number of convictions for assaults, as well as breaking into houses and stripping metal from roofs to support a serious drug habit.
He married twice and had additional heterosexual affairs, each time coming to grief on account of frightening behaviour when drunk. Two years before the current crime he had been admitted to hospital for treatment, but was thought not well motivated to change and relapsed into heavy drinking very soon after discharge. At the time of the killing he had been mixing with other alcoholics and was staying temporarily with a male friend met in a pub, and they were having many quarrels. The victim was another drinking companion with whom he was for some reason staying the night. This man was a homosexual, but the offender denied knowing this. He gave varied accounts afterwards about what happened, but essentially he claimed that he was awoken by the victim approaching his mouth with an exposed penis. He pushed him away, but when the victim came back at him he reacted violently. He was never able to admit or describe clearly all that happened then. He had been drinking spirits and cider and taking valium beforehand and was still somewhat intoxicated when he fled the scene, after disposing of his own blood-stained clothes and dressing in the victim’s things. He went to a friend’s house and confessed to having possibly killed someone in self-defence. He was persuaded with difficulty to go to the police. On the first visit he could not bring himself to report the crime, pretending he had come about something else for which the police wanted him. He was allowed to leave. After becoming very drunk and aggressive in public he was finally arrested.
When I saw him in prison he was complaining of chronic depressed feelings, as if something were hopelessly the matter with him. He had written several pages of notes in advance, trying to put his feelings into words. He described obsessional thoughts and habits which seemed to have developed as futile rituals to ease his tense, miserable moods. He insisted he was not feeling suicidal and wanted to live. His talk was coherent and rational and he was able to eat normally.
Clearly he was not psychotic, but was a man of violent temperament, especially when drunk. His homicidal frenzy might have been just a more extreme example of previous outbursts. He admitted a common-place dislike of homosexuality, but no strong feelings about it. Another psychiatrist, who had been asked an opinion on the
basis of police records and other documentation, suggested that it was possible the killing was a pathologically violent reaction to homosexuality. I felt that the reaction was pathological, whether or not related to homosexuality, and that the offender could be assumed to have been in a condition of ‘diminished responsibility’ at the time of the crime. Possibly because another psychiatric opinion said to be favourable to the offender was obtained, I was not asked to attend his trial and do not know the outcome.
This case illustrates a problem with the use of a hypothetical homosexual panic reaction as a line of defence. Some instances of frenzied homicidal rage may well reflect complete loss of control and amount to diminished responsibility, but many events other than homosexual confrontation may trigger such a reaction in a mentally susceptible person. An example might be a person suffering from pathological jealousy who batters to death a man he believes to be his wife’s lover. In the case I have described the offender was prone to excessive rage in response of any aggravation, especially after he had been drinking. He might therefore have been regarded as a victim of provocation. However, as a legal defence, provocation used to require that the response had to be such as a reasonable man might make under the circumstances. Now, the offender’s mental state may be taken into account, as in cases of violence by battered women. Some authorities argue that in cases of murder the defences of diminished responsibility or provocation should be merged into behaviour “under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance for which there is a reasonable explanation or cause” (American Law Institute Model Penal Code, 1985).
In the next example, a man in his mid-thirties charged with murder, I was asked by his solicitor to read the documentation to decide whether I might be of positive assistance to his defence. I replied that the evidence did not support a diagnosis of homosexual panic, but that “episodic dyscontrol aggravated by alcohol” might be argued to favour diminished responsibility, but it would be difficult to establish. I was not called upon further.
The offender in question was known to frequent gay bars and mix among gay men, some of whom reported having had sex with him. He, however, insisted on his heterosexuality. Although now living as a single man, he had had a common-law marriage of some duration, but he did admit to taking advantage of gays’ sexual interest in him to obtain drinks and favours. He was a heavy drinker and known to have an explosive temper after drinking, and he had recently accepted counseling for anger management.
For three months prior to the murder he had been lodging in the home of his victim, an older gay man who was a chronic alcoholic and also well known for making ineffectual advances to other men. He had lost many jobs, some gay friendships and most recently his driving licence, on account of his irresponsible drinking. In the small hours of the day that he was killed, he was found lying in the street in a drunken stupor and helped home by the police. This was nothing unusual. The offender said he arrived at the lodging an hour or so after this incident. As he was ascending the stairs to his bedroom, the victim, who had been slumped in a chair downstairs, woke up and followed him, ranting about the money he owed for rent and electricity, and blaming him for deserting an old man. It was a fact that the offender owed his landlord money and that he had found another flat and had already moved most of his belongings there. The offender interpreted the landlord’s stance, words and smirking expression as an expectation of sexual favours in lieu of rent. He was outraged because it had been clearly agreed as a condition of his occupancy that there would be no sex. The landlord had already breached this by entering his bedroom at night. The door had no functioning lock and he had been obliged to barricade it to ensure undisturbed sleep.
On other occasions the offender asserted that the landlord had actually followed him into the bathroom as he was washing and proceeded to grope him. In any event, he pushed the landlord away, causing him to fall backwards down the stairs. The offender was a well-built labourer, younger and stronger than his landlord. Presumably the row continued, for the offender descended in rage, first attempting to strangle the victim and then, grabbing such heavy objects as were around, smashing in his skull. After his arrest he did not deny he was responsible, but claimed to have no recollection of the details of the killing or of his prior movements or state of mind between the closure of the pubs and his arrival at the lodgings hours later.
When he realised the horror of what he had done, he fled the place and for the week following was on the run from the police. After visiting his new flat to change his clothes, he called upon various acquaintances asking to be allowed to stay. On the evening of the killing he met an older woman in a pub and secured an invitation to her home for the night. He told her he had killed a queer who had “come on” to him, and asked her opinion whether he might secure a defence of diminished responsibility. He also booked an appointment with a solicitor, but could not attend because the police intervened, having been tipped off by the friend he was staying with. He had deposited his blood-stained clothes in this friend’s dustbin, where the police found them.
In view of his immersion in the gay community and his prior awareness of his victim’s habits, it seemed implausible that hypersensitivity to importunate conduct was the true cause of his homicidal outburst. He had had drunken rages in the past and the row about his debts seemed a more likely trigger. Nevertheless, on re-reading the evidence, a degree of provocation while in a dangerously inebriated condition does appear a possible explanation, but probably insufficient for a legal defence, since offenders are normally held responsible for whatever they do after voluntarily consuming intoxicants. I was not asked to testify.
Homosexual panic, according to Henderson and Gillespie’s classic ‘Textbook of Psychiatry’ (10th ed., p.445) is uncommon and associated with states of insecurity and tension and complaints of anxiety or other neurotic symptoms in a man who comes to believe others have detected in him homosexual tendencies, and is manifesting suspicion and aggression. Such was the picture in the one case in which I felt reasonably confident that an emotional complex about homosexuality was a leading cause of the frenzied killing of a homosexual. I testified to this and the accused, a man in his mid-thirties whom I shall call Ralph, had a charge of murder reduced to manslaughter. The case received some publicity and my name was cited in the press. This did not endear me to those gays who assume that homosexual panic does not exist except as an excuse for cold-blooded murder. On discovering that I had supported this defence, an acquaintance I met on the internet contacted me again to tell me angrily that I had betrayed all the gay men victimised by prejudice and violence. Such understandable reactions might be appeased if homosexual panic were to be renamed homophobic frenzy and regarded as a description of behaviour rather than a medical diagnosis.
The offender, Ralph, was employed as a handyman by someone I shall call Edward who was somewhat older and ran a small business of furnishing and interior restoration. They were more like friends and drinking companions than employer and workman. Edward was openly gay and, especially after drinking, was apt to try touching up younger men, a habit causing a mixture of amusement and annoyance. Ralph’s sister believed that Edward was in love with him, but Ralph hated the idea that his small, slim stature might attract homosexuals and make others think he was a homosexual. A few years before he killed Edward he had violently assaulted him, but in spite of this their association continued. It was rumoured, and Ralph later admitted, that the incident was caused by Edward making a sexual advance.
Ralph came from a poor family and had spent time during his childhood in local authority care. His parents separated when he was twelve. As a schoolboy he disliked lessons, was bullied and called a sissy, and truanted persistently. From an early age he displayed a neurotic temperament. He suffered from severe migraine and worried about his health. He had depressive episodes during which he was irritable and complaining of painful sensations in his head, which were put down to ‘nerves’. He would often talk about suicide. Having started t
o drink in his teens, he carried on using drink and taking medications as a means of reducing tension. He blamed his poor health for his irregular work attendance, loss of jobs and failure to achieve a better career. He had a reputation for angry over-reaction when provoked. He was torn between a wife and a mistress, with a child from each; a situation causing further stress.
Ralph admitted to nothing more than a dislike of homosexuality, but in addition to his attack on Edward there were other occasions when he had over-reacted to unwanted approaches. In a cinema a man had edged towards him, pressing a leg against him. He flew into a rage, shouting and chasing after the man until restrained. When his young nephew reported an encounter with a paedophile, he took the matter to heart, threatening to ‘go after’ the man, and was with difficulty persuaded from doing so by the boy’s parents.
On the day of the crime, Ralph, Edward and another man were drinking together in a local pub. Edward was becoming drunk and disinhibited and put his arm round Ralph. The third man left, after which Ralph offered to help Edward back to his nearby workshop as he was unsteady. Some children called after them as they were progressing along the street and Ralph began to feel tense and ill. For what happened after that there is available only Ralph’s version and the physical evidence left behind. On arriving at the workshop, while being helped up the stairs, Edward urinated and lowered his trousers because they were wet. Once inside Ralph guided him to a couch onto which he collapsed, dragging Ralph down with him. Then Edward started to giggle and put his hand under Ralph’s sweatshirt, pulling at his trousers to let down the zip and feel his genitals. Except for struggling to get up, Ralph claims not to remember clearly what happened then. In fact Edward’s skulk was broken open from violent blows from a nearby answerphone and a walking stick, and an electric wire was wound round his throat. Questioned subsequently, Ralph said “It never really occurred to me that I was killing him, there was nothing in my mind but anger. I was vomiting and hitting and everything was happening together”. After this he collapsed on the floor exhausted. On recovering, and before fleeing the scene, he poured spirits and paints, which were stored there, all around the place and set it on fire. The interior was burned out and the body partially consumed before the fire was discovered.