Court Opinion

ID: 9478639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:53:33.614039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:31.717179
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
with whom LAY, Chief Judge, and McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge, join, dissenting.
I write separately to outline Gerald Smith’s personal history, because I believe that his personal history supports the view that Smith’s mental health is a progressive and changing condition requiring that a current evidentiary hearing be held to determine his present competency to dismiss his appeal.
The experts who examined Gerald Smith are in general agreement that Smith suffers from a borderline personality disorder, from an anti-social personality disorder, and from a history of depression. (The term “borderline” means that Smith sits on the border between psychotic and intensely anxious behavior, out of control anger and the opposite.) The experts are also in general agreement that each of the above are “mental disorders” within the meaning of Rees v. Peyton, 384 U.S. 312, 86 S.Ct. 1505, 16 L.Ed.2d 583 (1966).
The record moreover makes it clear that Smith has suffered from these disorders during most of his thirty years. As a young child, Smith sustained several serious head injuries. When he was less than two years old, he was admitted to the St. Louis City Hospital with lead poisoning. The lead level in his body was dangerously high. He was thrown out of school in the first grade for fighting. At age 10, he became a petty thief. At age 15, Smith was sent to the Missouri Hills Home for Boys, a juvenile detention facility. Throughout Smith’s childhood his father drank excessively and beat Smith frequently-
Smith dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade and has had no significant period of employment since dropping out. He has abused alcohol and marijuana since age 13 and has abused amphetamines, demoril, placedil and valium on a regular basis for a number of years. Smith has a history of being unable to maintain enduring relationships, although he has had many sexual partners.
Smith has a long history of being unable to control his anger, causing him to act impulsively. Smith has a history of physically hurting himself, implicating suicidal tendencies. He has cut his forearm 83 times, he has slashed his wrist three times, and he has overdosed on several occasions. He has attempted suicide five times: three times before incarceration, and twice thereafter.
Smith was arrested on eight occasions between September, 1979, and August, 1980. He was admitted to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis in 1980 after he threatened to commit suicide by jumping off a three-story building. Smith was then diagnosed as suffering from depression and personality disorder. One examiner noted that Smith’s “chronic obsessive thinking of hostile threats and activity is a problem of mammoth proportions.” Another stated that Smith was a total catastrophe. He was nonetheless released from the hospital shortly before he killed Karen Roberts.
All of the psychiatrists who have examined Smith indicate that he has frequent mood changes and conclude that persons who have a personality disorder such as Smith are prone to act impulsively, to be *1514self-destructive, to act out of extreme anger without a sense of what is going to happen in the long run, to be in need of immediate gratification, and to have difficulty in dealing with other people.
Under the circumstances outlined above and in Chief Judge Lay’s dissent, I believe that an evidentiary hearing relating to Smith’s current competency should be held before his appeal is dismissed.