Diagnosis muddies case of ‘Christmas card killer’
If a man kills someone and is only years after his trial found to be profoundly mentally ill, and at least one psychiatrist says he was probably equally severely ill at the time of the killing, what does it mean?
Has he been unjustly convicted or not?
And what does it say about the reliance of courts upon the expert opinions of psychiatrists and psychologists when, as is alleged here, so many doctors may have got it wrong?
This is the case of Trevor Lapierre, whose lawyer James Fleming Wednesday argued that the Ontario Court of Appeal should either allow the “fresh evidence” in the case and declare Lapierre was not criminally responsible at the time of the killing, or order a new trial.
On Dec. 15, 2007, Lapierre attacked 74-year-old Hunter Brown as he hand-delivered Christmas cards to friends in his Kitchener neighbourhood, earning Lapierre the nickname of the “Christmas card killer.”
He stabbed Brown more than 40 times, most of the wounds to the man’s face and head.
Two days later, Lapierre attacked another man as he was shovelling his driveway, but used only his fists, so the man wasn’t hurt.
Lapierre pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and assault in 2010 and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 17 years.
Two psychiatrists who examined him at that time, including one hired by his trial lawyer, concluded that he didn’t suffer from a major mental illness and thus didn’t have a mental health defence, commonly called NCR (Not Criminally Responsible), available to him.
But once Lapierre, who is now 33, landed in the federal correctional system, his mental condition deteriorated and he was admitted to the Regional Treatment Centre in Kingston, where he was quickly diagnosed with “severe intractable schizophrenia” and put on a drug considered to be the medication of last resort for schizophrenia because it has such dangerous side effects.
He has been compliant about taking the drug and made “significant progress” with his mental health and is now at a minimum-security institution, so good is his security rating.
These institutional records are part of the fresh evidence appeal, but the most important piece is a report by respected senior forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford, who saw Lapierre at the Brockville Mental Health Centre for two months and concluded he had “suffered from severe treatment-resistant schizophrenia prior to and at the material time” of Brown’s murder and the assault.
In a later report, Bradford was even more emphatic, writing that “In my opinion, Trevor Lapierre was seriously mentally ill for a considerable period of time prior to (the killing) and that his mental status at the time was directly related to his behaviour leading to the homicide.”
Lapierre had long described having had what psychiatrists call “command hallucinations” (in his case, orders from Satan to kill someone in order to save himself ) and having heard voices.
He was repeatedly hospitalized for his symptoms, but rarely kept for more than a few days, as is standard in the revolving door world of mental health care.
His longest stay came in 2006, in Toronto, after he had tried to amputate one of his fingers.
In fact, his last admission, to Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, was less than four weeks before he attacked and killed Brown. His parents raced to the hospital, his mother Cindy says, to plead with staff to keep him.
But the psychologists who tested him after the killing and the psychiatrists who interviewed him suspected he was malingering, or faking extreme symptoms. Their attempts at diagnosing him were frustrated by the fact that even as he reported hearing voices and feeling paranoid, he was able to take part in lengthy evaluations and seemed to focus.
What one of the psychologists told a psychiatrist is typical: “Although he agrees that Mr. Lapierre is a troubled man, and possibly suffering from periods of depression, he describes him as a self-focused if not selfabsorbed individual …”
But Bradford says flatly Lapierre was simply misdiagnosed, complicated by the fact that until he got the right drug for his severe schizophrenia in prison, he was non-compliant with the medication that he was given.
Bradford also said unequivocally that, “In my opinion, there is no evidence of malingering being a factor …”
Lapierre, he said, would have had to “repeatedly misrepresent the torment and suffering he went through,” not to mention misrepresent his efforts to cut off his finger.
His killing of a complete stranger, Bradford wrote, “is a classic presentation of violence driven by a psychosis such as severe treatment-resistant schizophrenia.”
Fleming, meanwhile, told the court that prior to the onset of his client’s illness, when he was 19 or 20, Lapierre was an honours student and a talented artist, headed for the Ontario College of Art and Design. Now that Lapierre has been correctly diagnosed and treated, he has returned to being the emotionally stable and respectful man his parents know and love.
He “fell through the cracks of a gaping hole in the mental health care system,” Fleming said, and the hospital that released him less than a month before he attacked Hunter Brown abdicated its responsibility.
For the Crown, prosecutor Eric Siebenmorgen said the fresh evidence “falls far short of establishing any miscarriage of justice in this case” and asked that the appeal be dismissed.
The three-member court has reserved its decision.
HAS HE BEEN UNJUSTLY CONVICTED OR NOT?