Lima, Ohio, is the setting for a decisive second phase of Billy Milligan’s case: after his insanity acquittal, the city becomes both the site of his confinement at Lima State Hospital and the venue for legal proceedings over whether that confinement should continue. The transfer placed treatment, public safety, and procedural rights into close proximity, while a later plan to turn the hospital into a prison made the question of his placement urgent again.

Transfer and legal challenge

On October 4, 1979, Billy was taken to Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, handcuffed and belt-shackled, after an incident at Ward 5 in which he and Gus Holston ran over a hill and Billy was subsequently subdued and returned to the ward. Judge Roger J. Jones granted the Attorney General’s request to send him to Lima. The transfer covered 180 miles; Billy had time to say goodbye only to Dr. David Caul. The abrupt departure made Lima not merely a new treatment address but also the setting for a more restrictive placement imposed amid active legal disagreement.

At the Allen County Courthouse, Alan Goldsberry challenged the transfer on procedural grounds, asserting that Billy had not been given an opportunity to confer with his attorney and had been moved to a more restrictive facility without due process. Goldsberry also pursued an appeal concerning the denial of Billy’s motion to withdraw earlier guilty pleas. That appeal argued that the judge had improperly weighed the opinions of four psychiatrists and a psychologist against the contrary opinion of one psychiatrist. These disputes brought separate questions into focus: whether Billy’s earlier mental state justified reopening the pleas, and whether his present transfer had followed proper procedure.

The courthouse hearings

A week after the transfer, at a hearing in the Allen County Courthouse, the writer saw Billy in handcuffs for the first time. The person present was The Teacher, who smiled sheepishly and described his treatment during the preceding week. Lima’s clinical director, Dr. Lewis Lindner, had diagnosed him as a pseudo-psychopathic schizophrenic and prescribed Stelazine, a psychotropic drug in the same family as Thorazine. The account notes that Thorazine had made the splitting much worse, giving the new prescription particular significance within the continuing dispute over how his condition should be treated.

The courthouse also became the site of a review hearing on November 30. It was a cold day, with the first snow on the ground. Courtroom 3 could seat about fifty people, but most chairs were empty: the proceeding was closed to the public and the media, while television cameras waited outside. The Teacher sat in handcuffs between his attorneys. The permitted observers included Dorothy, Del Moore, and the writer; officials present included James O’Grady, assistant prosecutor for Franklin County, William Jan Hans of the Ohio Adult Parole Authority, and an attorney observer from Southwest Community Mental Health Center. Judge David R. Kinworthy reviewed the history of commitment hearings beginning with the December 4, 1978 finding that Billy was not guilty by reason of insanity, framing the Lima proceeding as part of a continuing statutory review rather than a new criminal trial.

Commitment findings and institutional purpose

On December 10, 1979, the court found that Billy had a mental illness diagnosed as multiple personality and that his condition substantially impaired thought, mood, perception, orientation, memory, judgment, behavior, and his capacity to recognize reality. The findings cited suicide threats and recent violent behavior as evidence that he posed a substantial risk of physical harm to himself and others. They also concluded that he would benefit from hospital treatment and needed it because his behavior created grave and imminent risks to his own and other people’s rights.

The order declared that Billy was dangerous to himself and others and required hospitalization in a maximum-security facility. At the same time, it explicitly directed that his treatment be consistent with the multiple-personality diagnosis. The court therefore did not treat the diagnosis as incidental to placement: it made that diagnosis part of the formal instruction governing his care at Lima State Hospital. Copies of the findings were to be transmitted to the hospital under seal.

The hospital’s planned conversion

In October 1980, the State Department of Mental Health announced that Lima State Hospital would be phased out as a state hospital for the criminally insane and would become a prison under the Department of Correction. The announcement turned an institutional change into a fresh dispute about Billy’s future location. The possibility of sending him back to Athens or to another minimum-security hospital prompted O’Grady to demand that, under the new law, Billy return to Columbus for his sanity review hearing. Judge Flowers agreed to hear the case. A hearing first scheduled for October 31 was postponed by agreement to November 7, after election day, to avoid making the case a political issue.

Lima’s importance in the narrative is thus tied to the changing purposes assigned to one institution. Billy arrived there under restraint after a contested transfer; the court then required maximum-security hospitalization while specifying treatment consistent with his diagnosis. When the hospital itself was slated to become a prison, the question of where he belonged returned to court. The city marks a period in which medical classification, legal authority, and institutional design repeatedly shaped the conditions of his confinement.