Seven-Month Observation and Treatment Period at Harding Hospital

The Seven-Month Observation and Treatment Period at Harding Hospital was the extended clinical interval in which William Stanley Milligan’s diagnosis, treatment, and legal status were examined together but not treated as the same question. The hospital study lasted more than seven months, involved a broad team of clinicians, and became the basis for determining that Milligan could stand trial. It did not, by itself, settle whether he was criminally responsible for the acts charged against him.

Background and Admission

The period followed a January 1978 psychological evaluation arranged after Milligan’s lawyers, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, continued to represent him despite a letter in which he had fired them. On January 8 and 13, clinical psychologist Dr. Willis C. Driscoll administered a battery of tests. Milligan scored 68 on the intelligence tests, although Driscoll attributed the low result in part to depression. Driscoll diagnosed acute schizophrenia and concluded that Milligan’s identity was severely impaired, that he had difficulty distinguishing himself from his surroundings, and that he was not then able to understand events well enough to assist in his defense. He recommended hospitalization for further examination and possible treatment.

On January 19, Schweickart and Stevenson presented Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay Flowers as evidence that Milligan could not assist in his own defense. The judge directed Southwest Community Mental Health Center’s forensic psychiatry unit to examine him. The defense feared that the center, which it regarded as generally aligned with the prosecution, might use information from the examination against its client. The lawyers and prosecutors disputed whether the interviews should be privileged; they ultimately agreed that incriminating statements could be used only if Milligan took the stand in his own defense. The defense then allowed the evaluation to proceed under that condition.

Milligan was transferred from the Franklin County Jail to Harding Hospital on March 16, two days earlier than expected. Dr. George Harding had assembled a therapy team but was away at a psychiatric meeting in Chicago. Dr. Shoemaker took charge until his return. Judy Stevenson and Dorothy Turner accompanied Milligan to Wakefield Cottage, a locked unit for fourteen patients requiring close observation and personal attention. He was placed in a special-care room with a heavy oak door and a peephole for continuous observation. Turner wanted the staff to see the multiple-personality condition directly; at her suggestion, Arthur came out to meet members of the team. The scene introduced a continuing tension between making the personalities legible to clinicians and managing how their appearance affected treatment.

Treatment and Institutional Conflict

As staff members encountered Milligan’s denials of actions they said they had witnessed, they complained that he was undermining treatment on the unit and manipulating staff by approaching them separately. His references to Ragen handling matters were regarded by staff as threatening. Dr. George proposed that he alone address the personalities, and only during therapy, while staff avoided discussing their names in front of other patients. A March 28 nursing-goal sheet made the institutional approach explicit: staff were to remind Milligan that his name was Billy when he referred to himself as another personality, and to respond matter-of-factly when he denied playing piano or writing notes that staff had seen him produce. The plan sought to establish responsibility and reduce confusion on the unit by consistently treating the patient as Billy.

After Dr. Cornelia Wilbur visited and viewed videotapes of therapy, the strategy changed again: Dr. George concentrated on fusing the personalities. Dr. Marlene Kocan arranged regular sessions in which the personalities recalled and worked through memories of abuse and torture associated with the major dissociation at age eight. Kocan questioned whether fusion was safe in this case. If Ragen were fused with the others and Milligan were later sent to prison, she warned, he might lose a means of defending himself in a hostile environment. The treatment therefore carried a practical dilemma: integration was being pursued, but one personality’s defensive capacity was also considered relevant to Milligan’s safety.

Fusion brought its own anxieties and measurable changes. In early June, Milligan reported that he had fused for an hour as Tommy and Allen and that the experience felt strange. He worried that the process might cause the others to disappear or diminish their talents and strengths; Allen reassured Donna Egar that they were working on it. The court approved an extension of observation and treatment on June 6, allowing at least three more months for fusion. On June 14, Rosalie Drake watched Tommy play drums in the music building. Allen had previously been the only one to play them, and the fused performance was less accomplished. Milligan described the change as taking Allen’s talent, making the cost of integration concrete rather than merely diagnostic.

Report, Publicity, and Competency

By late August, Dr. George Harding was weighing the ethical and legal implications of his findings. He believed Milligan was fused or close to fusion and might be sufficiently integrated to stand trial. His concern was different: whether using a multiple-personality diagnosis as a defense to serious crimes was justified, and whether his testimony might discredit the diagnosis, harm other patients, or undermine psychiatric evidence. He also understood that an insanity ruling based on a disorder then classified as a neurosis could establish precedent in Ohio and perhaps beyond. Believing that Milligan had not controlled his actions during the three days in October 1977, Dr. Harding consulted other professionals and his staff before writing a nine-page report on September 12, 1978, covering Milligan’s medical, social, and psychiatric history.

Until that point, the multiple-personality diagnosis had been known to Milligan’s treatment providers, the prosecutors, and the judge, but had not been made public. The defense wanted it kept secret to avoid turning treatment and the pending case into a media event. Bernard Zalig Yavitch agreed not to disclose it in the absence of testimony in court. On September 27, the Columbus Citizen-Journal broke the story. The publicity became part of the strain of the period: back at the Franklin County Jail, Milligan grew depressed, spent more time drawing and brooding, and increasingly slept in withdrawal from his surroundings.

The report’s scope mattered to the competency decision. Bernard Zalig Yavitch and Terry Sherman considered it an unusually thorough mental examination: not a brief checkup, but a hospital study of more than seven months that incorporated consultation with many psychologists and psychiatrists. On October 6, after a brief competency hearing, Judge Jay Flowers ruled that Milligan was capable of standing trial and set December 4 as the trial date. Schweickart accepted the ruling on the condition that the case be governed by the law in force when the crimes occurred, before a change that would shift the burden of proving insanity to the defendant. Competency at the time of trial and responsibility at the time of the alleged offenses remained distinct legal questions.

Consequences and Significance

The period ended with Milligan back in jail rather than at Harding Hospital. When he asked why he could not stay until trial, Stevenson reminded him that the court had granted seven months there and that the trial was less than two months away. Gary Schweickart urged him to hold himself together, warning that if he became unable to stand trial, he might be sent to Lima. The contrast between the hospital’s extended observation and the jail’s return to the foreground shows how treatment remained constrained by legal procedure and placement decisions.

At trial, the distinction between present competency and past responsibility became decisive. Judge Flowers dismissed the first rape count for lack of corroborating evidence and a similar modus operandi. On counts two through ten, the medical evidence was stipulated; the judge found that the doctors agreed Milligan had been mentally ill at the time of the offenses, unable to distinguish right from wrong, and unable to refrain from the acts. He found Milligan not guilty by reason of insanity. In December 1979, a separate court proceeding again identified his condition as multiple personality and ordered hospitalization with treatment consistent with that diagnosis. The Harding period thus established an influential clinical record, but its significance lies partly in what it did not collapse: a diagnosis, a treatment process, the ability to participate in a trial, and responsibility for earlier conduct remained related yet separate determinations.