Kirkland v. State

• Decision Date: 03 May 1983
• Docket Number: 65989,Nos. 65988,s. 65988
• Citation: 304 S.E.2d 561,166 Ga.App. 478
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals
• Parties: KIRKLAND v. The STATE (Two cases)

Page 561

304 S.E.2d 561

166 Ga.App. 478

KIRKLAND v. The STATE (Two cases)

Nos. 65988, 65989.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

May 3, 1983.

Charles B. Merrill, Jr., Swainsboro, for appellant.

Richard A. Malone, Dist. Atty., for appellee.

BIRDSONG, Judge.

In June and August 1981, Phyllis Sharon Kirkland committed bank robberies in both Toombs and Emanuel Counties. Her method was virtually the same in each case: wearing a dark wig, large sunglasses, and jogging suit, she entered the banks when they were empty of customers, and, after pretending to want a money order, obtained large sums of money from the employees by brandishing a 9mm automatic pistol. In the Emanuel County bank, she told the employees that two men with machine guns awaited her outside; she made as if to spray the women with mace but relented after the women pleaded with her. In Toombs County, she told the bank employees her husband awaited her outside with a machine gun. She was seen leaving the Emanuel County bank in a black Cadillac with dark tinted windows. The police soon captured her several miles outside Swainsboro. In the car with her were her two small children and the money from the robbery.

For the next three or four hours, she was rational and, except for the "normal" upset of anyone just arrested for bank robbery, was calm. She intelligently and rationally waived presence of counsel at that point and freely confessed to the crime. She accompanied the sheriff to various places in Swainsboro where she had thrown out or hidden her wig and other disguises. She also confessed to the Toombs County bank robbery. She stated: "That morning, I woke up. Something spoke to me and told me what to do. Bob and I were in debt about twenty thousand dollars.... I do not know exactly how much money I got. When I went to the bank in Vidalia [Toombs County], there were two women in the bank. I robbed only one of the women. There was a black man in the bank that worked there. I threw away the wig I was wearing and the jumpsuit. I was driving my same car, my Cadillac. I spent about two thousand, I don't know what that word is, bills. I think I got nine thousand dollars. I think there is fifteen hundred dollars at my house in the chimney. I was in Knoxville, Tennessee. I went to a nightclub and someone stole a lot of the money. My husband, Bobby, knows where the money is at in the chimney. The money was in a shoebox underneath the seat. We picked up a young white boy and he stole the money. When I went to the bank in Vidalia, I was wearing my sweatsuit. My girlfriend's name is Wanda Collins. She lives in Jellico, Tennessee. I stayed in Tennessee six weeks. Gary Collins from Tennessee should be at my house. My husband got Gary a job where he works at.... I got two thousand dollars in a savings account at the First National Bank in Vidalia...." Appellant then accompanied the officers to her house, where she asked her husband, "Bobby, what did you do with [the money from the Vidalia robbery]?"; he retrieved it from under the front seat of their truck.

Appellant was tried without jury, by the same trial judge in both counties. The Emanuel County record containing extensive psychiatric testimony was consolidated in the Toombs County trial. Identical verdicts with findings of fact and conclusions of law were rendered.

There is no dispute that appellant committed the bank robberies. But Phyllis Sharon Kirkland contended, and the trial judge found, that she "has a multiple personality [disorder] which has been properly diagnosed as psychogenic fugue." Appellant pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the trial court retrospectively applied OCGA § 17-7-131 (Code Ann. § 27-1503) (effective July 1, 1982) and found the appellant "guilty but mentally ill."

On appeal, Phyllis Sharon Kirkland contends that the verdict is contrary to the evidence and the law; and that the trial court erred in failing to find appellant "not guilty by reason of insanity" through misapplication of the law and in contravention with the overwhelming and uncontradicted expert testimony. She also contends the trial court erred in ex post facto applying the 1982 "guilty but mentally ill" statute to the 1981 offenses. Held:

1. This appeal presents, in one instance, two issues taxing the outer limits of criminal law and psychiatric science. The undisputed psychiatric testimony describes appellant as having a disorder called psychogenic fugue, which is so like the "multiple personality" disorder that the doctors could only with great difficulty explain the difference, or even say there is a clear difference. In the facts of this case, the purported fugal personality, "Bad Sharon," is a well-developed, rational and conscious personality, so for legal purposes we will not distinguish them.

The conditions of multiple personality and its less refined cousin, psychogenic fugue, are extremely rare and certainly not fully understood nor perhaps fully accepted even by psychiatry. In general, the affected individual unconsciously "develops" alternate personalities to deal with trauma (e.g., child or sexual abuse) that the individual otherwise cannot endure. The alternate personalities are separate identities with highly individualized traits, behavior patterns, and complex social activities, even to the point of possessing different family histories, different ages, or even different nationalities. When faced with stressful situations, the individual may be dominated by one or more separate personalities; the "core" individual most often has no knowledge of the existence of any other personalities, but may sometimes hear "voices" and will "lose time." She may wake up in a strange city thousands of miles from home, and find herself in possession of unfamiliar and uncharacteristic clothing and objects. The "core" personality has no control over the personality which is in domination, or consciousness; the transition to the alternate is involuntary and unknowing; she has no memory of what the other personality does. The alternate personality may stay in control for hours, months or years. A particular alternate personality may be, and often is, as its raison d'etre, a well-developed and complete personality in itself, rational and quite functional. Naturally the core personality stays often confused, and may even ultimately abdicate altogether in favor of another (or a platoon of others) who will separately function in society to the limit of their respective abilities.

We have surveyed the case law and, as far as we can ascertain, the question of criminal accountability of the multiple personality has heretofore been addressed only once, in 1982 in Ohio v. Grimsley, 3 Ohio App.3d 65, 444 N.E.2d 1071. There, the Ohio court concluded without elaboration: "There was only one person driving the car and only one person accused of drunken driving. It is immaterial whether she was in one state of consciousness or another, so long as in the personality then controlling her behavior, she was conscious and her actions were a product of her own volition.... [We find no merit in the claim that] the court erred in finding that she failed to establish her defense of insanity, because the uncontroverted evidence was that her primary personality (Robin) was not conscious of the wrongfulness of the secondary personality's (Jennifer's) acts and did not have the ability to cause that personality to refrain from driving while drunk.... The evidence fails to establish ... that Ms. Grimsley's mental disorder had so impaired her reason that she, as Robin or as Jennifer or as both, either did not know that her drunken driving was wrong or did not have the ability to refrain from driving while drunk." (444 N.E.2d pp. 1075-1076).

The law adjudges criminal...