Judge orders mental health treatment plan for convicted kidnapper

An Allegheny County Common Pleas judge on Monday ordered that a man found guilty but mentally ill of kidnapping and assaulting his girlfriend serve five to 10 years in prison.

But in an unusual move, Judge Alexander P. Bicket also ordered that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections provide Calvin McDonald with specific mental health treatment as was recommended by the defense expert who evaluated him.

Typically, a guilty but mentally ill verdict in Pennsylvania leads to a defendant being assigned to the State Correctional Institution Waymart, Wayne County, which specializes in treating inmates with mental illness. But the treatment provided is dictated by evaluations done in prison, and there is no guarantee of any type of intensive treatment, experts say.

McDonald, 32, of Monroeville, was found guilty but mentally ill in July of aggravated assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment and false imprisonment.

According to the prosecution, McDonald assaulted his girlfriend, bound her with duct tape and then drove her around for

hours in a minivan with their children on June 17, 2016.

Shannon Edwards, who holds a doctoral degree in forensic psychology, testified at McDonald’s trial that at the time of the crime, the defendant was in a dissociative state, stemming from a history of childhood abuse.

As a child, McDonald and his sister said in separate interviews, food was withheld from them for days at a time; they weren’t permitted to wear clothes at home; and they were tied to bunk beds and beaten until they lost control of their bodily functions — which would lead to further punishment.

Ms. Edwards said McDonald told her that during a June 17 argument with his girlfriend, she hit him on the shoulder, triggering a flashback. He said he did not remember using the tape or driving around.

As the case was about to go to the jury for deliberations, defense attorney Andrew Capone objected to the judge giving the instruction from the law on a guilty but mentally ill verdict.

“The reality, or the fact, is, that no treatment is made available to the defendant. He would just be locked up in prison just like any other guilty verdict,” Mr. Capone argued. “I think it’s misleading the jury into a false sense of comfort to help them find a guilty but mentally ill verdict.”

In McDonald’s case, Ms. Edwards recommended to Judge Bicket that the defendant continue to take the psychotropic medication he is on, but also that he continue in individual and group counseling and that he continue with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy — which he began at Torrance State Hospital, one of only two state-run mental hospitals in Pennsylvania. In addition, she said that McDonald should be re-evaluated after a year to check his progress.

Ms. Edwards told Judge Bicket she believes that if McDonald fails to continue in his various forms of treatment, he will regress.

In addition to the prison term, McDonald also must serve three years of probation.