Steve Thompson

Steve Thompson is a defense attorney whose role in Billy Milligan’s story emerges most clearly in the legal battles over where Milligan should be treated. Alongside Alan Goldsberry, Thompson made the diagnosis consequential in court: the question was not only whether Milligan was mentally ill, but whether the institution holding him could provide treatment appropriate to his condition.

Identity and Role

Thompson appears in the record as an advocate for Milligan during later proceedings concerning hospitalization and treatment. The evidence places him beside Goldsberry in legal work, including a court appearance in Lancaster and a motion challenging Lima State Hospital’s handling of Milligan. Thompson’s most explicit individual contribution is his summation at a hearing about Milligan’s placement: he argued that the psychiatric evidence supported treatment at Athens Mental Health Center rather than Lima.

The earlier proceedings establish the legal questions surrounding Milligan, but do not identify Thompson as a participant in them. In January 1978, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson obtained funding for an evaluation by Willis C. Driscoll, whose tests and report described severe impairment and recommended hospitalization. When they presented the report to Judge Jay Flowers to show that Milligan could not assist in his defense, a dispute arose over whether statements made during a further examination could be used against him. This record illustrates the distinction between Milligan’s ability to participate in a trial and his mental state when the alleged offenses occurred; it provides context for the later legal arguments in which Thompson is named.

The Earlier Legal Findings

At the trial presided over by Judge Jay Flowers, the first rape count was dismissed for lack of corroborating evidence and a similar modus operandi. For counts two through ten, the judge relied on stipulated medical evidence that Milligan had been mentally ill at the time of the offenses, unable to distinguish right from wrong, and unable to refrain from the acts. The court found him not guilty by reason of insanity on those counts.

Those findings did not settle the later question of where Milligan should live or receive care. In the subsequent proceedings, psychiatric opinions and court orders concerning diagnosis and hospitalization became central. Thompson’s advocacy took shape within that further dispute: the legal determination of illness had to be followed by a decision about treatment, and the parties disagreed over which hospital could provide it.

Advocacy Over Hospital Placement

In a hearing at the Allen County Courthouse, Thompson was part of the defense team seeking to return Milligan to Athens. The court had depositions from George Harding, Cornelia Wilbur, Stella Karolin, David Caul, and Dorothy Turner. They agreed that, with reasonable medical certainty, Milligan had been mentally ill with multiple personality when the roadside-rest assaults and Gray Drug Store robbery occurred, and that he probably could not then assist his attorney. That evidence addressed both his condition at the time of the offenses and his capacity to participate in his defense; it was not simply a general endorsement of one hospital over another.

A later review of Milligan’s placement focused more directly on treatment. After Milligan had been transferred to Lima State Hospital, Thompson argued that the expert witnesses supporting his client agreed on the multiple-personality diagnosis and on the need for long-term treatment. He presented Athens as the appropriate setting for that care. He also challenged the weight given to the assessment made at Lima, arguing that it rested on Milligan’s prior convictions and older evidence rather than expertise in multiple personality. This was advocacy, not a court finding: the opposing position was that Milligan remained mentally ill and that Lima was the least restrictive suitable environment.

The disagreement was also about whether a hospital could treat a patient whose diagnosis its clinicians did not accept. Milligan said that he needed to trust his treatment team and feared that the Lima doctors did not believe in his illness. The referee did not decide that medical dispute at the hearing, but said it could be considered at a review of whether Lima was an appropriate placement. Thompson’s position therefore concerned more than the name of the diagnosis. It linked recognition of that diagnosis to the practical question of whether the proposed institution could offer the care Milligan needed.

Court Order and Continuing Dispute

On December 10, 1979, the court found Milligan mentally ill, identified the condition as multiple personality, and ordered hospitalization. Its findings cited risks of physical harm to Milligan and others, as well as his need for hospital treatment. The ruling gave formal legal recognition to the diagnosis while leaving the placement dispute active.

After Lima officials failed, in Goldsberry and Thompson’s view, to follow the court’s direction to treat Milligan as a person with multiple personality, the two attorneys filed a contempt-of-court motion against the hospital authorities and the state mental-health department. They also pressed for Milligan’s transfer to a less restrictive hospital. The motion shows the practical limit of a favorable judicial finding: recognition in an order did not itself ensure that the institution’s treatment would conform to it.

Significance

Thompson’s documented role is concentrated in a conflict between diagnosis, legal authority, and institutional practice. His arguments separated the question of whether Milligan required hospitalization from the question of which hospital could treat him appropriately. The proceedings also distinguish clinical conclusions from legal decisions: experts supplied opinions, the court made findings and issued an order, and the defense then challenged whether the institution was complying with that order.

The record does not establish the ultimate outcome of Thompson’s transfer effort. What it does show is a sustained effort, shared with Goldsberry, to make the court’s recognition of Milligan’s condition matter in the place and form of his care. In that struggle, Thompson’s role was both representational and procedural: he argued for a treatment setting supported by the defense experts, then sought judicial enforcement when the existing placement appeared to contradict the court’s direction.