Luc Leclair, lawyer for Luka Magnotta, leaves during the morning break as Magnotta's trial begins in Montreal on Sept. 29, 2014. RYAN REMIORZ/THE CANADIAN PRESS Photo: Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press MONTREAL — About five weeks before he killed and dismembered the Chinese student Lin Jun, Luka Magnotta presented himself to a psychiatrist at the Jewish General Hospital here and appeared “composed and coherent,” showing “none of the symptoms of schizophrenia.”
That doctor, Joel Paris, was the last psychiatrist to see Magnotta before the homicide. Paris diagnosed him not with schizophrenia, or psychosis, but with a likely personality disorder.
Paris testified Tuesday at Magnotta’s murder trial, where the 32-year-old Toronto native is pleading not guilty by dint of mental disorder.
And not long after his arrest in Lin’s slaying, Magnotta also refused to be assessed by another doctor, Gilles Chamberland, a forensic psychiatrist working for the Crown.
Both doctors were called by prosecutor Louis Bouthillier in reply to the defence presented by Magnotta’s lawyer, Luc Leclair, who closed his case without calling his client to the witness box.
Magnotta admitted on the first day of trial through Leclair that he committed the “physical part” of the five charges he faces.
The burden of proving that he should be found not criminally responsible for his actions because of his alleged mental illness rests with Leclair, and to that end, he marched a trio of psychiatrists to the witness box, one who is now treating Magnotta and two who conducted forensic assessments on him after lengthy interviews.
Both diagnosed him as a chronic schizophrenic and said at the time of Lin’s death Magnotta was either in the grips of his disease or was suffering a severe psychosis, which is loosely defined as a break from reality.
They also emphasized that psychosis isn’t necessarily incompatible with seeming normalcy.
Yet when Paris saw Magnotta, just 38 days before the homicide, the man before him more closely resembled the fellow Quebec Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer and the jurors have seen in extensive surveillance video now in evidence.
That video — from cameras in Magnotta’s apartment building, local stores, airports, a bus station and hotel lobby in Europe — showed him in the week before Lin’s death, on the night of the homicide itself and in the days afterwards as a cool customer who appeared perfectly normal.
Whether he was calmly disposing of Lin’s remains while simultaneously checking his rear in the mirror, moving in the crowd at Montreal’s airport or lining up patiently to buy a bus ticket in Paris, Magnotta never seemed rattled, remotely disconnected from reality or fearful he was being watched.
He was referred to Paris by a general physician at a walk-in clinic and showed up promptly on April 17, 2012.
Lin was killed, his body cut into 10 pieces and much of the dismemberment videoed and later posted online by Magnotta, on May 25 that year.
Paris, whose specialty is personality disorders, and a psychiatric resident spent about an hour with him, he said, and though Magnotta told him he’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man, he claimed this was in the context of heavy cocaine and marijuana use, that he’d since stopped using the drugs and that the diagnosis was later amended.
As Leclair pointed him to the reams of Magnotta’s psychiatric records — which Paris never saw, though he intended to get them — the psychiatrist said that in retrospect, the frequent mentions of schizophrenia “causes me concern, but I don’t take for granted it was the correct diagnosis, given he (Magnotta) showed none of the symptoms of schizophrenia” he has seen “in the hundreds of cases” he has handled in his long career.
Magnotta’s “moments of disorganization” in his speech and thought “means he went off on a tangent. That’s not a symptom of schizophrenia,” he said bluntly.
He told Leclair he remembered the interview “vividly” because, such a short time later, the story of Lin’s slaying was all over the news. But at no time, he said, did Magnotta have the disorganized speech that is typical of schizophrenics.
Paris tentatively diagnosed him as suffering from borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by an acute fear of abandonment and unstable relationships, and intended to see Magnotta again for a further assessment. The plan was that he would be called that summer and given a follow-up appointment at the personality disorders section, and by that time, Paris said, he would have asked him to release his medical records.
That never happened, of course.
“It was upsetting for me to have that assessment take place which was followed by a criminal act of this nature,” Paris said. “And I was unhappy there was nothing I’d done to prevent or predict it.”
He said, as has every psychiatrist who saw Magnotta, even if only from afar, that his was a particularly complicated and difficult case.
As Chamberland put it once, Magnotta “said a lot of things to a lot of psychiatrists. … You could give an entire course in psychiatry (through) this case.” It had everything, he said — diagnoses that ranged from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder, anxiety issues, panic attacks, personality disorders, the taking of drugs and, oh yes, “the possibility of malingering.”
Chamberland will continue his evidence Wednesday, the last anticipated witness of the trial.
Postmedia News
cblatchford@postmedia.com
No comments:
Post a Comment