Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [171]
ANSWER God, it's so easy to be accused of being paranoid in prison. I mean maybe I had a disagreement with somebody and they were in a position to say I was paranoid and thereby dismiss whatever the thing was. I don't know.
DR. HOWELL During that time you don't see yourself as having been mentally ill.
ANSWER A lot of those guards are mentally ill.
DENNIS CULLIMORE, MEDICAL STAFF WORKER Was there anything either of the evenings of the murders about your mental state that was different than usual?
ANSWER Well, I didn't have-all of the strings had been cut, like I didn't have control of myself. I mean I was just going through motions. I wasn't planning anything. These things were just occurring . . .
DENNIS CULLIMORE, MSW At what point did you know that you were going to shoot him?
ANSWER When I shot him. I didn't know it before then . . . it just seemed like it was the next move in a motion that was happening, you know.
DR. KIGER Have you had other emotionally charged episodes where you didn't remember all that happened at that time?
ANSWER I'm not really excitable, you know, I don't get emotional. Some things I let weigh on me pretty heavy, but it's not the sort of thing that mounts and builds, you know. It's not a spur of the moment thing.
DR. LEBEGUE That feeling that you described to several of us about somehow things being unreal like seeing through water, has that happened to you before this summer?
ANSWER Not, not really . . . only there have been times when life seems to slow down and you can watch movement more intensely. Like if you get in a tight situation, a fight situation, or something like that, the feeling there is somewhat similar to this.
DR. KIGER Anything similar to when you are on grass?
ANSWER When you are on grass, you just trip along and everything is fine, but when you're in a tense situation, I don't know. No, I can't say that I have really experienced that feeling before.
DR. LEBEGUE So, it was something new to you.
ANSWER Yeah, I would say so.
DENNIS CULLIMORE, MSW Does anyone have anything else? OK.
DR. WOODS Thanks for coming in, Gary.
ANSWER All right.
Comprehensive Treatment Plan
A report will be made to the court stating that the patient is both competent and responsible.
BRECK LEBEGUE, M.D.
Resident in Psychiatry
Formulation:
This is a 35-year-old white male who is here for psychiatric evaluation. There is no evidence of thought disorder or psychosis, amnesia, organic brain damage, seizures, or any other behavior of pathology which would prevent him from conferring with his attorney and standing trial on the charges. He is aware of the circumstances and of his actions. He does describe some symptoms of depersonalization during the actions, but it is not uncommon for those who murder to undergo a temporary process of dehumanization. I feel that he was responsible for his actions at the time of the incident.
Staff Diagnosis:
Personality disorder of the antisocial type.
BRECK LEBEGUE, M.D.
Resident in Psychiatry
4
Gilmore gave off no aura of the psychotic. The more Snyder and Esplin searched these staff reports and transcripts, the less they encountered madness, and the more he appeared grim, ironic, practical.
There was hardly a wall in the law you could not climb if you could get onto some little thing, some legal grip with which to raise yourself to find another hold. There were cracks in many a block of law, but in the Gilmore case, these psychiatric walls offered nothing.
They took the problem to Dr. Woods, who had seen a lot of Gary at the ward level, and John Woods went over it with them. The lawyers came up so often to his office that he began to worry about it.
Woods was young to be Director of the Forensic Program, and he liked his job, and was intellectually stimulated by the therapeutic ideas of his superior, Dr. Kiger, whom he thought was one hell of an innovator. So, Woods didn't want to get the hospital in any trouble, and worried a little over the correctness of all these visits. On the other hand,