Trial judge allows confession to counselor

During an intake process at a behavioral center, David Charles Buchan asked a mental-health counselor to send police to check on his girlfriend’s father. He might have killed him, Buchan confessed, according to court documents.

Prosecutors want the counselor to testify about what Buchan told her in his murder trial, but a defense lawyer tried to argue over multiple hearings that the communication was protected by law. However, Buchan’s own words may be used against him, an Orange-Osceola circuit judge ruled Tuesday, nearly two weeks after the last hearing.

Buchan is charged with firstdegree premeditated murder in the stabbing death of Julian Gresham, 81, in February 2016. He was previously found not guilty by reason of insanity of violent attacks against an Orange County Sheriff’s Office deputy and his mother.

The comments aren’t covered by psychotherapist-patient privilege law because Buchan gave counselor Lindsay Walker permission to tell police what he told her, Judge John Marshall Kest wrote in an order. Further, Walker was not diagnosing or treating Buchan, but was only assisting in admitting him to the program.

Four days after Gresham’s killing, Buchan and his girlfriend, Tessie Lynette Gresham, both attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on drugs in a motel. Buchan called 911 and both were hospitalized at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Buchan was later taken to a mental health facility under Florida’s Baker Act, which allows people to be involuntarily detained and given emergency mental heath evaluations if they are believed to be a threat to themselves or others.

Buchan told the counselor his suicide attempt stemmed from the killing, according to court documents. He said he didn’t know why he might have killed Gresham, but he remembered he walked into Gresham’s bedroom to talk to him and left the room covered in blood and carrying a knife, court documents show.

Buchan signed an authorization form allowing Walker to release the information, according to court documents.

“It was the defendant’s intention that the information be related to third parties, e.g., the police,” the judge wrote. “In fact, it was his, and not Ms. Walter’s request that such actions be taken.”

Gresham’s daughter later committed suicide, prosecutor Stewart Stone said. Stone, a Seminole County prosecutor, was assigned the case because Orange-Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala represented Buchan when she was a defense lawyer.

In 2007, Buchan stabbed his mother two dozen times while he was out of jail on bail for attacking an Orange County Sheriff ’s deputy. His mother survived. Buchan was sent to a state mental hospital, where he was treated and released in 2010, according to Orange County court records.

A judge released him to a residential mental-health facility, which he left two years later. At that time, Buchan’s sister begged a judge in Orange County to lock him up again in a state mental hospital.

“He hears voices … He needs help and to be taken off the streets,” Buchan’s sister wrote to the judge. “He’s going to get killed or kill someone.”