Chapter 12
Dog Ado
"GOOD AFTERNOON," PETROU said, turning to the next witness. "Can you give the ladies and gentlemen of the jury your full name, please?"
"Marguerete Johnston which was my professional name, and Barnes, which is my married name, Marguerete Johnston Barnes."
"Can you tell us what year you were born and how old you are?"
"I certainly can. I was born in 1917, and I'm now 76."
"And how many years did you spend in the newspaper business?"
"From 1939 to 1985,"
"So is that over 40 years?"
"Yeah."
"In your career as a journalist and writer, did you come across — did you cross paths with Oveta Gulp Hobby?"
"Yes. I was very fortunate."
"Where did you meet Mrs. Hobby?"
WHEN I CAME TO HOUSTON, I had had what I thought was the most glorious job in the whole world as a Washington correspondent. I didn't want to do anything less. So I offered to teach creative writing at the University of Houston, but I soon got lonesome for newspapers because that's what I liked to do. And my former publisher was a very beloved figure in American journalism and he wrote Mrs. Hobby about me and she promptly had me to lunch and the next day hired me."
"And can you tell us what was your last job at The Houston Post? What did you eventually end up doing at The Post?"
"My last job was assistant editor of the editorial page. Now, I have to tell you I didn't do any editing. I was writing that whole time." "Did you review some editorials?" "I read every editorial before it went to press.”
"Do you remember while working for The Post, running across Carl Leatherwood?"
"Yes, of course, I do."
"And do you remember at one time helping him with one of the very first editorials he ever wrote?"
"That's interesting. I didn't think Carl needed any help."
"But if he testified in this trial that you reviewed his first editorial and made comments about it, would that be accurate?"
"Well, it's very nice of him to say so. I hope I did him some good."
"I would like to show what's been premarked as Plaintiffs Exhibit B."
"Yes, I remember that editorial."
"Who wrote it?"
"Carl."
"What did you think of that editorial?"
"I thought it was excellent."
"Could he become a full-time writer?"
"I don't know why not."
"So he could become, in your opinion, a full-time editorial writer?"
Kalmans: "Objection. He's leading the witness."
The court: "I'm going to overrule the objection."
"I see no reason why he shouldn't. This is a very well-written editorial."
One editorial that was a court exhibit was entitled "Ape and essence." A Rice University professor had taken the trouble to write, calling the piece "erudite."
THE GHOST OF VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, the fictional scientist who gave life to a ghoulish creature, resides in northern China as Dr. Ji "Yongxiang. Ji has proposed, indeed has already attempted, to produce a near-human ape by fertilizing a chimpanzee with human sperm. He would put this new species to work herding sheep and cows, mining and exploring space and the sea. He also sees the ape-human as a solution to the problem of human rejection of animal organs in transplants.
This futuristic idea leaves itself open to many jabs, but the aspect of reducing noxious labor is as bothersome as any. Consider, for example, the shepherd cast out of the valley and onto the automobile assembly line. Are we really doing him a favor? The job of herding sheep no longer holds esteem as in the biblical time of David. It means hard work and the physical hazards of lightning, bears, hornets and snakes. Worst of all, it isolates the worker from family and friends and from modern conveniences.
But there is simplicity in the shepherd's life. He eats fresh trout for breakfast and bathes in a tub of water set in the sun. Orange paintbrush and towering pines may decorate the herder’s path. He develops a talent with animals—horses, dogs and, of course, sheep—and feels at home with wildlife.
As a spot-welder in an automobile assembly plant the transplanted worker would stand on one spot pushing a button on a welding gun 12,000 times a day. Tremendous noise would rule out wool-gathering. On a night shift he still would likely lose much of his contact with family and friends. His redemption would be a good paycheck.
Admittedly, the change in jobs is conjecture. But in applying scientific knowledge to change the face of the work force, industry must fully consider job satisfaction, the quality of a major part of a worker’s life. In the case of the shepherd, standing under brilliant stars flashing in a blue canopy or standing with a flashing welding gun?
If the point is debatable, if the abolition of human need to herd sheep or to perform certain tasks in space has merit, please consider further. The ape-human would likely share our emotions. Frankenstein's monster did. He yearned for the love and sympathy of cottagers he observed in the German countryside. Airs played on a guitar were so entrancingly beautiful he shed tears of sorrow and delight. Should we enslave in any task the human spirit, even if it is breathed by such a creature? No. The spirit is still human, and we fought a war to end its subjection to slavery.
There were lighter contributions to the editorial page, take a kiss:
FROM WHAT A TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY professor tells us, the custom of kissing must belong to more civilized peoples. Vaughn M. Bryant Jr., the head of that school's Department of Anthropology, says kissing became a national craze in Roman times, "as commonplace as shaking hands." Among medieval knights, he said, the ability to kiss nicely was a sign of gentility.
But people on the South Seas island of Mangaia only recently learned about kissing. And some, such as West Africans in the mid-1800s, feared it, the professor said. Bryant believes kissing began with a misplaced nose rub in 1000-1200 B.C. in India, where a hob/ man wrote the world's first how-to manual centuries later. Ah, civilization?
And this editorial about a canoe...
A SINGLE JOURNEY WESTWARD from the center of his world ended on a prairie in Minnesota. But writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who traveled mostly in and about Concord, Mass., would have enjoyed Texas in the spring in a canoe. In the spring, more than 570 species of native grasses (out of 1,200 in the United States) and approximately 5,000 different native wildflowers burst anew upon the land. A canoe trip on New England's Concord and Merrimack rivers in 1830 inspired him to develop a natural philosophy. And 80,000 miles of streams, more navigable by canoe than power boat, flow mostly through rural Texas.
For those who wish a Thoreauean experience, many of the stated rivers and creeks will do. From the canyon walls of the Rio Grande at Big Bend to the white sand bars of Village Creek in the Big Thicket, and the white water of the Hill Country in between, the canoe will slice silently into a wondrous environment This year two canoeists and a small dog chose the Brazos River between Lake Whitney and Waco to welcome spring.
Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush already lined the route there. On the river, as the current assisted the paddlers with their pea pod of a vehicle, ducks and blue herons took flight. A warm sun penetrated six feet of clear water where schools of large fish swayed plants and turtles rested on a rock bottom. Springs flowed through thick ferns down a limestone bluff, while trees were greening on the opposite bank.
Read or listen to the rich history of a region, and the mind can see more than the eye. It can feel the presence of the Spanish who named the river, the Anglo-American pioneers in the 1800s who forded Spivey Crossing in wagons and plowed the fields of Smith Bend, the turn-of-the-century campers who left graffiti and the Indians whose garbage has become a dig.
This trip the Brazos canoeists basked in the first full calendar day of spring before a norther pushed through their camp. Winter was reluctant to die. But, as Thoreau said, the life that had lain torpid had begun to stretch itself.
DID YOU KNOW A L s o that Carlton Leatherwood wrote features from time to time?" "I read them, yes." "How were his features?" "Pleasant. An addition to the paper."
"In addition to being a full-time editorial writer, did you feel that he could be a full-time feature writer?"
"Oh, I don't see what we're aiming at, but I knew Carl; he wrote well. At that time I would have said that—"
"That he could be a writer?"
"Sure."
No doubt, she liked the piece on Southeast Texas writer and radio celebrity Gordon Baxter.
WHEN CHRYSLER CHIEF LEE IACOCCA, 61, married a former airline flight attendant twenty-six years his junior, I thought of Gordon Baxter.
Baxter, also in his seventh decade, is a writer and an institution in Beaumont radio—a teller of tales, he calls himself—whose much younger wife Diane flew for Braniff. His musings occasionally appear in the opinion section of The Post. The first years of the couple’s marriage and of their precocious daughter’s young life were spent in a cabin on Village Creek. That creek winds through the Big Thicket, a heavily wooded and ecologically mixed area north of Beaumont. Some of it has been preserved by the National Park Service.
 |
| Gordon Baxter is a writer and a radio celebrity in Beaumont |
Ever since I read Baxter's book, Village Creek, I had wanted to canoe by his cabin, maybe meet the man whose love affair with the stream runs a half century. Those fifteen acres in the Thicket have been his Walden, and it is always a pleasure to come in contact with a person close to nature.
Because the Thicket can easily shield a house from view on the creek, I abandoned the idea of canoeing to the cabin and instead drove over. The family has moved into town, to accommodate the accelerated education and people needs of Jenny, but returns to the cabin on weekends.
On the weekend of my visit, Baxter had repaired the leaks in two small pirogues in his home workshop and brought them back to the creek. A pirogue is a boat somewhat canoe-shaped and some are hollowed out of cypress logs. Baxter built these little eight-foot pirogues out of plywood for the two sons of his first family thirty years ago. After surviving repeated rammings in childhood war games on the water, "they had been kinda dormant over the years," Baxter said. Then Jenny became a good swimmer, and she cast her eyes on these pirogues like she was seeing them for the first time."
Jenny had dragged one into the water and impressed her dad with not rolling it over. "They are very tender—ten inches wide at the bottom—and she just sailed out," Baxter said. "She had picked up a big old awkward one-bladed paddle and still handled it OK." Today, Jenny pushed off in the repaired boat with a double-bladed paddle and without the problem of leaks, and her joy shone.
 |
| 8 year old Jennie Baxter glides through Village Creek in a pirogue |
Her dad discovered the joy of canoeing to and from this sand bar in his teens. He and a pal built a canvas boat in the 1930s and drove up to a Village Creek bridge from Port Arthur in a Model A.
"We would come up and launch into the creek and float down the creek, and this was about as far as you could go without getting tired and thirsty," Baxter said. "I would pull up on this sand bar and lie under that line of willows and just lust for the place."
In intervening years the sand bar, white quartz crystal stretching some 100 yards, and its attached woodland, have become a realized dream of Baxter’s youth.
Baxter suggested Jenny and I climb into an aluminum canoe with him to paddle around the sandbar and up a baygall on the property. A baygall is a swampy piece of land in the Thicket with a variety of trees, notably red bay, common bald cypress and May hawthorn. Once you see one, you feel swampland has gotten a bad rap—in truth it possesses an awesome, tranquil beauty. We didn't, however, make it to this one by canoe. "I thought the creek was high enough that we could canoe into the baygall, and it ain't," the creek romantic said. "It’s always changing. I didn't know this [a ridge of sand] was here. It wasn't here last year. This is this year’s surprise."
We sat and talked under the willows on the bank of the little eddy.
"That big blue bird that you saw, that’s the great blue heron." Baxter said. "We may be looking at her daughter, but a blue heron has been here as long as I've been here to notice the creatures. She lives back somewhere in the baygall and feeds from these sand bars."
The heron, to Baxter, is the Spirit of the Holy Ghost Thicket. "Archer Fullingim (the late publisher of the Kountze News) named this place the Holy Ghost Thicket because he said if you stay back in here long enough you begin to speak in tongues," Baxter explained. "Archer was one of the prime movers to save the Big Thicket, he and Sen. Ralph Yarborough. The people who lived here didn't want it to be a park. When the word got out that the world’s record magnolia tree was in the Big Thicket in Hardin County, a group of them went out at night and cut the thing down. The ivory-billed woodpecker was a favorite target of characters who wandered through the woods carrying something to shoot. They got them all down to where they were about extinct, and Archer began to publicize the fact Save the ivory bill woodpecker became his cry. One day one of his neighbors came in carrying his rifle in one hand and a dead ivory-billed woodpecker in the other and dropped it on Archer's desk. He said, ‘Is that what you've been looking for?' It was the first one Archer had ever seen and it was the last one and it was dead."
"I believe the creek will heal you," Baxter said. The clouds riding the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico closed together on the last rays of morning sunshine. "I've always suspected that there is such a combination of pollutants in the creek that it will shine the aluminum on your outboard motor and also heal minor cuts and wounds. I also vow that the creek heals my mind. I've walked the sand bar in all the ups and downs of my life, in the victories and the tragedies. I've walked the sand bar and cried out, 'Oh Lord, what do you want of me?’ The sand bar is the place for that; it is my sand-floored cathedral ... after a while you begin to know which way to go."
Jenny was between us listening attentively. We knew that for sure later when she asked what speaking in tongues was. Her father had sung and danced on the sand bar to pacify her as a baby. "She had the croup and the colic, and oh, she had a terrible time," Baxter said. "I would take Jenny in my arms—stiff, crying, and flailing her arms—in the middle of the night, and I would take her down the front steps of the cabin and out on the sand bar. We would walk in the moonlight, and I would hold her ear up against my heart so she could hear my heart beating. I walked in a slow, steady, rhythmic pace singing. If Jenny grows up and can remember all the old rabble songs, all of the barroom songs, all of the early day, foot-stomping, Baptist-come-to-Jesus revival songs ... I sang everything I knew to her, and she would grow warm and limp and quit crying ... Diane said it was self-defense that she would stop crying.
Later that afternoon, stopping near Kirbyville to buy juice of the fruit of the May hawthorn, I wished I had asked the Baxters for the recipe for mayhaw jelly. Local residents call the trees mayhaws, and Fullingim had given them his recipe. He had sent his jelly to the White House until he and President Lyndon Johnson got crossed up on politics, my host explained.
I didn't ask for the mayhaw recipe because I was mindful of Thicket mores as set down in Baxter’s purchase of his sand-bar property. He had mentioned to the owners he wanted to buy it, and ten years later they sold it to him. He asked them why they waited so long. "We wanted to wait a little and find out what kind of feller you are," they answered.
How long, Bax and Diane, for a recipe that will curl up your toes on the chair rungs and make your eyes water and your nose run and you will know that there is indeed a God in heaven in all his mystery?
DID you EVER OBSERVE Carl Leatherwood making big disruptions in the newsroom?" "No."
"Did you ever see him bring his dog into the newsroom?"
"No. Others brought their dogs."
"Pardon me?"
"I'll—if you want to bring a dog to the newsroom, I don't think there were any rules against it."
"Okay."
Kalmans: "Objection, Your Honor. That's obviously not responsive to any question."
The court: "All right."
Johnston: "Sorry."
"After you left The Post, did you continue writing?"
"Oh, yes."
"And are you an author now?"
"Yes."
"What is your book called?"
"Houston, the Unknown City: 1836 to 1946."
"Thank you for coming."
Kalmans stepped closer to the stand:
"Ms. Johnston, when did you leave the employment of The Houston Post?"
"January 1, 1985."
"All right, You have no personal knowledge of anything that went on at The Post after that date, do you?"
"No, none."
"Pass the witness."
JUDGE GIBSON: "The defense will call its first witness."
Bounds: "Your Honor, at this time we call Dr. Richard _ Pesikoff."
Bruce Coane, a lawyer for the plaintiff: "Your Honor, may we take this witness on voir dire?"
Gibson: "Why would you want to take him on voir dire?"
Coane: "Your Honor, this witness is being called as an expert witness. He does not have any information about relevant facts. It's our position that he is not a qualified expert to testify in this case. His expertise has nothing to do with the issues."
Gibson: "What is his expertise?"
Bounds: "Psychiatry with an expertise in manic and all emotional disorders."
Coane: "His resume as presented to us shows he's an expert in child psychiatry. It has nothing to do with this case."
Gibson: "I overrule the objection. I overrule your request to voir dire."
"Would you state your occupation, please?" Bounds asked.
"I'm an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. I'm in the private practice of adult and child psychiatry, serving about half adults and about half children and adolescents. I'm also a psychoanalyst."
"Okay. Have you ever done an actual examination of Carlton Leatherwood?"
"No, ma'am. I have not met him."
"Have you reviewed any record regarding Carlton Leatherwood?"
"Extensively."
"In what capacity are you here today, Dr. Pesikoff?"
"I was retained to review the records and give a medical opinion of everything I have read."
"How familiar are you with the disorder of manic depressive disorder?"
"Well, very much so."
"You have patients that have been diagnosed with that disorder?"
"Yes, I do. Many."
"Have there been any significant changes in the treatment of manic depressive disorder?"
"In the last few years, because we've had a number of patients who did not respond well to lithium, we've added some of the other drugs which were mainly for seizure disorders. Depakote and Tegretol are two that we use now with a lot more freedom. We try to mix them sometimes to get better results."
"And what does Depakote do?"
"Well, I don't think any of us truly knows what any of these drugs actually do. As a net result, they are given in order to stop the kind of up-and-down, up-and-down manic depressive episodes that these patients suffer with—the mechanism isn't real clear as to exactly how that happens because there isn't any naturally found lithium or Depakote in people's bodies."
"After having reviewed all these records, do you have an opinion about the general diagnosis of Carl Leatherwood?"
“Yes, I do."
"What is your opinion with regard to the general diagnosis of Carl Leatherwood?"
"I would agree with the diagnosis that I read in Dr. Ranjit Chacko's report from Methodist Hospital this last month. I think he has a bipolar illness. I think it's severe. It's been present for about seventeen years now, to the best of my figuring. It's been a terrible illness for him. I do think bipolar manic depressive illness is a proper diagnosis."
"You say that you think he has a severe case of this bipolar disorder. Has it always been severe?"
"I think it's been getting worse and worse. He started out, typically, like many patients do in their thirties, with his first episode. He’s had thirteen, I counted thirteen, hospitalizations up until this October. I may have missed one. That's a lot of hospitalizations in seventeen years. That's a pretty severe illness when you're in and out.
"And during that entire period, Mr. Leatherwood has had different degrees of contact with doctors. It's not like he hasn't gone for help. I mean, he's certainly tried to get help. And in spite of that, his illness is so malignant and so significant that it has continued—keeps breaking through. He has periods when he's okay, even some periods when he had a couple of years he was all right. Then he goes down and down and down. It has an unfortunate downward course and it's not been possible—I've read all his records—for us to stop that in the state of medical science today."
"Based upon your expertise, do you have an opinion about the general course of treatment that's been given to Carl Leatherwood?"
"I think it's been—he went through a series of different diagnoses. I don't think he got on to lithium until the '80s. I think that was fortunate. At least it appeared to be a fortunate breakthrough for him, but even that hasn't really helped. I think his illness has continued to be a severe illness that's been downwardly focused. Maybe his symptoms have changed, according to the chart, but there's certainly little doubt in my mind that it's a manic depressive illness at this point."
"Is there some point in Mr. Leatherwood's course of this illness that you believe he has started his downward approach that you're talking about or has it always been downward?"
"The first, I guess, twelve years, thirteen years, he had eight or nine hospitalizations. It's always been a severe illness for him. And as I read his symptoms, he had these terribly psychotic episodes where he would become very confused, lose his contact with reality, and need to be in a hospital for a period of time, and that has continued up until the present."
"Is that unusual for that type of course to be taken for this type of illness?"
"Unfortunately, that's not unusual at all."
"But there are people who have bipolar disorder who don't have this spiraling down; is that correct?"
"Thank goodness. Most of the patients that we have who are manic depressives have, let's say, a mild or a medium severity of this disorder. And they may have one or two hospitalizations where we really do pick up on it and they may go years without any problems. There are a lot of factors which influence whether or not you're going to be a pretty good patient. Some of it's biological. Some has to do with your support system, you know, your husband, wife, kids, things like that, the kind of job you do and so forth. But most patients, if they take their medicine, if they're complying patients, if their illness
doesn't interfere with their ability to know they need their medicine, have a milder course than Mr. Leatherwood has had."
"But in your opinion, Mr. Leatherwood is not in this category of mild?"
"No, he's not. He's not for a number of reasons. He's had too many episodes, very severe illnesses. And one of the worst things about his illness is that when he starts getting ill, he believes he doesn't need his medicine. Of course, at that point, he stops his lithium. You can read his records. He comes into the hospital with almost no lithium in his blood system, which tells you he's stopped his medicine. Of course, then it just gets worse and worse."
"Specifically, I'd like to turn your attention to the fall of 1988. Are you familiar with the hospitalization that Mr. Leatherwood had in December of 1988?"
"Yes, I am."
"He was hospitalized in the middle of December 1988; is that correct? Is that your understanding?"
"Yes, it is."
"Do you have an opinion about when this episode actually began?"
"From the best I can read, it was building up for a couple of months before—September-October. That's what is referenced in the various notes in the chart."
"Is there any significance to the fact that Carl Leatherwood was involuntarily hospitalized for the first time in this particular episode in 1988?"
"It speaks to what I'm saying. The fact that the illness is getting worse, his ability to see himself is deteriorating. He's already, at that point, out of contact with reality. You can't reason with him. You can't just say, Carl, you're not doing well; you've got to go in the hospital. He can't hear you. My patients tell me when they are in that state, Dr. Pesikoff, I can't hear you. I can't reason with you. You don't make any sense to me. I don't see anything wrong with me.
"So you would, therefore, need to go to the authorities, down to probate court, get a court order, and have the patient picked up and involuntarily confined. That would be indicative of a worsening of his illness and a loss of insight into his illness."
"In your opinion, was this episode more severe than the previous episodes he had?"
"It seemed to be more so, yes."
"Based upon that, would this episode have been perceived by other people around Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Absolutely."
"At what point in an episode such as this does a patient lose their ability to reason or have judgment?"
"In severe versions of manic depressive illness, the window of opportunity, to use a familiar phrase, for a number of my severe patients, is one to two days. And they call me—they say, I was up all night, I'm pacing, we've got to do something. That's that one or two days. I get their husband or wife—I'm just thinking of a lady in particular—down to my office. We get a lithium blood test that day and we start to pump in more medication and try to avoid—I'm not always successful in keeping this kind of patient out of the hospital."
"If the patient is not able of their own accord to notice that there's a beginning of a problem or if they don't have someone around like a husband or a wife who lives with them and notices those sorts of things, what is the possibility that you're going to catch them within that window?"
"Negligible. I can't even catch them with husbands and wives overseeing them. And if you have nobody watching you, that day or two or three, that window just passes by without anything happening and then you're in the midst of that bizarre psychotic period."
"What if a person is employed, could their coworkers be expected to notice that window?"
"I think that's asking an awful lot. I can't even pick it up sometimes. It can flash by. It can happen over a weekend. There's no way. Yes, on occasion, I think you might say something to a fellow employee if they were acting weirdly, yes; but, I mean, as a routine, by the time you try to convince them to go somewhere, that's a very, very unrealistic proposition."
"Mr. Leatherwood returned to work in January of 1989. In Defendant's Exhibit No. 3, there are several pages of Dr. Blackburn's notes following that hospitalization that December. On page 40, could you tell us what you find?"
"1/14/89 shows that he's taking lithium carbonate, 300 milligrams, two tablets twice a day. That's 600 milligrams twice a day for a total of 1200 milligrams. That would be a reasonable dosage of medication."
"Do those notes indicate any problems that Mr. Leatherwood is having?"
"Personally, there's something about parents—some kind of interpersonal conflict between girl friend and his parents and Mr. Leatherwood."
"Throughout these notes, there is again a note dated January 28th where there was a session. February 11th of '89, there was a session. February 25th of '89, there was a session. March 11th. Do you notice in these notes of Dr. Blackburn's anything of particular concern for you with regard to Mr. Leatherwood's condition?"
"Yes. You can watch the quality of the notes change as you get to March llth. I highlighted my series of notes in the middle. It says paranoia recurs, suspicious that some of the stories had been formulated. So Dr. Blackburn in March of that year is writing in his records that once again he's picking up that paranoia in Mr. Leatherwood. And, of course, paranoia is one of Mr. Leatherwood's major psychotic symptoms when he's ill. He's very paranoid. And so it's already there in the March office notes of his physician."
"Based upon your review of his hospitalizations and his conditions this time, do you have an opinion about Mr. Leatherwood's condition during this period of time?"
"I think he's continued to be ill. He has never recovered fully from this severe episode, and by March of 1989, he once again is back in a paranoid state. So it's one long, continuous downward illness with a drop of some recovery and then it's down again and he's falling again."
"In looking at these records, is it your opinion that Mr. Leatherwood in the past had been able to recover a relatively acceptable degree of stability?"
"I guess it depends on what kind of job you're talking about. My understanding is that because of his illness, The Post created a position for him in the '80s so that he could remain with the corporation, so that while he couldn't go back after a few of these hospitalizations, they did try to keep him and they made a new job to fit him. But by '89 after years of this illness, it doesn't appear that he could maintain himself even for a couple of months now without again becoming psychotic."
"Mr. Leatherwood was hospitalized again in June of 1989; is that correct?"
"Yes, it is."
"Do you have an opinion as to when this episode that resulted in the hospitalization in June of '89 began?"
"In December of '88, probably in September or October of '88. It sounds like one long, downward spiral, like a stock that's dropping, then has some little upticks and then drops again. I think he was in the course of a malignant portion of his illness, a tragic kind of illness, and they stopped it for a while in December; but, unfortunately, his health doesn't always respond the way we want it to, and it resumed its downward spiral soon after the hospitalization of December of'88."
"Dr. Blackburn's records reflect a change in Mr. Leatherwood's medication on June 3rd. Could you tell us what the purpose of that change in medication may have been?"
"Dr. Blackburn must have been picking up what we're seeing because he wanted to use one of the major tranquilizers. He was adding Mellaril, which is like Thorazine, Prolixin. And in his notes, he writes, hypomanic episode, meaning that the man is on the cusp already now of a major manic episode."
"How does a manic depressive disorder affect a patient's judgment?"
"Terribly. Terribly. I mean, it's a horrible illness. When you are psychotic, your judgment is centered around your bizarre thinking. So in the midst of the full-blown episode, you don't have any kind of judgment to be a doctor, a lawyer or anybody, a newspaper man.
"During the periods when you're shy of that full-blown illness but you're in a hypomanic state, your judgment is impaired. You rush things. Your speech is pressured. You have trouble sitting still. You have trouble concentrating. You're agitated. You're very irritable. You don't sleep at night."
"Dr. Blackburn wrote a letter on June 29th releasing Mr. Leatherwood to return to his normal duties immediately. Have you read that letter?"
"Yes, I have."
"Do you have an opinion as to whether or not Mr. Leatherwood should have been returned to work in June of 1989? If so, could you please tell the court what it is?"
"I think this is a well-meaning letter, but it is a very misleading letter. I don't think Mr. Leatherwood was anywhere capable of working. I don't know Dr. Blackburn's motivation for writing it other than trying to be nice maybe to his patient; but, A, the man did not have a hypomanic mood shift. He had a manic episode. You don't hospitalize hypomanic disorders—at the price hospitals charge for full-blown manic episodes. This man in no way has recovered from his illness.
"There's nothing in the notes that indicate anything that tells me that he is able to go back to work. Usually what you do with patients who've had severe illnesses is you give them a chance to recuperate. I don't care whether it's a broken leg, a hysterectomy, or psychotic episode, you know. You give people a week or two or three to go home and try to collect themselves."
"Following the writing of this letter on June 29th, Dr. Blackburn wrote a letter on August 11th. I believe you have it.
"That letter, according to Dr. Blackburn's testimony, was written to aid Mr. Leatherwood in obtaining various benefits. That letter indicates, I believe, about the middle of the second paragraph that Mr. Leatherwood is not in his opinion able to continue with his regular occupation. Is that a correct paraphrase of the letter?"
"Yes. He writes, 'Because of these unpredictable episodes and the necessity of hospitalization, I cannot say that Mr. Leatherwood would be able to perform the material duties of his occupation with a reasonable continuity.'"
"Do you think that's a major shift in opinion from the June 29 letter?"
"This is my opinion of Mr. Leatherwood. I agree with his opinion. It's a 180-degree change in direction from everything else that's been written by his physician. I mean, he writes he is disabled with respect to his performance. I agree with Dr. Blackburn. I think the man was disabled for a long time."
"Do you find anything in Carl Leatherwood's medical records to establish any basis for this 180-degree change by Dr. Blackburn in a period of six weeks?"
"No."
"And in November, Mr. Leatherwood was hospitalized again; is that correct?"
"November 1989, that is correct."
"Dr. Blackburn has in his records prior to that hospitalization, a statement that he had received numerous phone calls over a period of about a month from friends and family and others regarding Mr. Leatherwood's condition. Is that unusual to receive those types of phone calls?"
"No, it's not unusual. If you have a couple of friends or wife or kids who are current with you, you may get calls from concerned people telling you that their friend or their spouse is ill. I mean, that certainly happens in my practice."
"If you'd received calls from people such as this, but then you had had a visit with your patient and you did not observe any obvious delusions or hyperactivity or loud behavior, would you dismiss the calls and decide that you were the more competent person to decide about their emotional stability?"
"I think that's naive. I think you see them maybe fifteen minutes or half an hour every month and these people either work with them or live with them and know them and see them all the time in a noncontrolled environment. I don't think you can ignore—what I do is I ask them to come in. I also have them call my nurse, usually, every single day when in the middle of one of these episodes. I usually believe the people who are calling because there's no reason for them to lie to me. Why would they call a psychiatrist and lie to them? These people who are ill slide right out from your hands like mercury. You really have to hold on tight. It's a real challenging piece of work for a physician to do. And if it's looking more and more to me like we're going to end up having to hospitalize this patient, maybe get them in a little bit sooner so they don't end up in one of these severe psychotic episodes."
"If, as in the case of Mr. Leatherwood, the course of treatment is a little bit less controlled than you tend to treat your patients, can the people around them be expected to control Mr. Leatherwood?"
"Don't be misled, even by the fact that I ride tight rein on my patients, I can't always control them. I have patients who I do my very best to control who end up in the hospital. I think the illness is stronger than me, my nurse."
"November 22, 1989, Dr. Blackburn wrote another letter, this time to the Social Security Administration. In that letter, he writes that Mr. Leatherwood has been mostly seriously disabled since September of 1988. Do you agree with this assessment?"
"Yes, I really believe that that is the truth. I think he did in fact write the truth, that the man had been severely disabled since the fall of the previous year, yes. It goes on to say, you know, he was restless, hyperactive, sleepless at times, psychotic, delusional—I think that's all true."
"Based upon your understanding of his job and your understanding of Mr. Leatherwood's condition in 1989, did his condition impair his ability to perform that job?"
"Absolutely."
"Pass the witness, Your Honor."
Witness: "I could get a little water?"
Judge: "Yes."
Coane stepped forward: "Would you like to proceed, Doctor, or would you want to wait for the water?"
"I think we can go on."
"Okay. Doctor, so in your opinion—well, let me ask you this: Is it your understanding that Carl wants to return to work?"
"That's been his position, as best I understand it, that he's wanted to work, yes."
"Okay. And despite his desire to work, it's your opinion that Carl Leatherwood cannot return to work; is that right?"
"Are you talking about at The Houston Post?"
"Let's start with The Post. Yes, at The Post."
"Yes, that's correct,"
"Have you read any of his writing?"
"I've read all his works. All the ones that were in the addendum to the deposition."
"Did you find in reviewing those articles that there was any evidence in there that he was delusional or paranoid or manic?"
"No."
"So in the periods where he's not delusional, paranoid, or manic, you would agree that he can probably perform his job?"
Bounds: "Objection, Your Honor. What he's discussing is writing articles on his free time, not what his job was at The Post."
Judge: "Let the witness do the responding."
"Given the circumstances that you're describing of writing ad-lib articles, I guess, casually with no pressure, no time limits, yes, I think he can probably still write. I hope he can."
"Doctor, at some point in this lawsuit, I was given a copy of your curriculum vitae. Just so we're clear on this, you don't claim to be an expert in the newspaper business; is that correct?"
"That's correct."
"If you had to name one area of expertise in your practice of psychiatry, what would that be?"
"Would be very difficult because I have about three or four areas where I specialize."
"Right. And child psychiatry is one of them?"
"Oh, absolutely. Child psychiatry, adult psychiatry. I'm a board certified adult psychiatrist. I'm a general psychiatrist. I was chief of one of the hospitals for three years. I write on issues of custody in the law. There are a number of areas."
"If you'll glance at your curriculum vitae that you have in front of you there, would you agree that the bulk of your major educational and research interests are in child psychiatry, at least according to your curriculum vitae?"
"I get tapped at Baylor to teach that because there are much fewer child psychiatrists and I often do the TV and public relations work for Baylor because we don't have a lot of child-adolescent psychiatrists, so a lot of my presentations are on child and adolescent. But the six years I spent at the Psychoanalytic Institute, Houston-Galveston Institute, was all adult.
"Let's look at the major educational and research interests on your curriculum vitae. You listed five of them. Would you read them to the jury, please?"
"Adolescence and drug abuse, children and divorce, psychiatry and the law, psychological growth and development in childhood and adolescence, and sleeping disorders in children."
"Thank you. Also on your curriculum vitae here, I count about eight pages of publication, speeches, and lectures that you've given. And would you agree that most, if not all of these, have dealt with child or family psychiatry?"
"Yes, I would."
"You don't have any complaints with Dr. Blackburn's treatment of Mr. Leatherwood, do you?"
"I think I would have kept a tighter reign on Mr. Leatherwood in terms of some of those phone calls that came in. I think I probably would have tried to verify those. I would have probably asked the patient to keep in closer contact with me, rather than every three weeks since he's had such a severe history. And, of course, I am very confused by the variety of the notes and letters that Dr. Blackburn wrote. Otherwise, he had the medications, I think, the ones I would have used. I would agree with most of the other treatment."
"You used the word earlier when Ms. Bounds was questioning you 'disability.' Are you referring to manic depression as being a disability, or bipolar disorder, whatever y'all call it now?"
"Sure. I would call any mental or emotional illness a disability, be disabling, as I think it was here."
"Okay. From your understanding of the case, from 1976 until at least that episode in 1988 that led to his hospitalization, Mr. Leather-wood was able to perform the duties of his job unless he was having an episode; is that right?"
"That's my understanding, yes."
"Okay. So throughout that time, just to make sure we're clear on this, throughout the time of 1976 to 1988, it's your understanding that Mr. Leatherwood had a disability of manic depression, correct?"
"It wasn't really diagnosed that way in the earlier papers. To be fair to those doctors, they didn't call it manic depression. I don't want to change history. They called it schizophrenia, then they called it schizo-affective disorder, then it evolved to manic depressive. If I could change your words and say that he had a major psychiatric illness, diagnosis shifting, but, yes, I would agree to that land of phraseology."
"Okay. Did you ever notice in Dr. Blackburn's notes any comments about work or employment being therapeutic for Mr. Leather-wood?"
"I think he made reference to the fact that that was one area that Mr. Leatherwood actually was drawn to and it was one of his areas of strength, something he derived satisfaction from."
"Would your reading also indicate that the termination was a very distressful thing for Mr. Leatherwood?"
"I certainly agree that to have to be let go from a job is always very distressful, yes."
"Is it particularly distressful for someone in Mr. Leatherwood's mental condition, as you understand it?"
Bounds: "Objection, Your Honor. He's—"
The court: "Overrule the objection."
"I think he's a more sensitive person because he has this illness, and I would agree with that."
"Do you think that some day- in your opinion, do you think some day he could return to a job as a newspaper writer at a major newspaper?"
"I have a crystal ball in my office which I turn to in moments like this. No, I don't really think so. But I think a less stressful job, something that used his intellect and his writing skills, maybe he could do something with it. I would hope so."
"Sir, you're being paid to testify here today?"
"No. I'm being paid for my time and that is all that I have to sell, and I sell my time and my expertise."
"What do you sell your time for?"
"I get $300 an hour when I do this kind of work."
"Your diagnosis of Mr. Leatherwood is bipolar illness, chronic-severe with multiple episodes. Is it really ever possible for anyone with that diagnosis to work in any type of job."
"Sometimes, yes. It's not easy. The general course of those severe versions makes it really hard to do that. You know, if you had a job where you could do it at your own pace and didn't have any time lines and the conditions were ideal, some of the time he might be able to work, yes. I don't want to say that he couldn't work at something sometimes."
"Are you saying that even today he has never recovered from that severe episode of 1988?"
"The answer is I think he's had up and down, up and down—what has occurred has been going down. I think he's probably lucid now, although that's a guess. Dr. Chacko, his present doctor, is a good doctor. I know him. He's getting good care. I'm glad he is at Methodist with Dr. Chacko. He's on a different medical regimen. He's on val-proic acid and lithium now, which is a good mixture. And it looks good. I mean, I can only tell you that for the moment at least—that doesn't tell me—it's three weeks since he was in the hospital, so I'm not good enough about prognosticating. And I'm hopeful that maybe we've gotten a handle on it, but, I mean, that's my medical school talking. I wouldn't stress a job or anything like that right this minute, but he looks lucid to me."
"Do you have any reason to doubt that he enjoys the job of a writer and editor?"
"I think he loves writing. He wouldn't have worked for a newspaper all these years if he didn't love that."
"Do different writing jobs at The Post have different deadline requirements?"
"That's my understanding. I've worked with a number of reporters who've done investigative kinds of work, and they'll take months to put together stories. And then you have people who write about hurricanes and that's real on-the-spot stuff. The answer is yes."
Bounds returned to take up the questioning:
"Dr. Blackburn, have the effects of Mr. Leatherwood's mental illness—"
"Dr. Pesikoff."
"Sorry. I'm so busy listening to everybody talk about—Dr. Pesikoff, I will represent to you that Dr. Blackburn has testified that the reason for the difference between the two letters that you have a problem with, that being the June 29th letter and the August 11th letter from 1989, was his recognition of a severe depression in Carl Leatherwood. Did you find any evidence in Dr. Blackburn's records
of such a depression?"
"There's no mention in the notes of any severe depression."
"Is that something that you think a prudent doctor would have written in the notes if it had occurred?"
"I think if he had thought of it, he would have written it down, yes."
"Dr. Pesikoff, do you have an opinion as to whether or not Dr.
Blackburn did Mr. Leatherwood and The Post a good service?"
"I think he made it very confusing for The Houston Post and Mr.
Leatherwood by writing different letters at different times containing
different information so that it confused The Post, it confused Mr.
Leatherwood, and made it impossible for anybody to get an accurate
picture of his illness."
The court: "The witness is excused."
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