Jaycee Dugard, transfixed by a monster - Includes past psych eval

Public revulsion will focus on Phillip Garrido, the delusional sex offender likely to spend the rest of his life in jail
by Karen Franklin, from the Guardian.co.uk

In these harsh economic times, the saga of Jaycee Lee Dugard is especially riveting to the public imagination. Our horror and revulsion unite us. Who can we blame? How could this monster hide amongst us while committing unspeakable acts against innocent children?

Our collective furor and thirst for vengeance run counter to the principles of our justice system, under which a criminal defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Psychiatric issues will make justice especially slow for Phillip Garrido, the registered sex offender who is accused of holding Dugard hostage for 18 years, after kidnapping her in June 1991 when she was just 11. (Garrido and his wife Nancy have both denied the charges.)

Initial evidence points toward a psychosis. In an interview from jail, Garrido called Dugard's story "heartwarming" and referenced secret documents and "hundreds and hundreds of thousands" of lawsuits. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The wonders of the internet allow us to travel back in time and enter his mind, via rambling blog posts about voices in his head, mind control, and religious delusions of himself as the savior.

Ironically, more than a year ago Garrido referenced the potential for psychotic symptoms to cause violence against children. A woman who drowned her three children in the San Francisco Bay was, he wrote, "led by a powerful internal and external (hearing) process that places the human mind under a hypnotic siege that in time leads a person to build a delusional belief system that drives them to whatever course of action they take."

Defense attorneys in such cases would undoubtedly consider an insanity defense, inciting more public anger. High-profile cases skew public perceptions of this defence, which is rarely used and even more rarely successful. As one lawyer put it, "You can be extremely crazy without being legally insane. You can hear voices, you can operate under intermittent delusions, you can see rabbits in the road that aren't there and still be legally sane." Here, the prosecution could counter any insanity claim by pointing to Garrido's seemingly rational conduct, for example in running a printing business.

Another public misconception is that freedom follows a successful insanity defense. In reality, most insanity acquittees are sent to locked state hospitals that look very much like prisons. And, in the unlikely event that the 58-year-old Garrido was ever considered for discharge, he would be eligible for further detention under California's sexually violent predator law.

Competency to stand trial is another psycho-legal issue that may engender confusion in this case. While insanity pertains to an accused person's past state of mind, and whether he knew the difference between right and wrong at the time of his crime, competency pertains to his present ability to understand the legal proceedings and assist his attorney. As such, incompetency is not a permanent barrier to prosecution. A person who is found incompetent is treated until he becomes competent, at which time he stands trial.

After the dust settles and the legal manoeuvring ends, Garrido will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars if found guilty. Meanwhile, as with abduction survivors Elizabeth Smart of Utah, Natascha Kampusch in Austria, and fellow Californians Colleen Stan and Steven Stayner, the details of Jaycee Dugard's tragedy will gradually fade from our collective memory.

Until the next monster comes along and creates panic anew.

Fortunately, cases like this are so extraordinarily rare that they do not merit the public panic they engender. Although riveting, in the end the Dugard saga serves to distract us from the real dangers facing children in California today, including family child abuse and bankrupt schools preparing children for hopeless futures.

see also: A deluded man, certainly, but probably not America's Fritzl

Here's his 1976 Psych Eval.