Trial begins Monday in Wisconsin`s worst serial killing case, when defense lawyers and prosecutors will start selecting jurors to decide the fate of Jeffrey L. Dahmer.
But the only thing left for jurors to decide is whether Dahmer, 31, who turned his small West Side apartment into a human slaughterhouse, spends life in prison or in a state institution for the criminally insane. Wisconsin does not have the death penalty, and his lawyer has pleaded him guilty but insane. Nevertheless, the bizarre and grisly details of the crimes, and the psychiatric dueling likely to occur between expert witnesses over the insanity issue, may make it one of the most widely followed such trials in history.
”It`s going to be worldwide,” said Dan Patrinos, media coordinator for the legal proceedings and an editor at the Milwaukee Sentinel. ”No matter where you go, you`re going to see Dahmer`s face.”
Three of the 15 men and boys he is charged with killing-Oliver Lacy, 23, Jeremiah Weinberger, 23, and Matt Turner, 20, also known as Donald Montrell-were, or had been, Chicago residents. A fourth, Joseph Bradehoft, 25, had lived in Greenville, a town in southern Illinois.
More than 60 news organizations will be present, some from as far away as Britain, France and Australia. Court TV and CNN, which together drew nearly 3 million viewers during high points of the Palm Beach rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, will be providing broad, nearly gavel-to-gavel coverage.
The courtroom of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Laurence C. Gram Jr. has been partitioned with an 8-foot-high barrier of bullet-resistant Lexan and steel.
Seats have been reserved for 40 members of the families of Dahmer`s victims, who have yet to hear full details of the killings. A separate media room has been set up three floors below for an anticipated overflow of 60 to 70 reporters and television crew members.
Representing Dahmer will be Gerald Boyle, 55, who has a reputation as one of the best defense lawyers in Wisconsin. Making the prosecution`s case will be E. Michael McCann, also 55, Milwaukee County`s district attorney for 24 years.
Boyle is known for winning over juries with a quiet, folksy charm. McCann is a widely respected prosecutor with a passionate conviction for the law.
”It`s a fair match,” said George Kersten, a spokesman for the Milwaukee County Bar Association. ”Neither one of these guys is a showboater. They`re both tough and talented men.”
With Dahmer`s guilt acknowledged-he has confessed to 17 killings-the burden will be on Boyle, who must prove that his client was insane at the time of the murders.
Like other states, Wisconsin law has a two-pronged standard for proving insanity. Defendants must have been unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of their conduct, and/or unable to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law. In other words, either the defendant does not know right from wrong, or was rendered out of control by his mental disease, or both.
But Boyle faces a problem in getting around the fact that Dahmer killed his victims in secrecy and sought to conceal many of them by destroying and dismembering their remains. Dahmer pulverized the bones of his first victim, Steven Hicks, in 1978 near Bath, Ohio, and buried them over a wide area. And last May he masterfully persuaded two police officers to return a fleeing 14- year-old victim to him.
Such actions, the prosecution can be expected to argue, would indicate he knew the difference between right and wrong.
An insanity defense that rests largely on the argument that a defendant knew right from wrong but lacked the ability to control himself, fell out of favor in the 1980s, said Stephen J. Morse, professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
It is the contention that the defendant was ”unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct” that leaves the greatest opportunity for a skillful defense lawyer, Morse said.
”That allows an artful advocate to make the case that the person knew that killing was against the law but didn`t really appreciate that it was wrong, because he had these cockamamie reasons for doing it,” Morse said.
The biggest hurdle for the Dahmer defense, however, will be to convince the jury that the defendant`s illness was so severe that rather than view him as culpable, it should view him as sick and deserving of treatment, said Frank Remington, of the University of Wisconsin law school at Madison.
Boyle must also counteract the misperception that someone who has committed the crimes Dahmer has could win early release from an institution for the criminally insane.
The victory record for insanity defenses is not good. Only 1 percent of all felony defendants attempt the defense, and only one-third of those are successful, said Jack Levin, who teaches a course in criminal homicide at Northeastern University in Boston.
Levin also was co-author of a 1985 book ”Mass Murder: America`s Growing Menace.” Of 42 serial killers studied for the book, nine attempted the defense and four were successful.
”Because of community outrage, it is very difficult to advance that defense and get a jury to believe it,” said Dr. Elissa Benedek, a specialist in criminal insanity and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan medical school.
Boyle will put at least two mental health experts on the witness stand. One is Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist with Johns Hopkins University medical school, where he directs the hospital`s clinic on sexual disorders. The other is Kenneth Smail, a Milwaukee forensic psychologist who began interviewing Dahmer shortly after his arrest.
”They`ll be trying to convince the jury that he or she can look back to
(a random date) and say, `Yes, on that day, this guy in my opinion was insane.` That is pretty tough to convince a jury of,” said Terry Sullivan, one of the prosecutors in the 1980 trial of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who lost his insanity plea in the killing of 33 boys and men.
The prosecution will match Boyle`s experts with at least two of their own. One is Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist and criminologist who teaches at the University of California and is a consultant to the FBI`s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. The other is Frederick Fosdal, a Madison, Wis., psychiatrist and forensic specialist in private practice.
Much of the trial may be a battle of the experts, each trying to convince jurors of Dahmer`s state of mind while he committed the murders.
”If the jury wants to reject the psychiatric testimony and base their decision on the facts, that is their prerogative,” said Richard Kling, clinical professor of law at Kent College of Law in Chicago, and a member of Gacy`s defense team.
”That is really what you are dealing with,” Kling said. ”You are dealing with the politics of the situation.”
