Ohio Criminal Law Handbook

The Ohio Criminal Law Handbook is a legal reference that becomes consequential in the defense of William Stanley Milligan when Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson use its Section 2945.38 to identify a possible alternative to pretrial commitment at Lima State Hospital. The book does not decide Milligan’s mental condition or determine the eventual outcome of his case; its importance lies in the precise statutory wording that lets his lawyers question an assumption about where he may be sent for examination and treatment.

The book in the defense’s hands

The handbook enters the dispute after Milligan’s appointed public defenders, Schweickart and Stevenson, have continued visiting him in prison despite receiving a letter dismissing them. The public defender’s office secures funds for a psychological evaluation, and Dr. Willis C. Driscoll administers tests on January 8 and 13, 1978. Driscoll reports an IQ score of 68, which he attributes in part to depression, diagnoses acute schizophrenia, and describes Milligan as unable at that time to understand events or assist adequately in his defense. He recommends hospitalization for further examination and possible treatment.

On January 19, Stevenson and Schweickart present Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay Flowers as evidence that Milligan cannot assist in his own defense. Flowers proposes that the forensic psychiatry unit at Southwest Community Mental Health Center examine him. The defense worries that the center is usually aligned with the prosecution, and Schweickart seeks a guarantee that information disclosed in the examination will remain privileged. After disagreement with the prosecutors and a near contempt threat, the parties reach a limited compromise: incriminating statements from the examination may be raised only if Milligan takes the stand. The handbook is consulted amid this broader effort to protect the client and secure an appropriate psychiatric assessment.

Section 2945.38 and the alternative to Lima

The decisive reading takes place over the handbook itself. Judy Stevenson retrieves a well-thumbed copy from the shelf, and she and Schweickart take turns reading it aloud. Two hours later, he asks her to reread the passage on Section 2945.38. As she follows the text down the page, the wording distinguishes between commitment to a hospital for the mentally ill within the court’s jurisdiction and commitment to Lima State Hospital when the court considers that advisable.

Schweickart seizes on the first clause: “A hospital within the jurisdiction of the court.” In his reading, the statute does not make Lima the sole possible destination. The handbook thus supplies more than general background: it furnishes the precise language with which the lawyers can challenge what they understand to be the prevailing assumption that no alternative exists for pretrial commitment. The passage matters because the statutory wording leaves room for a hospital within the court’s jurisdiction, while naming Lima as a further option rather than the only one.

The exchange turns a legal text into a practical search. The lawyers still need to identify another hospital that falls within the court’s jurisdiction. Schweickart then recalls Harding Hospital in Worthington, where he had worked as a psychiatric aide after military service. He describes it as a conservative and respected institution affiliated with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and says even prosecutors trusted the judgment of Dr. George Harding Jr. The handbook does not establish that Harding is legally suitable or guarantee that Milligan will be sent there; it gives the defense a textual basis for looking beyond Lima and a named institution to investigate.

A procedural argument, not a clinical verdict

The book’s role is specific: it helps the lawyers frame a question about the place of examination and pretrial commitment. That question is related to, but not interchangeable with, the clinical and legal judgments made elsewhere in Milligan’s case. Driscoll’s evaluation addresses Milligan’s then-current ability to understand proceedings and assist counsel. The insanity ruling, by contrast, concerns his condition at the time of the charged acts. The handbook’s passage concerns the statutory arrangements for hospitalization; it does not itself establish either diagnosis, competence, or criminal responsibility.

At trial, Judge Flowers dismisses the first rape count for lack of corroborating evidence and a similar method of operation. On the remaining counts, the court considers stipulated medical evidence that Milligan was mentally ill when the offenses occurred, could not distinguish right from wrong, and could not refrain from the acts. Flowers finds him not guilty by reason of insanity. Those findings are not presented as a direct consequence of the handbook passage. They mark a different legal decision, based on evidence about the time of the offenses rather than on the book’s proposed alternative for pretrial placement.

A later court order, dated December 10, 1979, describes Milligan as mentally ill with a condition diagnosed as multiple personality and finds grounds for hospitalization, citing risks of harm to himself and others and the need for treatment. This later determination likewise underscores the difference between a statutory route to a hospital and the evidence required for a particular diagnosis or commitment. The available account does not establish that Section 2945.38 governed that later order.

Significance of the close reading

The handbook’s narrative force comes from the contrast between its ordinary physical form and the consequences of one carefully noticed phrase. It is taken from a shelf, opened, reread, and followed line by line; the legal possibility emerges not from a new medical opinion but from attention to the statute’s distinction between a hospital within the court’s jurisdiction and Lima State Hospital. The lawyers’ excitement reflects the practical stakes of a detail that could alter the options they pursue for their client.

As an object in the story, the handbook represents law as language that must be interpreted and applied rather than as a self-executing answer. Its wording enables the defense to contest a perceived procedural limit, but it neither resolves the competency dispute nor predicts the insanity verdict or later hospitalization. The book’s significance is therefore bounded and concrete: it opens a possible route in the pretrial placement argument at a moment when psychiatric assessment, legal procedure, and Milligan’s access to treatment are tightly connected.