‘Nature of the disorder an issue’

Christine McGoey did what many thought impossible and made from what seemed her sow’s ear of a prosecution case the proverbial silk purse.

“We have trial by jury, not by experts,” the Toronto Crown attorney told the jurors Friday in a powerful closing address at the first-degree murder trial of Richard Kachkar.

It was a straightforward appeal for the six men and six women of the jury to prefer their own common sense and life experience over the wealth of sometimes confounding psychiatric evidence they have heard over the six weeks of the trial.

Lawyers for the 46-yearold Mr. Kachkar admit that on Jan. 12, 2011, he was behind the wheel of a stolen truck-cumsnowplow and that he drove it right at Toronto Police Sergeant Ryan Russell, the blade of the plow knocking him off his feet and fatally clipping his head.

But the lawyers say Mr. Kachkar shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for what he did because of his mental illness — thus his plea of not guilty.

The defence primarily relies upon three forensic psychiatrists who have testified that Mr. Kachkar was so mentally ill he couldn’t have understood either the physical consequences or moral wrongness of what he was doing that early morning.

To all that, Ms. McGoey said, in effect, nonsense.

“The Crown accepts that more likely than not, Richard Kachkar had a mental disorder,” she said. “But our position is that the nature of the disorder is an issue.”

As she snapped later in her address, “You can have a mental illness and still know something’s wrong.”

Mental illness doesn’t necessarily wipe out all contact with reality, Ms. McGoey pointed out, or as she put it once, “Motivations are not mutually exclusive, mental illness is not the only thing that operates.”

It was a smart point, one that underlines what is likely a typical urban dweller’s varied experience with mental illness, such as the homeless man who shouts obscenities but sud- denly quiets when a police car drives by, or the co-worker with bipolar disorder who excels at a demanding job.

And Mr. Kachkar’s illness — whatever it was and the psychiatrists say either psychosis-not-otherwise-specified or late-onset schizophrenia — was complicated and not easily diagnosed.

The three psychiatrists, including Dr. Philip Klassen who was hired by prosecutors but testified for the defence, all acknowledged there were hard-to-explain aspects of Mr. Kachkar’s behaviour and presentation. For one thing, his purported psychosis at the time in question resolved un- usually quickly afterwards, and without the help of any antipsychotic medication.

A series of other doctors, who saw him either in hospital (only after Sgt. Russell was struck and killed and Mr. Kachkar was shot were police able to stop his rampage throughout the city) or in jail, saw no symptoms of psychosis.

For another, the lack of memory Mr. Kachkar claimed about the incident itself was atypical, and at least one psychiatrist suspected he may have been exaggerating it.

And some of Mr. Kachkar’s statements before the event or after can be interpreted two ways — either as evidence of his wide-ranging fear and dread or of his vague intentions to do something wrong.

For instance, several days before, Mr. Kachkar asked an acquaintance at a St. Catharines, Ont., shelter if he did something bad, would God still love him?

And the night before he stole the snowplow, he told worker at a Toronto shelter “he was thinking of doing something bad.”

The defence, bolstered by the psychiatrists, says that these were comments consistent with what one called Mr. Kachkar’s “general sense of forboding,” but Ms. McGoey said they could just as easily be expressions of his ability to “think ahead” and to plan, and evidence that he hadn’t lost touch with reality.

And for all the strangeness of Mr. Kachkar’s behaviour that snowy January morning — before he hit Sgt. Russell, he drove the snowplow into five traffic accidents, went the wrong way down several major streets and did U-turns again and again, shrieked at some passersby about “Chinese technology,” threatened one and invited others to come for a ride — Ms. McGoey pointed out that there was also a curious rationality and consistency to it.

Though the psychiatrists described him as fearful, how he appeared to many of those who saw him that day was just plain angry, Ms. McGoey said.

And he drove the 5,050-kilo truck-cum-plow with great skill, sideswiping a series of taxis here, backing in between pillars to smash a plate-glass window there, pulling up into a narrow lane beside a squad car, and was always alert enough to spot anyone foolish enough to follow him.

Mr. Kachkar also displayed a certain interest in his own notoriety, the prosecutor said. When he asked one passerby to jump on for a ride, he promised, “You’ll be on Facebook”; he later asked one of his police guards, “Is this on Facebook?” and inquired of the guard, “Are there newspapers from that night?” and when the guard asked, “What night?”, replied, “The night it happened.”

Most of all, Ms. McGoey said, it “is difficult to reconcile” Mr. Kachkar running at parked cars “with psychotic, fearful behaviour.”

Rather, she suggested, Mr. Kachkar was “flexing in muscle, [saying] ‘Notice me! I’m in control here!”

Sgt. Russell, she said, “was not confronting him, he’s backing away” when Mr. Kachkar drove the plow at him. “But that’s not enough for Richard Kachkar. Richard Kachkar now had Ryan Russell in his sights … he is the deer in Richard Kachkar’s headlights.”

Finally, in an oblique but pointed barb at defence lawyer Bob Richardson, who had repeatedly referred to Sgt. Russell’s death as a tragedy, Ms. McGoey snapped, “Yes, this was a tragedy. It was also a first-degree murder.”

Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian MacDonnell will complete his instructors to the jurors Monday, at which point they are expected to begin deliberations.

Mea culpa: In Friday’s column on this trial, I mistakenly referred to the psychiatrist Dr. Klassen as being in jail. I meant Mr. Kachkar.