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Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [178]

By Root 9890 0
if that was the way to build a bridge from the psychopathic to the insane.

But he always came back to the difficulty. The speech was of no legal use to Snyder and Esplin. You could not appear in court with spirits from other worlds.

There did remain one legitimate possibility. In the record from Oregon State Penitentiary was Dr. Wesley Weissart's psychiatric entry for November 1974:

IT IS MY IMPRESSION THAT AT THIS TIME GILMORE IS IN A PARANOID STATE, SO THAT HE IS UNABLE TO DETERMINE WHAT HIS BEST INTERESTS ARE. HE IS TOTALLY UNABLE TO CONTROL HIS HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE IMPULSES.

. . . I FEEL COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED IN GIVING GILMORE MEDICATION AGAINST HIS WISHES AS HE CREATES A SERIOUS PROBLEM TO THE PATIENTS AND TO THE ENTIRE INSTITUTION.

That was the unclean report to which Dr. Kiger referred when the staff interviewed Gilmore. "Why," asked Woods, of Snyder and Esplin, "don't you get that doctor down here to testify."

Gary didn't want him, that was why. Gary had said: Of all the dirty, mean, rotten sons of bitches. He did not want to be evaluated by that man.

Woods said even if they had to go to Oregon and rope the fellow, they ought to get him for the trial.

It was very hard, they replied, to get a person to respond to a subpoena if he lived out of the state. Woods said, "Man, that seems critical to me."

Snyder and Esplin called Weissart, but he told them he did not wish to be involved. They received the impression that, if he had to get on the stand, he would say that Gilmore might be four-plus paranoiac, but was not, in the legal sense, psychotic. Another dead end.

Woods had seen the difference between experienced trial lawyers and young attorneys. It was a hell of a difference. He said to them as diplomatically as he could, Why don't you get somebody else in on this who can pull some shots? He couldn't get across. They kept on trying to get some evaluation of Gary as a victim of mental illness.

Actually, Woods did hate Prolixin. He saw it as incarceration within the incarceration. One morning he even woke up exhausted from the ardors of a dream that had him conducting a cross-examination:

QUESTION What was his dosage?

ANSWER Fifty milligrams a week, that's pretty much an average, standard dose.

QUESTION But he swelled up under it, didn't he?

ANSWER Well, they get side effects from all these antipsychotic drugs. The more potent the drug, the more apt they are to develop side effects. Prolixin causes many more side effects than Thorazine.

QUESTION What would be the advantage then of using Prolixin?

ANSWER You'd only have to give him medicine one time a week, rather than try to give it to him every day.

QUESTION It's really a matter of administering it.

ANSWER That's right.

QUESTION If you have a saddle a bad horse, you want to be able to do it once a week, not twice a day.

ANSWER That's right. Prolixin is the only drug out now that we can give at infrequent intervals. Everything else has to be given hourly, two or three times a day, or daily.

QUESTION What were Gilmore's side effects?

ANSWER He had a real severe reaction. Oh, as I recall, he had swelling in his feet and it was difficult to get his shoes on, he had trouble walking and his hands swelled, he really had a severe reaction.

QUESTION How long did it last?

ANSWER Well, let me put it this way, that's a long-acting drug, Prolixin, you give a shot today, probably there will be some of that same shot in his system maybe six or eight weeks from now. That's why, if they develop a reaction it takes them two or three months to get over it.

QUESTION Well, what did you use for medication after that didn't work, the Prolixin?

ANSWER I don't think I used any medication after that at all.

QUESTION So he was just a problem then . . .

ANSWER Just talking, we just talked.

QUESTION How did Gilmore himself respond to the Prolixin? I mean, when the side effects had hit him, how did he respond in his relationship with you?

ANSWER Well, he was very unhappy with me, naturally.

QUESTION He got paranoid about you, wouldn't you say?

ANSWER Oh, yes, yeah.

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