by Robert Scott
Fahy then asked, “Would it help if someone, like a lawyer, who he learns to trust, would help him gain stability?”
Larsen responded, “Absolutely. As long as they don’t disagree or make light of the delusional thought.”
“And don’t bring up about the evidence against him?”
“That would be an example.”
CHAPTER 50
Fahy noted that Dr. Sasser had diagnosed Gabe as having an antisocial personality disorder.
To this observation, Larsen said, “Antisocial disorder is a long-term maladaptive, ingrained way of behaving, or experience that deviates away from your peers. You have to be deceitful, have poor impulse controls, be reckless, irresponsible and not feel remorse. You have to have three or more of seven criteria, and Gabriel Morris did not have those. They simply weren’t there. And the DSM states there had to be conduct disorder before the age of fifteen. And those can’t be just pranks or illegal activity. It’s a habitual, ongoing behavior. They have to be consistent and last for three or more months. I didn’t see that in the reports from Mr. Morris or the investigative reports. Antisocial personality disorders develop over time. There are signs of it when you are a kid. Gabriel Morris does not fit the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, in my opinion.”
Fahy wanted to know if it was a close call in making his diagnosis, and Dr. Larsen said, “No, this was one of those rare circumstances where there is lots and lots of corroborating reports from people literally describing a delusion.”
“Was there anything you saw that indicated a planned, premeditated killing?”
“Premeditated, no. The only plan was to go and confront Mr. Kennelly and try to get his mother away from him.”
“There is some testimony that he just didn’t go out and start killing people at random. He was able to control himself to some degree. He seemed to know what he was doing when he went to the Eschler home right after the event. Would you expect to see nonstop, out-of-control behavior? Nonstop delusions?”
Larsen said, “By and large, a person with a delusion can engage in purposeful activities. It is not as if they’re ravingly crazy.”
On cross, DA Frasier started out by saying, “Just because you and Dr. Mallory have diagnosed Gabriel Morris with a delusional disorder, it does not mean he meets the legal requirements of a mental disease.”
Larsen said that was true.
Frasier pointed out that Larsen also made a diagnosis of a personality disorder, which Fahy had not asked him about on direct.
Larsen said he had, and explained that a personality disorder was a long-standing maladaptive behavior that extended for years and years and adversely affected a person’s functioning in daily life. Larsen also said that Gabe had bits and pieces of paranoia and narcissism. Narcissism was where a person felt entitled and that the world revolved around him. It was to see one’s self as unique, and an individual would go out of his way to draw attention to himself. Larsen also explained that a personality disorder was not enough in the legal code when it came to an acquittal by a condition of mental disease or defect.
Frasier wanted to know, “So you have this Axis I delusional disorder and this Axis II personality disorder. Are they all intermixed? Where are we at here?”
Larsen said, “I think the narcissism lent itself to his difficulty with jobs and relationships.” Larsen still posited that the delusional disorder was paramount when it came to Gabe.
Frasier once again brought up the fact that initially Gabe had wanted to testify in front of the jury and put forth the reasons why he wanted to do so. There wasn’t any forensic evidence against him; there were no eyewitnesses to the killings; he said there was reasonable doubt.
Frasier continued, “So, isn’t it true that in the course of your interviews, you’ve met defendants that have ignored the advice of their attorneys? They’re not necessarily delusional when they tell their attorney they don’t want to go along with them?”
“Some have been, but most are not.”
On redirect, Fahy immediately asked Dr. Larsen if Gabe had said anything to implicate his wife in the murders.
Larsen responded, “Not necessarily implicate her, but she was convinced she was being poisoned.”
“Did you read in the interviews that at no time was she scared of Mr. Morris?”
“Yes.”
“And she went voluntarily with him?”
“Yes.”
As far as Gabe being prescribed medication in jail, Larsen said that a person with a delusional disorder did not respond well to medication, like a schizophrenic might or someone who was bipolar. Larsen agreed that a member of the defense team could talk to Gabe in jail and calm him down, but the delusion was still there. The delusion might not be as pronounced as before, but Larsen did not believe it had disappeared.
Fahy asked if it would be rational for someone who had been a police officer to go into court and believe he could sway them with these arguments about the case at hand with the outrageous stories he had come up with.
Larsen replied, “No, it is part of the delusional system. To think you could really go into a court and convince a judge or jury to believe the delusion is in itself delusional.”
Larsen was asked if he always went into court with reports to back up the defense in a case. Larsen said no, and he noted that he looked at over one hundred cases a year and testified in about three or four per year. He added, “The vast majority of the cases I look at, even if there is some mental illness, it doesn’t impact the actual event. So I never testify in those cases.” Larsen stated that in this case it was clear to him that Gabriel Morris suffered from a delusional disorder and could not conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.
CHAPTER 51
As the others had done, Dr. Sasser told of his education and credentials. He testified about the competency findings and then about his style of interviewing Gabe.
When he got into that aspect of the case, Judge Stone interrupted the questioning and asked Dr. Sasser directly, “The other two witnesses critiqued your style of interviewing. Would you like to respond to that?”
Sasser said, “I don’t know what their style is. If they have a passive style to sit back, kind of like a psychoanalytic thing, they’re never going to get any accurate information. You have to ask questions. From a question, it should lead to other questions. In Mr. Morris’s case, he would frequently give a vague, suggestive answer and then let it drop. It would be easy if you had a passive style to accept that. I tend to not do that. I want to know the next step. It is being more active in the interview process. For example, Mr. Morris told me that he left his mother’s house and did lots of stuff. So I asked him what ‘stuff’ meant. Morris said it meant that his mother was in a bad state. Those kinds of responses were frequent on his part. It required an almost confrontive style.
“I was not able to elicit a pervasive delusional system. A person with a delusional disorder—they have a false belief and it is fixed. It doesn’t go from being grandiose to persecuted. It’s one fixed idea that a person can’t get off of. It could be a belief that someone is breaking into their house. It’s not a common condition and it’s difficult to treat. It doesn’t wax and wane. It’s always there, but the person may not share about it if they are not specifically asked about it. But then they will, because they absolutely believe it’s true.
“They don’t look for a belief based upon evidence. They look for evidence based upon their belief. It may develop over time, but once it’s there, it’s there. There were comments by others that in the weeks before the shooting, he was acting weird, acting bizarre and not making sense when he talked. Those are not consistent with a delusional disorder. Those can be consistent with a drug-induced psychosis.
“We have a video of him admitting to the officers in Virginia what he did. Not only did he admit to the murders, he corrected the officers. They initially assumed it was a face-to-face thing, and he corrected them and said that he started
shooting from the balcony. The stories about some man in black jumping out of a bedroom and shooting his mother and her boyfriend is nonsense. Was this just one more of his lies, to feed to his wife as they traveled down to San Diego? If he was delusional at all then, it was probably more to do with his marijuana use than any fixed delusional disorder. If he had a delusional disorder, he would have shared it with me.”
Judge Stone asked Sasser, “You disagree that the defendant suffers from a delusional disorder?”
Sasser said that was so.
The judge then asked Sasser if it was a close call in making his diagnosis.
Sasser replied, “No, not at all. What the people who knew him said of his rambling from thought to thought, disorganized speech, that’s inconsistent with a delusional disorder. It is consistent with paranoid psychosis or drug psychosis.
“People with delusional disorders don’t have hallucinations. They don’t hear things and they don’t see things. They don’t have disruption in their speech like a chronically mentally ill person does, where they jump from topic to topic without any cohesiveness. They are clear in their thinking, but their logic is backward. In a sense, they look for information to support their false idea.
“People spoke of his bizarre behavior and bizarre thoughts. A delusional disorder is almost within believability. It’s things like delusional jealousy, or people moving things around in the person’s house. In light of his clear thinking now, it was more likely drug-induced bizarre behavior.”
There was a break, and when it was over, Judge Stone had an admonition to people sitting in the gallery. He said, “Don’t show any emotion when a witness is on the stand. I have seen individuals shaking their heads and making facial expressions. If you disagree with something the witness says, just hold it to yourself.”
That done, Michael Barker did the cross-examination of Dr. Sasser. Barker asked him if delusions in a delusional disorder were always fixed and never change. Sasser replied that was so. So Barker had Sasser look up the exact wording about delusional disorders in the DSM-IV: If auditory or visual hallucinations are present, they are not prominent.
Barker then said, “That doesn’t mean there are no hallucinations. It also says that tactile hallucinations may be prominent if they are related to the delusion. That could go into the business of smelling rat poison, could it not?”
Sasser agreed that it could. But when Barker asked if a person smelled rat poison in food, and there was none, if that was not a delusion, Sasser said it wasn’t and added, “That’s not a delusion. That’s a hallucination. It has nothing to do with the fixed belief.”
Barker then asked if Dr. Sasser had testified that delusions did not wax or wane. Sasser agreed he did say that. So Barker had him look at page 326 of the DSM-IV, where it stated that specialty- and persecutory-type disorders may be chronic, although waxing and waning of the preoccupation with the delusional beliefs often occur.
Sasser said that what he testified to was that the delusional belief never waxes or wanes. What Barker was now referring to was that the preoccupation with the delusional beliefs could wax and wane.
“Well, if the preoccupation waxes and wanes, wouldn’t that give you the same effect in the person as the delusion waxing and waning?”
“No, the preoccupation is the expression of their false belief. The false belief is still there, but they are not speaking about it.”
Barker said that in Dr. Sasser’s report, he noted that Gabe denied being mentally ill. Then Barker stated, “Mentally ill people often take that position. You knew that he was trying to sell the idea he did not have a mental disease, did you not?”
Sasser replied in the affirmative, so Barker continued, “Since he claimed to be not mentally ill, did you expect him to come out and start describing delusional-belief systems to you?”
“I did not expect him to describe them. That’s why I asked him about them.”
Barker then noted that in Sasser’s second interview with Gabe, Sasser had asked sixty closed-ended questions.
Sasser may have been being ironic when he answered, “I’m surprised anybody would take the time to count them.”
Barker was not particularly appreciative of that answer and said, “Well, you know, if you ask a closed-ended question, you’re going to get a closed-ended answer?”
Sasser replied that was not always the case. “Sometimes they lead to further questions.”
Barker wanted to know if Sasser asked Gabe any questions about alleging that his father had taken him into the ocean to drown or running through the forest blindfolded and being aided by God.
Dr. Sasser said that he had not.
Barker also wanted to know if Dr. Sasser had reviewed Doug Miller’s statement to police where Gabe had said he’d intentionally eaten rat poison so that he could heal himself. Sasser had not done so. When asked if that was a delusional belief, Sasser said that it wasn’t necessarily one.
As far as Gabe claiming to be a dragon rider in a pre-mortal existence, Sasser said that was an example of a bizarre belief. And by definition, a delusional-belief system did not incorporate bizarre beliefs. It only incorporated things that could be true, but weren’t.
Barker related, “You mentioned in testimony the possibility of a drug-induced psychosis. Is there anywhere in your report where you diagnosed him with a drug-induced psychosis?”
Dr. Sasser replied, “You need to speak up because you mumble.”
Irritated, Barker shot back, “My goodness, Doctor, I’m speaking about as loudly as I can!”
Moving on, Barker asked if Dr. Sasser expected Gabe just to come out and start telling him about his delusional disorder.
Sasser answered, “I expected to elicit answers that would support a delusional belief, if one existed.”
“So, since he wasn’t saying anything about a delusional disorder, you steered him in that direction?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Were you aware that most of the property he and his wife had was left in the red pickup truck in the back of the house? They left the scene barefoot, and his wife and child were in pajamas. Does any of that sound like a plan to you, Doctor?”
Sasser responded, “It sounds like a situation where somebody leaves a place they don’t want to be around.”
Barker wanted to know if Dr. Sasser considered collateral information, and he said he did. So Barker said that there was testimony in the case where Ray Wetzel actually said the words, “He was delusional, almost hallucinating.”
Sasser replied, “I don’t know what he means by ‘delusional.’”
Barker asked, “If you didn’t read any reports about him before he was fifteen years of age, when did you think he started lying?”
Sasser said, “I can’t tell you the first time someone reported him lying.”
Barker continued that the first reports of Gabe lying came in about the time that Gabe quit the ROTC. And then he asked, “So in other words, you don’t know if there was anything of his history of lying up to that time?”
Sasser said that was correct, and Barker got Sasser to agree that for the first eighteen months at Brigham Young University, Gabe had done well. His grades only began to slip after that time. The usually bright and amiable Gabe became withdrawn and sullen.
“Couldn’t this relate to the deteriorating mental health of an individual?”
“It might.”
“Don’t the last few years of his life appear to be a downward spiral?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t it become a consistent theme within the last couple of years of his life before the shooting, where he told people he was in black ops?”
“There were several people who reported that, yes.”
“And you can’t tell if those were lies or delusions?”
“No, I can’t tell specifically.”
DA Frasier, of course, wanted to ask more questions of Dr. Sasser on redirect. Frasier noted that Sasser had been cut off during one part of c
ross-examination, and asked what he was going to say.
Sasser explained, “The DSM-IV is not a cookbook. To go through it and list certain things is inappropriate. The DSM-IV is basically research material. In the clinical realm, we can use it and do use it less rigidly than they do in the research world. That’s why the caveats when it is used in forensic settings. It can be misused there.”
Talking about Pam Hansen’s statements about dragons, Sasser called them a bizarre delusion, and that had nothing to do with a delusional disorder. Sasser continued, “If a person is suffering from bizarre delusions, things that come to mind are schizophrenia, a drug-induced psychosis or a bipolar disorder. And breathing underwater or running through the trees blindfolded weren’t relevant to the time frame around the times of the murders. I was trying to get answers about the person’s mental state at the time of the crime.”
As far as the Eschlers went, Sasser said it wasn’t a delusion. “He gave them a story to get what he wanted—a car and a gun. He admitted to me that he lied to the Eschlers to get what he wanted.”
Judge Stone jumped in and said, “Clarify one thing. I want to phrase this in a way that makes sense. You said that some of Morris’s testimony was that his behavior and ramblings that were taking place two or three months before the shootings—that those, in your opinion, are not consistent with a delusional disorder?”
Sasser replied, “Yes, they are not consistent with a delusional disorder. They are not inconsistent, however, with a drug-induced psychosis or schizophrenia.”