Ohio Attorney General's Office

The Ohio Attorney General's Office enters the story not as a clinical provider but as the state body seeking to determine where William Stanley Milligan would be hospitalized. Its motion to transfer him from Athens to Lima State Hospital turned a dispute about treatment and security into a court proceeding. The office's position prevailed: Milligan was moved under restraint and ultimately committed to Lima, although the court expressly required that his treatment remain consistent with his multiple-personality diagnosis.

Role in the Transfer Dispute

On the morning after Milligan said he did not know who he was, Assistant Attorney General David Belinky filed a motion on behalf of the State of Ohio to transfer him to Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The application placed the office at the center of a consequential question: whether Milligan should remain at the Athens Mental Health Center, where he had been receiving treatment, or be moved to a more restrictive institution.

The immediate security context was an attempted escape from the Admissions and Intensive Treatment unit. Milligan and another patient, Gus Holston, used a chair to break the lock on a fire-escape door and went down the stairs. In the parking lot, Milligan tried to enter a vehicle; staff prevented him, and the two men ran over a hill. Three men subdued Milligan and returned him to Ward 5. Holston was sent back to Lebanon. The state relied on this incident as part of the case for transferring Milligan, and the court granted the motion after hearing evidence from the Athens facility's chief of Security and Safety.

Court Proceedings and Due-Process Challenge

Milligan's attorney, Alan Goldsberry, objected that his client had not been given an opportunity to confer with counsel or to receive notice that he could request an immediate hearing. Goldsberry asked the court to allow Milligan to be present and to hear the transfer question. The judge did not accept that request before granting the state's motion. At two o'clock on October 4, 1979, Milligan was handcuffed and belt-shackled and driven 180 miles to Lima; he had no time to say goodbye to anyone except Dr. David Caul.

Goldsberry then filed a motion at the Allen County Courthouse alleging that Milligan had not been allowed to consult his attorney and had been moved to a more restrictive facility without due process. At the subsequent hearing, Assistant Attorney General David Belinky appeared for the state, with Dr. Lewis Lindner as its witness. The referee did not hear testimony on the legal motion to return Milligan to Athens. Instead, the referee ruled that the question was moot because the prior order had selected Lima and Milligan would have an opportunity to present evidence at his ninety-day review. The court would later decide whether he remained mentally ill and whether he should stay there.

Competing Standards for Hospitalization

The transfer dispute brought the state's security rationale into direct conflict with the defense's treatment argument. At a later hearing, Belinky argued that the state needed to establish that Milligan was mentally ill and subject to hospitalization; in the state's view, it did not have to prove the diagnosis itself. He relied on testimony from Dr. David Caul and Frederick Milkie. Caul had testified that Milligan remained mentally ill, while Milkie considered Lima the least restrictive environment in which Milligan could be treated.

The defense responded that the psychiatric experts agreed on the multiple-personality diagnosis and that Athens was the more appropriate place for long-term treatment. It challenged the weight given to an assessment made after Milligan's October 4 transfer, arguing that the examining physician had not referred to his prior medical history or treatment. The dispute thus did not turn simply on whether Milligan was ill: it concerned how the court should connect his diagnosis, the perceived danger he posed, and the institution capable of treating him.

Outcome and Institutional Consequences

On December 10, 1979, the court found Milligan mentally ill, identified his condition as multiple personality, and concluded that he posed substantial risks of physical harm to himself and others. It ordered his commitment to Lima State Hospital in a maximum-security facility. The order also specified that his treatment should be consistent with the multiple-personality diagnosis. The state's effort to secure a transfer therefore succeeded, but the written disposition did not treat the diagnosis as irrelevant to the care he was to receive.

The office's involvement had immediate practical consequences: the transfer removed Milligan from Athens, interrupted his treatment there, and subjected him to a more restrictive setting. The legal process also separated questions that could easily be collapsed together. The state argued for hospitalization based on illness and risk; the defense contested the procedure and the suitability of Lima; and the eventual order combined a maximum-security placement with a requirement to respect the diagnosis. In the account, the Ohio Attorney General's Office is significant through this concrete exercise of state authority and the competing claims it brought before the courts.