Speaker 1: Clifton T. Perkins Hospital in Jessup, Maryland is a sprawling,
Speaker 1: nondescript building, surrounded by forests and located on forty five acres.
Speaker 1: The forensic psychiatric hospital has grown in size since its
Speaker 1: construction in nineteen fifty nine. Today, the nearly three hundred
Speaker 1: bed facility is mostly home to patients who are charged
Speaker 1: with a violent felony and have been either deemed incompetent
Speaker 1: to stand trial or not criminally responsible, or an inmate
Speaker 1: too mentally ill to be in prison. One of those
Speaker 1: patients is Catherine Hoggell.
Speaker 2: She's a patient at this point and not a prisoner.
Speaker 1: Troy Turner is right, Perkins, as it's known, isn't a prison,
Speaker 1: but the mostly maximum security hospital would sure feel like
Speaker 1: one of you lived there. Maximum security patients can have
Speaker 1: limited ability to roam the building and grounds, and all
Speaker 1: patient buildings are surrounded by security fences. Even with this
Speaker 1: focus on security, last year, Perkins made the news after
Speaker 1: a union representing workers at the hospital claim that assaults
Speaker 1: on both patients and staff had become routine. But despite
Speaker 1: the conditions the restrictions on Catherine's movement, Troy Turner, the
Speaker 1: father of the two children Catherine is accused of killing.
Speaker 1: Doesn't think Perkins is where his ex partner should be.
Speaker 2: I think that she should be punished to the greatest
Speaker 2: extent that the law would allow. I think that she
Speaker 2: should stand trial like anyone who murders two children should
Speaker 2: stand trial. And I think that she should go to
Speaker 2: jail and go to prison.
Speaker 1: In earlier episodes, we talked about the complications police can
Speaker 1: run into when they are investigating a crime, especially when
Speaker 1: missing children are involved, that they have to balance the
Speaker 1: rights of the suspect with the urgency of solving the crime.
Speaker 1: And in Catherine's case, it was even more complicated because
Speaker 1: of her mental illness as police tried to find out
Speaker 1: where she had taken her children, three year old Sarah
Speaker 1: and two year old Jacob. But that added complication doesn't
Speaker 1: stop once a person is arrested. It just continues as
Speaker 1: they make their way through the justice system, and there
Speaker 1: is a sense that it's at this point, as the
Speaker 1: accused is forced to answer for their crimes, that justice
Speaker 1: will be meted out. But that's not how things have
Speaker 1: gone in this case. For nine years, Troy has been
Speaker 1: living at the intersection of these systems as he contests
Speaker 1: Catherine's incompetency and advocates for what he considers justice for
Speaker 1: his children. He wants Catherine found competent to stand trial.
Speaker 1: He wants the evidence against her presented in a courtroom.
Speaker 1: I'm Beth Karas and this is Unrestorable, an original podcast
Speaker 1: from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: We come from this very puritan kind of heritage in
Speaker 3: our culture, and we're very punitive.
Speaker 1: This again, is tes Neil, a forensic psychologist at Iowa
Speaker 1: State University who researches how the justice system copes with
Speaker 1: the mentally ill.
Speaker 3: We have just an extraordinarily high rate of incarceration in
Speaker 3: this country and a kind of political narrative that we
Speaker 3: are tough on crime and we want to make sure
Speaker 3: that people don't get away with things. Then we also
Speaker 3: have this still pretty stigmatizing view of mental illness.
Speaker 1: I agree with Tess. For eight years as a prosecutor
Speaker 1: in New York City, I was on the front lines
Speaker 1: of this problem. Our prisons are full of people who
Speaker 1: are mentally ill. In fact, the National Alliance on Mental
Speaker 1: Illness says that two million people with mental illnesses are
Speaker 1: admitted to US jails each year. Is not in jail.
Speaker 1: She's in a hospital, and until she can be declared
Speaker 1: healthy enough to help her defense attorney, she's not going
Speaker 1: to have to defend herself against criminal charges before a
Speaker 1: judge or jury or face the threat of a prison sentence.
Speaker 1: And for Troy, that's the only way to get any justice.
Speaker 1: But you have to wonder why, why isn't being locked
Speaker 1: up in a maximum security institution where your freedom is
Speaker 1: definitely restricted. Why isn't that a form of justice, especially
Speaker 1: since it's very clear that Catherine does suffer from mental
Speaker 1: health issues.
Speaker 4: You know, I know, one of the questions raised by
Speaker 4: this case in other cases involving competency, is whether the
Speaker 4: criminal justice system adequately protects us from the mentally ill.
Speaker 1: My co host Sarah Trelevin was with me when we
Speaker 1: interviewed tes Neil.
Speaker 4: But there's also clearly another question to be asked about
Speaker 4: whether the criminal justice system served the interests of and
Speaker 4: protects the mentally ill themselves. What do you think about
Speaker 4: the balance of those two ideas.
Speaker 3: So, on the one hand, lawyers and the system has
Speaker 3: this kind of foundational assumption of how the process works,
Speaker 3: that we're in an adversarial system and the way we
Speaker 3: work is that each party gets to offer their best
Speaker 3: version of the facts with a narrative, and I get
Speaker 3: to provide their evidence, and the truth will out right.
Speaker 3: So through that process, whatever the truth is, it's going
Speaker 3: to come to the fore. But when you have a
Speaker 3: situation where somebody is not a great advocate for themselves,
Speaker 3: whether it be because of mental illness or other reasons,
Speaker 3: sometimes that attorney is in a difficult philosophical ethical dilemma
Speaker 3: between whether they're advocating for what the client is asking for,
Speaker 3: which may not be in their best interests as a
Speaker 3: human being, right, and so like, maybe they do need treatment,
Speaker 3: maybe they are mentally ill, and so there's definitely parentalistic
Speaker 3: legal representation where maybe that's in the best interest of
Speaker 3: the but it's not consistent with the system of justice
Speaker 3: as we have designed it. And so that's a hard
Speaker 3: problem and it's not solved.
Speaker 1: This hard problem is not new. The insanity defense has
Speaker 1: been used in the US since at least the mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Since then, the laws have been reformed and
Speaker 1: case law has been codified. But remember, Catherine is not
Speaker 1: asserting an insanity defense. She can't do that or won't
Speaker 1: do that until she's before a judge preparing for trial,
Speaker 1: and she has to be found competent before that can happen.
Speaker 1: For years, Catherine appeared before judges who accepted reports from
Speaker 1: doctors that she was responding to medication and could likely
Speaker 1: become competent in the foreseeable future. After all, that was
Speaker 1: the goal to restore her to competence so she could
Speaker 1: go to trial. This distinction, this idea that one cannot
Speaker 1: be tried one cannot help with one's own defense, comes
Speaker 1: from a nineteen sixty U. S Supreme Court decision. It
Speaker 1: involved a man with a history of mental illness named
Speaker 1: Milton Richard Dusky, who was found guilty of the attempted
Speaker 1: rape of a young girl and sentenced to forty five years.
Speaker 1: He appealed. In ordering a new competency hearing, the US
Speaker 1: Supreme Court laid out the test that is still used today.
Speaker 1: A defendant must properly understand the proceedings against him and
Speaker 1: possess the present ability to assist counsel in his defense.
Speaker 1: Dusky was retried, reconvicted, and his new sentence reduced to
Speaker 1: twenty years.
Speaker 5: Incompetence is a present state.
Speaker 1: This is Catherine's lawyer, David Felson.
Speaker 5: Someone is incompetent now, which means that they can't make
Speaker 5: for the for whatever reason, can't make the various decisions
Speaker 5: necessary to assist in their defense, or that they understand
Speaker 5: what's going on in court. We don't try those people
Speaker 5: for any crime because they can't defend themselves. They don't
Speaker 5: know what's going on. Relative to the legal process.
Speaker 1: Rules around mentally ill criminals continue to evolve, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, the US Supreme Court held that you
Speaker 1: cannot hold someone for an indefinite amount of time in
Speaker 1: the hopes of restoring one's competency.
Speaker 6: There's a statute that now limits and I think most
Speaker 6: states have in this, but there's a limited period of
Speaker 6: time that you have to restore somebody to confidence.
Speaker 1: John McCarthy is the state's attorney in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Speaker 6: That timeframe has been more severely limited in Maryland in
Speaker 6: more recent times. For instance, it used to be ten years,
Speaker 6: now it's five years. On felonies.
Speaker 1: For misdemeanors, it's three, which is why Catherine has been
Speaker 1: held for so many years now. She was initially held
Speaker 1: on misdemeanor charges for almost three years, but before that
Speaker 1: three year window had expired. A grand jury indicted her
Speaker 1: for murder, and the state dismissed the lesser charges. Catherine
Speaker 1: was soon found incompetent to stand trial again, and that
Speaker 1: started a five year clock which has loomed ever since.
Speaker 1: And this is where Troy finds himself.
Speaker 2: We're going, okay, we have this slock ticking.
Speaker 1: If Catherine cannot be restored to competence, then she will
Speaker 1: either be civilly committed if a judge finds her to
Speaker 1: be a danger to herself or others, or released, but
Speaker 1: she will not face murder charges for now because those
Speaker 1: will be dismissed.
Speaker 2: It's hard to kind of look at her and know
Speaker 2: what she did and know that she might be accountable for,
Speaker 2: you know, and that there's a good chance that she'll
Speaker 2: never be held accountable the way the system's working right now.
Speaker 2: And I'm just looking at her, going this is crazy,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing that we can do about it at
Speaker 2: this point right now.
Speaker 1: But it has to be made clear. Catherine is an outlier.
Speaker 1: Most defendants who are found incompetent are restored and end
Speaker 1: up in a courtroom. Most of them do not run
Speaker 1: out the clock.
Speaker 3: The best estimate we have is that something like seventy
Speaker 3: five percent of people will be restored within I think
Speaker 3: a year, and typically that is through taking psychotropic medication.
Speaker 3: And typically it's even faster than a year. Typically it's
Speaker 3: within six months because medication typically works, you know, within
Speaker 3: a month or two.
Speaker 1: For Troy, the father of Sarah and Jacob, the man
Speaker 1: who nine years ago lost his two youngest children and
Speaker 1: still today has no idea where they are or what
Speaker 1: happened to them, none of this sits well with him.
Speaker 2: She manipulated the system. She manipulated the staff at Perkins.
Speaker 2: The nursing knows. The nurse say that she knows that
Speaker 2: they The nurses are like, she's manipulating you guys. Basically
Speaker 2: they are writing to the purpose doctors that they're being
Speaker 2: manipulated as she's lying and just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: According to Troy and other members of the family, Catherine
Speaker 1: has been almost brazen about her plans to remain incompetent
Speaker 1: long enough to see the murder charges against her dismissed.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's possible for someone to fake incompetency,
Speaker 1: and I mean just anybody.
Speaker 5: I think it's possible.
Speaker 1: Sure, I'm speaking with Catherine's attorney, David Felson.
Speaker 5: I mean not in this case, not with these symptoms,
Speaker 5: not for this period of time, not under these circumstances,
Speaker 5: not taking these medications, not getting these therapies. But could
Speaker 5: somebody fake it? Sure, Beth, you could fake it.
Speaker 1: I asked Catherine's lawyer to describe the symptoms he's talking about.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't go into great detail, but told me he
Speaker 1: had represented her in the past for a minor traffic infraction,
Speaker 1: and the contrast between Catherine then and when he met
Speaker 1: her right after her arrest in twenty fourteen was profound.
Speaker 1: That there was a clear disconnect between the circumstances that
Speaker 1: she found herself in and the way she would react
Speaker 1: to people. That Catherine's eyes were darting around the room,
Speaker 1: that she spoke in hushed tones, and that she was
Speaker 1: obviously paranoid and delusional. Her hair was so messy it
Speaker 1: looked like she had been living on the street for days.
Speaker 1: Catherine knew she was facing murder charges because that part
Speaker 1: of competency she passed. I mean she understood it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we conceded that, yes, Catherine is not stupid. I
Speaker 5: think that most people have a profound misconception of incompetency
Speaker 5: to stand trial. They think of incompetency when they hear
Speaker 5: that word. Their initial vision is someone who is incoherent,
Speaker 5: unable to communicate, sitting in the corner of a room, drooling,
Speaker 5: banging their head against the wall, and looking at imaginary
Speaker 5: butterflies and soiling themselves. That person would clearly be incompetent.
Speaker 5: But that is not the only definition of incompetence, and
Speaker 5: competence to stand trial is a much more complicated, nuanced circumstance.
Speaker 1: And here again we bump into the intersection of two
Speaker 1: competing systems.
Speaker 3: It's a perennial question in forensic cases like this, where
Speaker 3: there's some question of mental illness, it's intersecting with the
Speaker 3: legal issue.
Speaker 1: It's something that test Neil has spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about.
Speaker 3: Malingering is when somebody is thinking some kind of mental
Speaker 3: illness in an effort to have their criminal charges dismiss.
Speaker 3: When clinicians are trying to assess from a one of
Speaker 3: the things you're trying to assess for is well, what's
Speaker 3: the motivation?
Speaker 1: Troy says he definitely knows Catherine's motivation.
Speaker 2: She knows is action.
Speaker 5: What's going on there?
Speaker 7: And I'm not saying that, you know, just as the
Speaker 7: father of these kids who wants justice. I'm saying that
Speaker 7: as someone who knows her, who has spoken with her
Speaker 7: since she has been locked up. You know, at times,
Speaker 7: and she doesn't appear to be any less cognizant of
Speaker 7: the situation than she was whenever she was explaining the
Speaker 7: entire system to me and telling me a rundown of
Speaker 7: how long she has to wait and be incompetent to
Speaker 7: get out.
Speaker 1: It's a complicated problem. The medical system Catherine is in
Speaker 1: is actively trying to get her healthy, healthy enough to
Speaker 1: stand trial. But that system is supported by doctors and nurses,
Speaker 1: and it raises questions about doing no harm. Should mental
Speaker 1: health professionals help make incompetent people well just so the
Speaker 1: system can prosecute them.
Speaker 3: What are the ethics of treating somebody a human being
Speaker 3: to then enable the legal system to prosecute that person.
Speaker 1: It gets even more complicated when you consider the death penalty.
Speaker 1: Catherine is not facing the death penalty. It was abolished
Speaker 1: in Maryland in twenty thirteen, only one year before Catherine
Speaker 1: is accused of killing her kids, But the American Psychiatric
Speaker 1: Association has weighed in on the question of restoring someone's competency.
Speaker 1: If there is a threat of execution, that person.
Speaker 3: Has to be restored to competency before they can be executed.
Speaker 3: The American Psychiatric Association has come out very firmly against
Speaker 3: physicians being involved in that process. They have said it
Speaker 3: is against the hippocratic oath. It is unethical for a
Speaker 3: psychiatrist to provide treatment in that situation, to aid a
Speaker 3: person to restore their confidence to become competent for execution.
Speaker 3: But it's still a thorny ethical problem because sometimes people
Speaker 3: who are very psych practically ill are suffering, and so
Speaker 3: there's also this hippocratic oath problem of not helping the
Speaker 3: person when they are suffering. So it gets very complicated
Speaker 3: at these intersection of systems, especially in that situation.
Speaker 1: And again, while Catherine is not facing the death penalty,
Speaker 1: Troy does believe that the doctors at Perkins are protecting her,
Speaker 1: helping her maintain incompetency rather than treating her.
Speaker 2: There is no therapy for them at Perkins until they
Speaker 2: are competent. So if you're profoundly mentally I don't know
Speaker 2: how they expect to bring you to competence or have
Speaker 2: you get better if they're not giving you therapy. That
Speaker 2: makes no sense to me.
Speaker 1: At Catherine's latest competency hearing, the evaluating doctor from Perkins
Speaker 1: testified that Catherine was not in one on one therapy
Speaker 1: since that's usually reserved for patients who have resolved their
Speaker 1: legal situation. We reached out to the Maryland Department of
Speaker 1: Health to find out more about why an ist patient,
Speaker 1: that is, someone incompetent to stay trial at Perkins might
Speaker 1: not receive one on one therapy and an effort to
Speaker 1: restore them to competency. We were told that it depends
Speaker 1: on the patient and their treatment plan. But Lucy and Parsley,
Speaker 1: an attorney with disability Rights Maryland, has a different take.
Speaker 1: Based on her experience. She believes Perkins may actually discourage
Speaker 1: individual therapy for patients being restored to competency.
Speaker 8: Perkins believes that the individual might say or do something
Speaker 8: with respect to their case that might cause the staff
Speaker 8: to be subpoenaed and testify against them, and they don't
Speaker 8: want to do anything that could put the person at
Speaker 8: more risk of being convicted.
Speaker 1: Parsley is troubled by this lack of therapy.
Speaker 9: We see people who are really suffering because many of
Speaker 9: them have experienced traumas in their life. They're not getting
Speaker 9: trauma therapy, they're not getting PTSD therapy, they're you know,
Speaker 9: getting medication if they would agree to take it in
Speaker 9: the hospitals, but they're also kept on the most restrictive
Speaker 9: levels in the hospitals.
Speaker 1: This illustrates that complicated intersection of the justice system and
Speaker 1: the treatment of the mentally ill, and a conflict even
Speaker 1: with those presumably on the same side. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: because your organization, Disability Rights Maryland is interested in the
Speaker 1: individual and getting them the care they need if they're suffering,
Speaker 1: like you say, from trauma, but they're not getting that
Speaker 1: proper care. But the hospital Perkins also feels like they're
Speaker 1: doing something in the best interests of the patient by
Speaker 1: withholding treatment so that they're not prosecuted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that is probably true.
Speaker 1: But to Troy, this is all irrelevant. The real truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is Troy does not believe Catherine is
Speaker 1: incompetent at all. He believed that she is in fact
Speaker 1: well aware of the situation and is waiting things out,
Speaker 1: and he says she's being very deliberate about it.
Speaker 2: So on one side, you have inconfident, it goes to treatment,
Speaker 2: it goes down.
Speaker 1: Troy is describing a sort of drawing that Catherine made.
Speaker 1: It was on a handout that Perkins gave Patience to
Speaker 1: explain the legal process. At the very top, there's a
Speaker 1: cartoonish drawing of a police officer blowing a whistle, his
Speaker 1: baton raised in the air like he's chasing down a suspect.
Speaker 1: Just below there's a drawing of an inmate wearing the
Speaker 1: classic striped prison guard, looking dejected behind bars in a
Speaker 1: concrete cell. Troy wants me to notice what Catherine added.
Speaker 2: If you look on there, even in terms of incoonfident,
Speaker 2: where it says not guilty, and there's a home she
Speaker 2: actually wrote streets on there, and then you have where
Speaker 2: being convicted, Lisa Jell NCR leads to where you would
Speaker 2: be home by then as an incompetent person.
Speaker 1: NCR stands for not criminally responsible, what we commonly know
Speaker 1: as not guilty by reason of insanity. For the pathways
Speaker 1: that lead Catherine out of jail and eventually out of Perkins.
Speaker 1: Katherine has drawn a cute little house, a curl of
Speaker 1: smoke coming from the chimney.
Speaker 2: It's literally just laid out as instructions, here's how you
Speaker 2: get home at some point.
Speaker 1: According to this drawing, the paths are clear. Being found
Speaker 1: competent and then guilty leads to prison. Remaining incompetent and
Speaker 1: receiving ongoing treatment. Never facing the court system leads to
Speaker 1: that cute cartoon house look.
Speaker 6: When they give you a diagram, literally give you a
Speaker 6: diagram that basically says paths to get out of jail
Speaker 6: and a path to go to prison.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sit well with Montgomery County State's Attorney John
Speaker 1: McCarthy either.
Speaker 6: And they explain to you on a diagram that she
Speaker 6: color codes that was an exhibit, and she discussed it
Speaker 6: with her husband. She knew exactly which road would keep
Speaker 6: her out of jail.
Speaker 4: What are the some of the signs that that practitioners
Speaker 4: look for that someone is malingering. What would be a tell.
Speaker 3: Just behavioral consistency across time and across context and situation.
Speaker 3: So what's the person acting like in their conversations and
Speaker 3: behaviors with family members and friends if they're in custody.
Speaker 3: What is their behavior like in custody? What are the
Speaker 3: treatment providers who are seeing them in that environment? And
Speaker 3: the people who are seeing them on the unit all
Speaker 3: the time, what are their notes like on a daily basis.
Speaker 3: If you find consistency that the person is struggling across
Speaker 3: all of those domains, that's much more compelling than if
Speaker 3: they're only having a problem when you're interviewing them. There's
Speaker 3: really good kind of psychometrically solved, scientifically based tools measures
Speaker 3: that we have as clinicians that can that can tap
Speaker 3: into the lingering like it's been studied quite a lot.
Speaker 3: We know what it looks like typically from people who
Speaker 3: are genuinely ill and people who are faking ill. The
Speaker 3: only people who are really successful at lingering would be
Speaker 3: somebody who's very sophisticated about what mental illness genuinely looks like.
Speaker 4: And yet, is it possible for somebody to appear lucid,
Speaker 4: to appear like a good advocate for herself, to appear
Speaker 4: self interested and capable of strategic thought, and still be
Speaker 4: not competent to stand trial for serious charges?
Speaker 3: Yes, I can give an example. Sometimes delusional disorder is
Speaker 3: a it's a type of psychotic disorder, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: have the same presentation as like a schizophrenia or something
Speaker 3: would have, so with a delusional disorder, a person doesn't
Speaker 3: have hallucinations. You don't see things that aren't there, they
Speaker 3: don't hear things that aren't there. So their main symptom
Speaker 3: with a delusional disorder is some kind of circumscribe fixed
Speaker 3: false belief, some belief that they truly think is real
Speaker 3: that is objectively not true. If that's significant enough, it
Speaker 3: can really derail things and really like mess up people's lives,
Speaker 3: and those are hard to treat sometimes, like psychotropic medication
Speaker 3: can't always treat that well. So if a person is
Speaker 3: very sophisticated, a smart human being who's like doing just
Speaker 3: fine in life, but they have this like resistant and
Speaker 3: intrusive and problematic delusional disorder, that can that can be
Speaker 3: a situation where the person might be lucid and this
Speaker 3: person could be perfectly capable of doing almost everything else
Speaker 3: in a life. That could be a reason why somebody
Speaker 3: might be found incompetent and might not be restorable, because
Speaker 3: delusional disorder can be pretty resistant to treatment.
Speaker 4: Sometimes, is it customary for an evaluator of competency to
Speaker 4: talk to the friends and family of that individual to
Speaker 4: get their perspective on whether the individual is malingering yeah.
Speaker 3: Although again it depends on the seriousness of the case,
Speaker 3: It depends on the training of the evaluator, it depends
Speaker 3: on how good of a job they're doing. So in
Speaker 3: a system that is incentivizing quick and sloppy work, which
Speaker 3: sometimes is the case. If there's a contract, for example,
Speaker 3: for the evaluators, and they get paid by the case
Speaker 3: and nobody is paying attention to the quality of what's
Speaker 3: coming in, then the incentive is no, you don't do
Speaker 3: any of that. You talk to the person for fifteen minutes,
Speaker 3: you write a shoddy report sometimes and submit it, and
Speaker 3: you get your pay. That's a bad way to design
Speaker 3: a system. It's also a bad way to do practice.
Speaker 3: But it does happen. But certainly it is the case
Speaker 3: that if somebody's doing a good job with an evaluation
Speaker 3: like this, that they will talk to collateral sources, certainly
Speaker 3: professional collateral sources, but often also non professional collateral sources
Speaker 3: like friends and family members.
Speaker 4: So would you be surprised if in a case family
Speaker 4: members had signed f David saying that they suspected a
Speaker 4: patient of malingering, that evaluators did not talk to those
Speaker 4: family members.
Speaker 3: If they knew about it.
Speaker 1: In all the years that Catherine has been held at Perkins,
Speaker 1: the doctors there never spoke to Troy, even though he
Speaker 1: says he's called the hospital at least ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: times over the years in an attempt to speak with them. Lindsay,
Speaker 1: Catherine's mother, says that she too hasn't been interviewed by Perkins.
Speaker 1: In an affidavit Lindsay signed back in twenty fifteen, she
Speaker 1: said Catherine understands precisely what is going on in her case,
Speaker 1: and she is trying to work the system to her advantage.
Speaker 1: She has recently explained to me that if she is
Speaker 1: found to be competent, she will go to jail. In
Speaker 1: my most recent conversations with Catherine, she has been as
Speaker 1: clear headed as I have ever known her to be.
Speaker 1: It's understandable why family members like Katherine's aunt leeb Levins,
Speaker 1: who also signed an affidavit, are suspicious of Catherine and
Speaker 1: her incompetent status. She asks questions about me and our
Speaker 1: family members and tells me her opinions about them. She
Speaker 1: is quick witted and responsive. She knows what she is doing.
Speaker 1: She is just choosing to act like she doesn't. These
Speaker 1: doubts about Catherine's behavior create an even more complicated situation
Speaker 1: for Catherine's own mother.
Speaker 10: The point that Troy made that the most important here
Speaker 10: is that Katherine is afraid of being charged further and
Speaker 10: going back to jail. She's now finally realizing that she
Speaker 10: does have a middle illness. She feels safe at Perkins.
Speaker 10: She wants to stay at Perkins.
Speaker 1: Lindsay Hoggle is addressing reporters in twenty fifteen, not long
Speaker 1: after another hearing where Catherine was found incompetent.
Speaker 10: She's very capable of being competent, whether she's taking antipsychotic
Speaker 10: drugs or not.
Speaker 1: She's not taken the right mix.
Speaker 10: Yet, she understands the situation. The problem is she doesn't
Speaker 10: want to go to jails.
Speaker 2: As simple as that.
Speaker 1: But it's not that simple. In fact, years after making
Speaker 1: that statement, Lindsay has become more circumspect about her daughter.
Speaker 1: It was clear when Sarah and I visited her more
Speaker 1: than eight years after her grandkids had gone missing.
Speaker 10: It probably wasn't worded correctly that My whole point about
Speaker 10: her being manipulative is that people with that serious mental
Speaker 10: illness learn to be manipulative because you've alienated everybody. That's
Speaker 10: close to you, and so you have to find a
Speaker 10: street smart way to survive. That's the reality of it.
Speaker 1: Lindsay indicated that at the time she signed the affidavit
Speaker 1: and made those statements to the me, she was furious
Speaker 1: with Catherine because she wouldn't tell anyone what she did
Speaker 1: with the kids.
Speaker 10: I mean early on, you know, I signed an Affidavid,
Speaker 10: and you know I was very angry at the time too,
Speaker 10: just that we're in this situation. I don't know that
Speaker 10: you can fake incompetence in her world.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 10: You know, there's been you know, conversations she's faking middle illness. No,
Speaker 10: I can tell you no. If anything, she has to
Speaker 10: be able to envision a safe place for her to be,
Speaker 10: and in my mind, I don't think she has one
Speaker 10: right now. I mean, Perkins is safe, I guess if
Speaker 10: you use that. But I don't think she's faking in competence.
Speaker 4: Do you have any regrets about writing that after.
Speaker 10: David, You know, I've kind of come to terms with
Speaker 10: everything that I've done and just gone, you know what,
Speaker 10: you make good choices, bad choices, And yeah, I don't
Speaker 10: really regret it.
Speaker 4: But she upset with you about the AFT David.
Speaker 7: Livid.
Speaker 1: Lindsey is uniquely torn between loving her daughter and missing
Speaker 1: her grandchildren, between accepting that many of her daughter's actions
Speaker 1: have been directed by mental illness while acknowledging that Catherine
Speaker 1: is capable of taking more responsibility. She grapples every day
Speaker 1: with ambivalence about what justice could mean in this case.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is that she wants Catherine to
Speaker 1: receive better treatment, not punishment.
Speaker 10: I think she could be competent intent trial. I think
Speaker 10: she's capable of that. I would hope that that's not
Speaker 10: where this goes after eight years. Yes, I would like
Speaker 10: her to have one on one therapy.
Speaker 5: She asked for that.
Speaker 10: We're still calling treatment medication only, and if that's what
Speaker 10: you depend on for recovery, there's really little hope because
Speaker 10: the medications aren't great. And so, yes, I think she's recoverable.
Speaker 6: I think there's a difference between ability to meaningly assist
Speaker 6: with counsel and willingness to do it.
Speaker 1: State's Attorney John McCarthy does not believe Catherine Hoggle is incompetent.
Speaker 6: She had the ability to assist counsel, but she wasn't
Speaker 6: willing to do it because it didn't serve her ultimate goal.
Speaker 1: If Catherine were to be declared restored and competent, if
Speaker 1: she were to face the charges of murdering her who
Speaker 1: small children, she'd have to decide on a defense, and
Speaker 1: the most obvious one not criminally responsible. There's plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence that Catherine suffered from serious mental health problems her
Speaker 1: entire life, but she'd have to admit that, yes, she
Speaker 1: killed her children. You can't claim that you are not
Speaker 1: criminally responsible if you don't also admit that you did
Speaker 1: the deed.
Speaker 6: You know, the doctors that we consulted basically indicated one
Speaker 6: of the reasons that particularly mothers who cling to insanity
Speaker 6: or incompetency is because if you actually become competent, where
Speaker 6: you begin to be able to look at what you've done,
Speaker 6: the horror of what you have done in taking the
Speaker 6: lives of your own children is too unbearable to allow
Speaker 6: yourself to ever recognize you actually did this thing. So
Speaker 6: they cling to the incompetency because it's what protects them
Speaker 6: from having to come to grips with what they've ultimately done.
Speaker 6: She was desperate not to become competent, and you know,
Speaker 6: she was terrified of going back to jail and being
Speaker 6: tried for the murder of her children.
Speaker 1: For the last eight years, Troy has done little else
Speaker 1: but advocate for Sarah and Jacob. He's pushed for Catherine's
Speaker 1: case to go to trial, but as long as she
Speaker 1: was declared incompetent, it was impossible. But in summer twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two that just might change. A judge has indicated
Speaker 1: he no longer wants to rely on reports from the
Speaker 1: doctors at Perkins. He wants to assess Catherine's competence himself.
Speaker 1: That's next time Unrestorable.
Speaker 2: You know, we still have a long way to go,
Speaker 2: and there's still a very good chance that come December
Speaker 2: the charges will get dropped. But we have a chance
Speaker 2: to try to at least fight for Sarah and Jacob
Speaker 2: and fight for what should be happening.
Speaker 1: Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by me Beth Carris
Speaker 1: and Sarah Trelevin. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldhar, Mixing
Speaker 1: and sound design by Mitchell Stewart for anonymous content. Jessica
Speaker 1: Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive
Speaker 1: in charge of production, and Nick Janiez is our legal
Speaker 1: counsel for iHeart, executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer
Speaker 1: Abu Zapfhar