Bernie Yavitch

Bernie Yavitch is the prosecutor whose decisions helped shape the legal response to William Stanley Milligan’s psychiatric condition. He initially disputed the defense’s demands about how that condition should be examined and tried, but ultimately agreed to a stipulated presentation of the medical evidence. The case therefore presents him not simply as an adversary to the defense, but as a participant in a proceeding where the prosecution’s position changed as extensive clinical findings accumulated.

Role in the prosecution

Yavitch worked with Terry Sherman on the prosecution as the defense sought to establish that Milligan could not assist in his own case and was mentally ill when the offenses occurred. These were distinct questions: the first concerned Milligan’s present ability to participate in a trial; the second concerned his mental state at the time of the charged acts. The legal proceedings moved between them, and Yavitch’s choices reflected that shifting focus.

The defense team, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, maintained that the multiple-personality diagnosis should remain confidential. They feared public attention would interfere with Milligan’s treatment and complicate any later trial. Yavitch agreed that he had an ethical basis for not disclosing the diagnosis while it had not been introduced in court. His agreement was a position on confidentiality, not an acceptance of the defense’s eventual insanity plea: at this stage, the diagnosis was known only to those treating Milligan, the prosecutors, and the judge.

Psychiatric evaluation and contested procedure

After Schweickart and Stevenson continued to represent Milligan despite his letter dismissing them, the public defenders’ office funded a psychological evaluation. Dr. Willis C. Driscoll tested Milligan on January 8 and 13, 1978. The intelligence testing produced an IQ score of 68, which Driscoll said depression had lowered; his report diagnosed acute schizophrenia and described a severe loss of identity, poor boundaries between self and environment, and voices that Milligan understood as forces tormenting or entering him. Driscoll concluded that Milligan could not adequately understand events or counsel his own defense, and urged hospitalization for further examination and possible treatment.

On January 19, the defense presented Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay Flowers as evidence that Milligan could not assist in his defense. Flowers said he would direct the forensic psychiatry unit of Southwest Community Mental Health Center to examine him. Yavitch and Sherman were concerned about the proposed examination’s implications because they regarded Southwest as generally aligned with the prosecution. Schweickart insisted that any information Milligan gave the examiners be privileged and never used against him. The prosecutors opposed that protection, and the dispute brought the defense close to being held in contempt when its lawyers threatened to advise Milligan not to cooperate.

The parties reached a narrower agreement: the prosecution could question Milligan about incriminating statements made to the court-appointed examiners only if he took the stand in his own defense. The defense accepted the risk and allowed the examination to proceed on those terms. That compromise enabled the forensic assessment while limiting how the resulting statements could be used at trial.

Confidentiality, reports, and trial readiness

The extent of the clinical record later altered the prosecution’s assessment of the case. When Yavitch and Sherman read Dr. George Harding’s report, they considered it exceptionally thorough: it followed more than seven months of hospital study and incorporated consultations with numerous psychologists and psychiatrists, rather than resting on a brief examination. The report’s comprehensiveness mattered in court because it gave the defense a body of evidence that the prosecution could not readily discredit.

After a competency hearing on October 6, 1978, Judge Flowers ruled, on the basis of the Harding report, that Milligan was capable of standing trial. That finding concerned his ability to proceed at that time; it did not settle whether he had been responsible for the offenses when they occurred. The parties also disputed which insanity law should govern. Schweickart sought the law in force at the time of the crimes, before a change shifted the burden of proving insanity to the defendant. Yavitch disagreed with that request, and Flowers took the question under advisement. The issue exposed the practical stakes of the case: the same psychiatric evidence would be judged under rules that assigned the burden of proof differently.

Flowers later said the prosecutors had placed a heavy responsibility on the court by agreeing to accept Harding’s report without agreeing that Milligan was legally insane. That distinction captures Yavitch’s position. He could recognize the authority of an extensive examination without conceding that its findings required a particular verdict. Meanwhile, Milligan returned to the jail and became depressed as publicity increased, asking why he could not remain at Harding Hospital until trial.

The stipulated trial and verdict

In the preparations for trial, Yavitch acknowledged that the assembled professional evidence concerning Milligan’s condition at the time of the offenses would be difficult to refute. The prosecution agreed not to challenge reports from Southwest and Harding, as well as testimony from Dr. Turner, Dr. Stella Karolin, and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. The defense, in turn, said it would not dispute the prosecution’s evidence that Milligan had committed the charged crimes. The victims’ names were removed from the record, and the remaining question included what would happen to Milligan if the court found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

The resulting proceeding relied on stipulated medical evidence rather than a contest between opposing psychiatric accounts. Judge Flowers dismissed the first rape count because it lacked corroborating evidence and did not show a similar modus operandi. On counts two through ten, he found that the medical evidence established that Milligan was mentally ill at the time of the offenses, could not distinguish right from wrong, and could not refrain from the acts. With no evidence offered to contradict that account, Flowers found Milligan not guilty by reason of insanity on those counts.

Yavitch’s agreement to the psychiatric evidence did not erase the prosecution’s role in the case or the victims’ accounts; it meant the central medical findings would not be contested at trial. The judgment followed the court’s application of those findings to the charged acts, while the dismissal of the first count rested on a separate evidentiary deficiency.

Aftermath and professional stance

After the ruling, Yavitch called each victim, as he had promised, and explained what had happened in court. He told them that, in his view, Flowers had reached the right decision under the evidence and law, and Sherman agreed. This response extended his role beyond courtroom argument: he communicated the outcome directly to the women whose cases had brought Milligan before the court.

The case’s progression—from a dispute over access to psychiatric examinations, through a fight over confidentiality and the governing insanity standard, to an agreed medical record—makes Yavitch’s changing stance central to its legal structure. He did not treat a diagnosis alone as the verdict. Instead, the proceedings separated present competency from responsibility at the time of the crimes, and his eventual acceptance of the reports allowed the court to decide the latter question on a shared evidentiary record.