Opinion ID: 1279175
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Transfer-Hearing Testimony

Text: In his offer of proof  which the court rejected  the attorney included the doctor's testimony in the transfer hearing and represented that it was the kind of testimony that would be offered to the jury. The proffered transfer-hearing testimony may be summarized as follows: Dr. McDonald, an eminent and highly qualified forensic psychiatrist, examined Richard Jahnke seven times between December 13 and December 23, 1982, for a total of 12 hours. Background information was also obtained by Dr. McDonald from the defendant's mother, sister and others who knew him. This included the staff of the Denver Children's Home, where Richard stayed, the ROTC instructor at Richard's high school, and another one of his high school instructors. The doctor also considered the sheriff's reports and material furnished by defense counsel. The psychiatrist did not find Richard Jahnke to be a violent person, in spite of this one act of violence, and he was not a threat to the community. As a child he was shy and lonely, but with no neurotic traits. When he was very young, he entertained thoughts of suicide because his father was constantly telling him how ugly and stupid he was, but he would fight back when other children picked on him. When he was a child in Arizona, he received poor grades in school, but these improved when he moved to Wyoming. His self-esteem improved when he found an interest in ROTC and assumed leadership roles in this program. In high school, Richard did not use marijuana or other illegal drugs  did not smoke or drink, and he had no history of juvenile delinquency. The doctor described an extensive background of Richard receiving physical abuse from his father. His earliest memory was of his father beating him, his mother and his sister. Between the ages of four and 12, there was seldom a day without some sort of punishment by his father. The punishment became less frequent between 12 and 15  more like every other day, but there were more beatings when his father used his fists on him. He was beaten with his father's fists every couple of weeks between 15 and 16. He would be beaten for such things as not cleaning the basement the right way  for walking along with his mouth open  for spending too much time polishing his ROTC uniform. At one juncture, the doctor testified that the children were forced to eat with plastic spoons and forks because their father did not like the noise they made while eating with ordinary utensils. Dr. McDonald testified that Richard related that he would be beaten for things like defending his sister. If Richard would react to verbal abuse by changing facial expression, the father would physically abuse him. When Richard and his mother had an argument, she would call him a bastard and report him to his father who would beat him. On May 2, 1982, after a severe beating by his father, he ran out of the house in his bare feet, then put his sneakers on and ran five miles to his ROTC instructor's home. He sat outside the instructor's house, afraid to go in, and was finally discovered there by the instructor. The doctor explained that children who are victims of abuse are often reluctant to report their problems to others. In Richard's case, he believed for many years that child beatings were the normal behavior for a father. He was humiliated by the abuse and even had trouble reporting it to the ROTC instructor with whom he had a close relationship. On this occasion, however, the instructor and Richard went to the sheriff to report the abuse. The family was then interviewed together, and Richard chose to return home rather than go to a foster home, principally because he saw himself as the protector of his mother and sister. Richard believed the May visit to the sheriff's office was useless even though his father did not beat him for a week or more. When he returned from reporting his beating to the sheriff, he put a chair against his door every night so his father could not get in. A week and a half after the sheriff's incident, the father exclaimed, That bastard reported me to the Sheriff, and would say things like I'll give him something that he can really complain about, that is if he can talk, the implication being that he would be in a condition that would prevent him from talking about anything. Then the abuse commenced again, with the father shoving Richard against the wall, punching him and slapping him around  almost every day. On one occasion, the father said he could handle the difficult people at the Internal Revenue Service (where he was employed) but at home he could not and some day he was going to hit someone so hard he would kill them. As he spoke, he looked at Richard, who believed his father was talking about him. Richard had seen his father fondling Deborah in a sexual way, and had reported it to his mother, who responded that she already knew it. When she was being abused, the boy also came to the rescue of his mother with a weapon  baseball bat  and he was successful in reducing the times when the father would beat the mother. Another reason for Richard's fear of his father was his father's habit of keeping a gun at his side constantly. He would take a gun when he went to answer the door  would even take a gun to the bathroom. When he sat down on the couch he would have a gun under his thigh, or alongside when he sat on the floor. One night when Richard was 10, he awoke to go for some food in the refrigerator. He did not turn on the lights, because he did not wish to awaken the family members, but the lights came on suddenly and he found his father with a pistol about eight inches from his face. One time when they were hunting rabbits, the father shot a rifle between two other hunters who held up a white handkerchief, whereupon the Jahnkes fled the scene. Richard knew the elder Jahnke had loaded weapons throughout the house and he was very afraid of his father and what he might do to him either with his fists or with his guns. In his transfer hearing, the doctor took other factors into account to reach his evaluation conclusion. For example, the beatings and verbal abuse had an adverse effect on Richard's psychological development. He testified that the boy does not have the ability to handle stress that other young people of his age have and any ability he does have in this regard has come about as a developed defensive mechanism against the brutality of his father. That was the problem on November 16, 1982  that is, when his mother turned on him, blaming him for all the trouble with her marriage and in the home generally, and when she kept calling him a bastard and throwing things at him it was too much for him to stand. He felt victimized when his mother reported him to his father that night because she reported things that he had never said about her. This series of events and its repercussions, together with his father's beating him that night and the father's threat that he should leave home, was more than Richard Jahnke could handle. In addition, according to Dr. McDonald, he was afraid of another beating when his father and mother returned from dinner. Therefore, taking all of these things into account, he was under unusual and, for him, unbearable pressure on the evening of November 16, 1982. On cross-examination: The doctor testified that when Richard protected his mother and sister from the elder Jahnke, and after some of the beatings against him, he thought of attacking his father but he did not say he intended to use a weapon. On the night in question, however, Richard was angry with his father, and he told the doctor that he intended to do something about his father's conduct. He told about how he loaded and arranged guns in preparation for his father's return  that his plans were to defend himself. The dialog went like this: Q. (By Mr. Carroll) In other words, he told you what his plans were and how he effected his plans in expectation of the return of his father? A. Yes. His plans were to defend himself against his father. He thought that his father would beat him up again and beat up his sister, so that first of all he said he didn't really know what he was doing when he went through the house putting the guns in various places. But then he had this fantasy that he was reminded, I think it was of Konan the Barbarian or something, I think he'd seen a film of this man protecting his home, where I take it he had weapons in every room. And so he, in a sense, was thinking that if something went wrong then there'd be a weapon to protect that particular room or he saw it  Q. When he said something went wrong, what did he think might go wrong, did he tell you? A. If his father fired at him, I take it. Q. Pardon me? A. If his father acted in a, you know, went on the rampage, that's the way he put it. He thought that his father was armed when he went to the restaurant. I don't think he knew whether he was or not, but he knew that often his father would take a firearm with him when he went out. He was afraid that his father was armed, and he was fearful that his father would thump him again when he got back. And so he made up his mind that he wasn't going to let this happen again. Q. Did his father  Did he tell you his father made any agressive acts toward him upon his return to the family home that evening? A. No, he didn't  He didn't make any aggressive acts other than the way he walked. So far as Richard was concerned, this was the way he walked when a beating was about to take place. He stomped. It reminded him of his father's behavior before beatings. But that was his interpretation, sir. Q. Did he tell you that's what provoked him into shooting his father through that closed garage door? A. I think that was the thing that, the factor that provoked the shooting. The witness testified that he was not retreating from his position between two cars in the garage when he fired the shots as the father came stomping toward the garage door. It was his intention that night to also protect his sister  the beatings received by Richard were more severe as he grew older  when he was young it was more often the open hand  later it was the closed fist. He both loved and hated his father. That night he wanted to go hug his father and say let's forget about this  let's get together and not have these arguments, fights, beatings  but Richard had done that before and he had just received a beating for his efforts at reconciliation. He had this fleeting magical belief that it could all be resolved by saying to his father, [L]et's be friends, I love you  that sort of response, but then he remembered that he had just received a beating when he had tried this on other occasions.