Psychologist: Killer didn’t think he was shooting at police
Lincoln S. Rutledge was so delusional and paranoid during a Columbus SWAT standoff at his Clintonville apartment last year that he didn’t think he was shooting at police officers, a psychologist testified Tuesday.
The conclusion of Galit Askenazi, who evaluated Rutledge in March, stands in contrast to the findings of a Franklin County jury, which last week convicted Rutledge of purposely killing Columbus Police Officer Steven Smith and knowing that he was a law-enforcement officer.
Askenazi’s testimony was presented Tuesday as part of an effort by defense attorneys to persuade the same jury that the death penalty is not an appropriate sentence for Rutledge.
Defense attorneys Jefferson Liston and Mitch Williams will continue offering testimony Wednesday to support mitigating factors — which can include mental illness — that jurors can weigh in recommending a sentence of death or life in prison. Common Pleas Judge Mark Serrott told the jurors that closing arguments for the sentencing phase also could be delivered Wednesday, so they should bring overnight bags in anticipation of being sequestered in a hotel while deliberating the sentence.
Askenazi, a Clevelandarea forensic psychologist, spent two hours and 55 minutes interviewing Rutledge and three hours and 20 minutes giving him tests in the county jail over two days in March, nearly a year after the SWAT standoff. She also reviewed police and medical records of the case.
She said Rutledge, 45, had a lengthy history of anxiety and depression, which were being treated with medication, but developed a delusional disorder in the months leading up to his crimes. The disorder is a form of psychosis, or a break with reality, which for Rutledge included irrational fears that others were out to get him and to harm him, she said.
When SWAT officers tried to serve Rutledge with an arrest warrant charging him with setting fire to his estranged wife’s house, he barricaded himself inside the apartment and eventually started shooting. The officers had sent robot cameras inside the apartment and fired tear gas, flash grenades and “knee-knockers” through the windows in an effort to get him to surrender.
Askenazi said Rutledge’s reaction was, “This is not the police. The police would not do something like this.”
The police action “reaffirmed his delusions that someone was after him and trying to do him harm,” she said.
Under cross-examination by Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Hogan, she conceded that some of her conclusions were based on what Rutledge told her, with nothing to corroborate it.
“Has anyone ever tricked you?” Hogan asked her.
“No, I don’t think so,” she replied, explaining that she specializes in identifying when individuals are malingering, or faking their symptoms.
When Hogan asked her for Rutledge’s explanation for setting his estranged wife’s house on fire, Askenazi said she doesn’t ask specific questions about a subject’s criminal charges unless she is evaluating him for a not-guilty-by-reason-ofinsanity defense.
During a break in Askenazi’s testimony, the judge replaced one of the jurors with an alternate. The juror told the court his employer was no longer willing to pay him during jury duty, which has lasted more than two weeks.
Because the alternate juror was not involved in deliberating Rutledge’s guilt, the attorneys questioned him to make sure he agreed with the verdicts that make Rutledge eligible for the death penalty.