Incompetence to stand trial

Incompetence to stand trial is the legal and clinical concern that William Stanley Milligan, in his condition at the time of evaluation, could not adequately participate in his defense. It shaped the case before any final determination of criminal responsibility: psychological evidence raised doubts about his grasp of reality and ability to assist counsel, while court-ordered examination led to pretrial treatment. The distinction matters because inability to proceed in court was not the same question as whether mental illness had affected his conduct when the charged offenses occurred.

Early Signs and Initial Evaluation

The concern became concrete while Milligan was in the Franklin County Jail. His public defenders, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, continued visiting him despite a letter in which he had fired them. With funding from the Public Defender’s Office, clinical psychologist Dr. Willis C. Driscoll administered tests on January 8 and 13, 1978. The intelligence testing produced an IQ score of 68, which Dr. Driscoll considered depressed by Milligan’s depression; his report diagnosed acute schizophrenia.

Dr. Driscoll’s assessment went beyond a diagnostic label. He described a serious disturbance in Milligan’s sense of identity, poorly defined boundaries between self and surroundings, and a restricted capacity to distinguish himself from his environment. Milligan reported hearing voices that directed or berated him, and described both hostile presences and benevolent ones that entered his body to oppose them. On this basis, Dr. Driscoll judged that Milligan could not then counsel effectively in his own defense or maintain adequate contact with reality to understand events, and recommended hospitalization for further examination and possible treatment. These conclusions concerned his present ability to participate, not a final answer about responsibility at the time of the offenses.

The defense’s own encounters added another kind of evidence. Dorothy Turner had interviewed Milligan in jail and encountered a sullen presentation she understood as Tommy. Afterward, she struggled between a promise not to reveal what she had learned and her belief that his attorneys needed to know. She contacted Stevenson, who read Sybil and reconsidered the sharply different ways Milligan had appeared to her: at times trembling and withdrawn, at others talkative, quick-witted, and apparently manipulative. Stevenson had previously attributed those shifts to mood. Her later conclusion that she had spoken with two different people helped explain why she had found his behavior so difficult to reconcile, but it was not itself a judicial finding of incompetence.

Forensic Examination and Pretrial Hospitalization

On January 19, Stevenson and Schweickart presented Dr. Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay Flowers as evidence that Milligan could not assist in his defense. The judge ordered the forensic psychiatry unit at the Southwest Community Mental Health Center to examine him. The order raised a further concern for the defense: the center was often aligned with the prosecution. Schweickart sought assurances that information obtained in the examination would remain privileged and could not be used against Milligan. The prosecutors objected, and the disagreement brought the lawyers close to contempt proceedings. The eventual compromise allowed prosecutors to question Milligan about incriminating statements made during the examination only if he took the stand. The defense accepted that limited protection and allowed the interview to proceed.

A later evaluation by Dr. George Harding Jr. gave the concern a direct legal formulation. In a March 13, 1978 letter to Judge Flowers, Dr. Harding concluded that Milligan was not competent to stand trial because he could not cooperate with his attorney in preparing his defense. He also found that Milligan lacked the emotional integration required to testify, confront witnesses, and sustain an effective psychological presence in court. The opinion linked courtroom participation to more than physical attendance: a defendant had to be able to engage with the proceedings and the people confronting him there.

Schweickart and Bernard Zalig Yavitch asked Dr. Harding to go beyond assessing competence and seek admission to Harding Hospital for observation and treatment. The resulting plan made the legal uncertainty explicit. Milligan might later be found competent and face a trial date, or be found incompetent after a period of treatment, in which case the charges would be dismissed. Judge Flowers ordered his transfer to the hospital for pretrial observation and treatment. The arrangement made treatment part of the route back toward legal proceedings, rather than treating the initial evaluation as a final verdict on the case.

Treatment and the Question of Responsibility

At Harding Hospital, treatment and the legal timetable pressed against one another. Dr. Harding considered Milligan’s condition in relation to the charged conduct and concluded that, although he did not regard Milligan as psychotic in the usual sense, dissociation had left him so far removed from reality that he could not conform his conduct to the requirements of law. He therefore regarded Milligan as not responsible for the crimes. At the same time, he understood that treatment had to continue and that Milligan would need to become competent to stand trial. With less than six weeks remaining in the court’s three-month period, the task was both clinical and procedural.

The case eventually separated these questions in court. Judge Flowers dismissed the first rape count, citing a lack of corroborating evidence and the absence of a similar modus operandi. On the remaining counts, the proceeding relied on stipulated medical evidence. The judge found that the doctors agreed Milligan had been mentally ill when the offenses occurred, had been unable to distinguish right from wrong, and had lacked the ability to refrain from the acts. The court found him not guilty by reason of insanity on counts two through ten. This ruling addressed criminal responsibility at the time of the offenses; it should not be collapsed into the earlier assessment of whether he could assist counsel in the present.

Later Dispute and Continuing Legal Significance

The diagnostic and legal questions did not end with that disposition. During later proceedings, Frederick Milkie rejected the multiple-personality diagnosis, saying he had not observed its symptoms and instead describing anger and panic. His position illustrates that clinical observers did not agree on how to interpret Milligan’s behavior. On December 10, 1979, however, a court found that Milligan had a mental illness diagnosed as multiple personality and that his impaired judgment, behavior, perception, orientation, and memory, together with evidence of suicide threats and recent violence, made court-ordered hospitalization appropriate.

That later hospitalization finding was not simply another phrasing of incompetence to stand trial. Across the proceedings, the courts and clinicians addressed related but separate matters: Milligan’s ability to participate in a defense, his mental state when the offenses occurred, and whether he required hospitalization. The narrative’s changing assessments preserve that distinction. They also show why a diagnosis alone could not settle the case: the legal consequences depended on the question being asked, the time period under review, and the evidence offered to answer it.