Judith Walters suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that could make her vulnerable to coercion, a forensic psychologist testified Wednesday.
Dr. Mary Ann Dutton, a faculty member at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who evaluated Walters in the early 1990s at the request of attorneys representing John Francis Wille, said Walters developed the condition after enduring sexual abuse as a child and as an adult.
Dutton said Walters' condition worsened after a 1985 interrogation at the hands of authorities investigating the murders of 8-year-old Nichole Lopatta and hitchhiker Billy Phillips.
Wille and Walters were arrested in Milton, Fla., in August 1985, two months after the bodies of the two victims were discovered in woods north of LaPlace.
Walters and Wille confessed to the crimes during three weeks of questioning. The next year, a St. John the Baptist Parish jury convicted Wille of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. In a separate trial, Walters was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
The two are back in the St. John Parish Courthouse in Edgard this week. Their attorneys -- Denise LeBoeuf, Nick Trenticosta and Robert Pastor -- are trying to persuade state District Judge Remy Chiasson to overturn their convictions.
The defense team alleges that investigators coerced Wille and Walters into making false confessions, that prosecutors withheld evidence that would have aided their defense, and that each had incompetent legal counsel.
But Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen, representing the state, contends that Wille and Walters freely gave their confessions and are guilty.
On Wednesday, Wille's attorneys tried to show through Dutton's testimony that Walters was the type of person who, if pressured, might confess to something she didn't do.
But Cullen argued that Chiasson should consider only the defense's argument that the police violated Wille's and Walters' constitutional rights in obtaining the confessions, not what Walters' mental condition might have been at the time.
Chiasson overruled Cullen's objections and allowed the testimony.
Dutton said that Walters described recurring nightmares filled with "images of dead babies." Walters said the images came from photographs of the Lopatta murder scene that she was shown repeatedly by investigators.
Walters also told Dutton she had been repeatedly sexually abused as a child, and then by her husband, Vondell Walters, Dutton said.
Dutton said that people who are abused often develop "coping mechanisms" -- such as giving in to the demands of their abuser -- to ease the abuse.
On cross-examination, Cullen suggested that perhaps Walters was traumatized by images of dead babies because she took part in Lopatta's murder, not because she saw pictures of the crime scene.
"You're saying she's suffering more post-traumatic stress disorder from her three weeks of interrogation in Santa Rosa County than from a lifetime of sexual abuse?" Cullen asked Dutton.
Cullen also implied that Walters had exaggerated the trauma she suffered at the hands of investigators, and noted that Walters told Dutton she had been raped and beaten by investigators while in jail, claims that have never been substantiated.
Later Wednesday, the defense team introduced two expert witnesses from London.
Dr. Gisli Gudjonsson, a forensic psychologist, and Dr. James MacKeith, a forensic psychiatrist, specialize in the analysis of disputed confessions.
Both have evaluated the reliability of confessions in a variety of high-profile cases in the United Kingdom, in some cases testifying at the request of prosecutors and in other cases for the defense.
In one case discussed Wednesday, the "Birmingham Six" were accused of killing 21 people in a bombing on behalf of the Irish Republican Army.
Four of the six confessed and spent 15 years in jail. But they were released in 1990 after Gudjonsson and MacKeith testified that the confessions were unreliable.
The two gave no substantive testimony Wednesday.
Cullen filed a motion seeking to exclude or limit their testimony, saying it goes beyond the scope of the hearing.
But Wille's attorneys argue that the testimony Gudjonsson and MacKeith will offer is the sort of testimony that should have been presented at Wille's and Walters' original trials and is therefore appropriate.
Chiasson will rule on the motion when the hearing resumes today.
09/28/00