Insanity defense and criminal responsibility

In William Stanley Milligan’s case, the insanity defense turns on a distinction the proceedings repeatedly test: present ability to stand trial is not the same question as responsibility for conduct in the past. Dr. George Harding concluded that Milligan had become competent after fusion, yet remained mentally ill and had not been responsible for his criminal conduct in October 1977. Judge Jay C. Flowers ultimately accepted the psychiatric evidence on the latter question and found Milligan not guilty by reason of insanity on counts two through ten. The case makes diagnosis consequential, but not self-executing: clinical judgments had to address different times and capacities, and the court had to decide what legal result those findings supported.

Competence and the first evaluations

The defense’s concern about Milligan’s ability to assist in his own case emerged before the insanity plea. His public defenders, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, continued visiting him in prison after he sent them a letter dismissing them. With funds from the public defender’s office, clinical psychologist Dr. Willis C. Driscoll administered tests on January 8 and 13, 1978. Driscoll reported an IQ score of 68, while cautioning that depression had lowered it, and diagnosed acute schizophrenia. He described severe difficulties with identity and distinguishing self from surroundings, as well as voices Milligan understood as hostile or helpful presences. Driscoll judged that Milligan could not adequately understand events or assist in counseling for his defense, and recommended hospitalization for further examination and possible treatment.

On January 19, Schweickart and Stevenson presented Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay C. Flowers as evidence that Milligan could not assist in his defense. Flowers ordered an examination by the forensic psychiatry unit of Southwest Community Mental Health Center. The defense feared that information disclosed in that examination might be used against Milligan, particularly because they believed the center was usually aligned with the prosecution. The parties compromised: prosecutors could question Milligan about incriminating statements made to the court-appointed clinicians only if he took the stand. The dispute shows that competency evaluation was not merely diagnostic; it also raised questions about how examination findings could enter the adversarial process.

Responsibility at the time of the offenses

The later inquiry addressed a different period and a different legal issue. In late August, Dr. George Harding worried that Milligan might now be sufficiently fused to stand trial, while still questioning whether multiple personality was an appropriate defense to serious crimes. He considered the broader consequences of his testimony for psychiatric practice and for other patients, as well as the possibility that a ruling accepting this diagnosis as grounds for legal insanity could establish precedent in Ohio and beyond. His concern was not that the diagnosis automatically resolved the case, but that his report would connect a psychiatric account to a judgment of criminal responsibility.

Harding’s September 12 report reviewed Milligan’s medical, social, and psychiatric history. It described reported childhood family violence and abuse, the loss of Milligan’s natural father, and the effects Harding attributed to that history: fear, instability, and recurrent dissociation. Harding concluded that Milligan was competent to stand trial after achieving fusion, but that mental illness had made him not responsible for the conduct charged from the latter half of October 1977. The paired conclusions are central to the case. Fusion supported the claim that Milligan could participate in the proceedings; it did not, in Harding’s view, establish that he had been able to control or understand his actions when the offenses occurred.

The defense formally amended the plea on September 19 to not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. The strategy also contained a dispute over which conduct Milligan could be held responsible for. Arthur proposed that Ragen plead guilty to the three robberies while refusing to plead guilty to rape. Arthur relied on Adalana’s account that the women had cooperated and received some money back. Schweickart and Stevenson did not accept that account, though they understood that Arthur was describing Adalana’s perception of events; Arthur said she had been permanently barred from the spot. The disagreement makes clear that an internal account of an offense was not a substitute for the victims’ accounts, nor did the insanity defense erase the need to distinguish among charges.

The stipulated trial and ruling

By the time the case reached trial, the multiple-personality diagnosis had been kept from public view. Rather than call witnesses or put Milligan on the stand, the prosecution and defense agreed that the facts would be read into the record as stipulations. The prosecution did not contest the psychiatric findings from Southwest Community Mental Health Center and Harding Hospital, including testimony by Dr. Harding, Dr. Dorothy Turner, Dr. Stella Karolin, and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur concerning Milligan’s mental condition when the crimes occurred. Judy Stevenson read the defense evidence into the record, while Milligan sat in the courtroom.

Judge Flowers first dismissed the first rape count, citing a lack of corroborating evidence and the absence of a similar modus operandi. He then considered the insanity defense on the stipulated medical evidence. The doctors agreed that Milligan had been mentally ill at the time of the offenses and had been unable to distinguish right from wrong or refrain from the acts. With no contrary evidence before him, Flowers found Milligan not guilty by reason of insanity on counts two through ten. He placed Milligan under the authority of the probate court of Franklin County. The ruling therefore did not treat all counts alike, and it did not amount to a finding that the alleged conduct had not occurred: the agreed proceeding accepted the charges apart from the first count while resolving criminal responsibility through the psychiatric evidence.

Continuing dispute and significance

The verdict did not end the difference between a criminal-responsibility ruling and later judgments about diagnosis or placement. In 1979, Dr. Frederick Milkie rejected the multiple-personality diagnosis because he had not observed its symptoms and did not accept the diagnostic category as defined in the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. In contrast, the December 10 court findings described Milligan’s condition as multiple personality and ordered hospitalization, citing impaired judgment and reality recognition, threats of suicide, recent violent behavior, and a need for treatment. That later decision concerned mental illness and the need for hospitalization, not a retrospective replacement of the trial court’s inquiry into responsibility at the time of the offenses.

The book thus presents the insanity defense as a legal determination built from, but not identical to, psychiatric diagnosis. Dr. Driscoll’s early assessment concerned Milligan’s ability to understand proceedings and assist counsel; Dr. Harding’s later report separated that present competence from the effects of illness during the charged acts; and Judge Flowers applied the stipulated evidence charge by charge. The proceeding also preserves unresolved tensions: Harding feared the precedent his opinion might set, the defense and prosecution negotiated limits on clinical examination, and the victims’ accounts remained distinct from Adalana’s interpretation. The result is not a simple equation between illness and innocence, but a record of how courts translate contested clinical judgments into specific findings about capacity, conduct, and legal responsibility.