1975

1975 is a contested point in William Stanley Milligan’s history: the Gray Drug Store robbery and roadside-rest assaults were later attributed to him during December 1974 and January 1975, while March 27, 1975, became the date at the center of a later challenge to his guilty plea. Years afterward, psychiatric assessments and court proceedings revisited his mental state at the time of the offenses, without settling every legal question in his favor.

Offenses and the guilty plea

The later record grouped the roadside-rest assaults and the Gray Drug Store robbery among offenses committed in December 1974 and January 1975. A separate legal dispute focused on Milligan’s guilty plea to the Gray Drug Store robbery: Judge S. Farrell Jackson’s later ruling treated March 27, 1975, as the date on which Milligan had entered that plea and assessed whether he had been mentally ill or unable to understand it.

That distinction matters to the chronology. The alleged offenses and the plea did not occur at the same time; the later proceedings examined both the circumstances of the offenses and Milligan’s capacity when he pleaded guilty. The supplied evidence does not provide a full account of the 1975 events themselves, but it shows how their dates became the basis for separate questions about responsibility and the validity of the plea.

Retrospective psychiatric assessment

In a later hearing concerning the roadside-rest assaults and Gray Drug Store robbery, four psychiatrists—George Harding, Cornelia Wilbur, Stella Karolin, and David Caul—and psychologist Dorothy Turner submitted depositions. They agreed that, with reasonable medical certainty, Milligan had been a mentally ill person with multiple personality when the offenses were committed, and that he probably could not then assist his attorney, George Kellner, in his own defense.

The opposing testimony did not simply deny his earlier treatment. Dr. Harold T. Brown said he had treated Milligan at age fifteen and sent him to Columbus State Hospital for three months. In light of later knowledge, Brown said he would have changed his earlier diagnosis of hysterical neurosis with passive-aggressive features to dissociative disorder with possible multiple personality. But after interviewing Milligan in Athens, Brown believed he seemed to know about the acts attributed to his alter egos; on that basis, Brown questioned whether Milligan had multiple personality. The disagreement made awareness of acts central to the competing interpretations of the diagnosis.

Capacity at different times

A separate evaluation in January 1978 illustrates why later assessments cannot be treated as direct findings about 1975. Dr. Willis C. Driscoll tested Milligan on January 8 and 13, reporting an IQ score of 68 that he believed depression had lowered, and diagnosing acute schizophrenia. Driscoll described severe problems with identity and distinguishing self from environment, and concluded that Milligan could not then understand events sufficiently to counsel in his own defense.

On January 19, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson presented Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay C. Flowers as evidence that Milligan could not assist in his defense. That was a question of his present capacity to participate in legal proceedings, not by itself a determination of whether he was legally responsible for conduct in 1975. The later opinions about the offenses addressed his mental state at the time they occurred; the two inquiries concerned different points in time and different legal issues.

The plea challenge and its limits

After Milligan’s transfer from Athens, Judge Jackson denied his motion to withdraw the Gray Drug Store robbery plea. The court placed the burden of proving insanity on Milligan and ruled that the evidence did not establish, by a preponderance, that he had been insane on March 27, 1975, unable to assist in his defense, or unable to understand the plea. The court therefore found no manifest injustice warranting withdrawal. The ruling did not erase the later psychiatric opinions about the earlier offenses; it concluded that the evidence did not meet the burden the court applied to the plea challenge.

The dispute continued through an appeal arguing that the court had improperly weighed the opinions of four psychiatrists and a psychologist against Brown’s testimony. In a separate filing, Milligan’s lawyer also challenged his transfer to a more restrictive facility and argued that Milligan had not been given an opportunity to consult counsel. In 1979, a court found Milligan mentally ill with a condition diagnosed as multiple personality, found that he required maximum-security hospitalization, and ordered treatment consistent with that diagnosis. These later decisions show the enduring institutional consequences of the earlier record, but they do not convert a later diagnosis or hospitalization order into a contemporaneous 1975 finding.