Faked mental illness apparently on rise as (Milwaukee) County Jail fad

The voices of a woman and a dog haunted his head; snakes and monsters stared out at him from mirrors; and "Sergeant 14 and Sergeant 15" promised they would eventually come to his "rescue," according to Milwaukee County Circuit Court records.

"Things fly . . . bugs, criminals, little people," he told a psychologist earlier this year, according to the psychologist's report.

The longtime felon from Chicago said he was so confused by life that he couldn't make sense of the armed robbery charge facing him in Milwaukee.

Smith spent 14 months in the Milwaukee County Jail, a state mental hospital and the county mental health complex before experts concluded he wasn't ever going to be fit to stand trial. They arranged to put him on a bus to Chicago, where his brother had a room for the 50-year-old father of two, court records show.

But the day before he was to leave, according to prosecutors, he startled a nurse by saying, "You know I ain't crazy. I was playing it and I got caught up with the meds. I did one year in (the mental hospital) and not 15 years in prison. I was blessed."

Within days he was back in the County Jail, and last week the armed robbery case that was nearly dismissed was put back on track so Smith could at last stand trial on charges of robbing a woman while visiting Milwaukee in 2001 to attend his mother's funeral.

Prosecutors said Smith's case was an example - albeit extreme - of a fad that appears to have swept through the jail: defendants claiming their mental health precludes them from understanding court proceedings.

Earlier this month, career burglar Robert Kowalkowski, who has nine break-ins on his record, contended that he was contemplating suicide because a male voice and nightmares haunted him in jail.

"Mr. Kowalkowski can control these behaviors if he chooses to do so," psychiatrist John Pankiewicz said in reporting that the repeat burglar "is not suffering from a major mental illness."

Two defendants in the Charlie Young Jr. homicide case also unsuccessfully claimed they were not mentally competent to be in court.

Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Potter, who is prosecuting Smith and Kowalkowski, said five defendants in his current caseload have unsuccessfully raised the issue, usually as a stall tactic.

It is not unusual for some defendants in Milwaukee County Circuit Court - which has more than 6,500 felony cases a year - to be sent temporarily to state mental hospitals because of mental health problems that make it difficult to defend themselves in court.

"There are many people who are caught up in the criminal justice system who are mentally ill," said public defender Dennis Gall. "I have a client now with a 15-year history of schizophrenia and paranoia. . . . I've raised competency as an issue at least 400 times in the last 15 years, and in at least 50 percent of the cases, the client was incompetent."

More try but fail But in recent months, more defendants appear to have been raising the issue, although they have been unsuccessful.

"In the jail, there is an indoctrination of sorts that takes place," said veteran forensic psychiatrist George B. Palermo. "Inmates talk.

"Many have been there several times, and they pass ideas and strategies along to each other."

Smith, who has a string of convictions for crimes including rape, armed robbery and aggravated battery, was charged with robbing a woman Aug. 25, 2001, after threatening to kill her in a store she operated on the city's west side. He was not arrested on the charge until Jan. 28, 2002, and raised the competency issue the following month in a preliminary hearing.

A county psychologist concluded that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and he was committed to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. In the meantime, the proceedings in his case were suspended.

He was repeatedly re-examined in the following months and repeatedly found incompetent.

"While he may at times emphasize his psychiatric symptoms, I do not believe there is sufficient support to establish a diagnosis of malingering in this case," psychologist Deborah Collins reported in February when she pronounced Smith "clearly in need of ongoing services."

By law, Smith could not continue to be committed under the criminal case for more than a year, so on Feb. 19, he was sent to the county medical complex under civil commitment proceedings. On March 12, it was decided that he could be sent to live with his brother in Chicago, records show.

But on April 9, the day before he was to leave, he uttered the malingering admission to the nurse, according to court records. Authorities scrambled and obtained a court order to have him returned to the jail and re-examined.

He vaguely described hallucinating about "all kinds of things . . . good and bad . . . including giant gorilla heads," psychiatrist John Pankiewicz reported.

"I believe there is a strong likelihood Mr. Smith may continue to exaggerate his symptoms and feign incompetency," Pankiewicz wrote in his report. "I believe this behavior is willful in nature and simply an attempt to avoid criminal proceedings."

Based on that report and the report of a psychologist who found Smith competent, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Mary Kuhnmuench reinstated his case, and he is awaiting another preliminary hearing.

We've had a large influx of mentally ill inmates in the prison I work at. The mental health program is run by a separate entity: the Dept. of Mental Hygiene. Once an inmate realizes that all he has to do is feign mental illness, he can get out of work, school, etc. He'll also get his drugs, which he can then trade out in the population for other things. The nurse's that work for Mental Hygiene have no idea about these cons. They think the guys are swallowing the pills, but in reality, they've got them hidden in their palate, or have already removed them from their mouth when they walk out the door. Many of them just spit them out on the sidewalk after they leave the building. It's a joke and a waste of taxpayer's money.

23 years ago, when I first started working in the prison system, we (the officers) used to give the inmates their meds. They ranged from Stelazine, Thorazine, Elavil, etc. There were no pills back then...only liquids. Each night during the count, we would carry the individual bottles down the gallery, and use the eyedrops in each bottle to give the inmates their medications. That finally stopped once the Union jumped on the issue and it was determined that we weren't medical staff and shouldn't be handing that stuff out. I understand that it's cheaper to dispense meds in pill form, but the money that is wasted by all of this, you'd think that liquid form would be more cost effective.

These prisoners all have a mental illness. It's called Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

Why are they having psychologists doing these competency determinations? They really should let psychiatrists, who are physicians trained in psychaitry, do the evaluations. Most psychiatrists probably have seen hundreds of real mentally ill patients through their training that they could see someone pulling their legs.

Both professions have about the same competency to diagnose mental illness and both can be easily fooled...for a while. One hour with a patient is insufficient for anyone to achieve good accuracy, but repeated observations over a protracted period of time can be quite effective. Neither profession has a lock on diagnostic supremacy.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.