Elizabeth Smart Trial Update: Defense Rests After Psychologist Labels Brian David Mitchell's Beliefs "Bizarre"
SALT LAKE CITY (CBS/AP) Brian David Mitchell, currently on trial for the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart from her Salt Lake City home, is a paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is the "Davidic King" and will rise up to fight and defeat the anti-Christ at the end of the world, according to a prison psychologist who testified just before the defense rested its case Thursday.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Richart DeMier was ordered by a court to evaluate Mitchell at a prison hospital in 2008 and determine if he was competent to stand trial. DeMier diagnosed Mitchell as a paranoid schizophrenic.
DeMier said he based his diagnosis on Mitchell's specific, grandiose religious delusions after reviewing thousands of pages of court and medical records, other evaluations of Mitchell, and taped interviews of Smart after she was found.
DeMier testified that the notion that Mitchell would fight the anti-Christ and be the Davidic King is a belief that "no one else shared ... that is why I came to the conclusion [that it was] bizarre," the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
"If I had interpreted [his beliefs] as non-bizarre, I probably would have concluded the diagnosis of delusional disorder," DeMier added, according to the paper.
DeMier told jurors an assessment done four decades ago as part of a juvenile court referral found Mitchell was pre-psychotic at the age of 16.
By the 1990s, he was married with a job and was a leader at his Mormon church when something triggered a change, the psychologist said.
"Within a very short time he abandons his job, is rejected by his family, is rejected by his church, starts wearing robes that he calls 'garments of humility,' stops paying bills and starts living in the woods," said DeMier, who works for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Prosecutors are expected to spend the next few days calling rebuttal witnesses before the case gets turned over to the jury on Dec. 10.
One of those witnesses is expected to be Dr. Michael Welner, a New York forensic psychiatrist who concluded in 2009 that Mitchell was faking mental illness to avoid prosecution, also known as malingering.
DeMier was asked on cross-examination by prosecutors whether he considered that Mitchell was faking his delusions. DeMier testified that he considered the possibility initially but quickly rejected it.
"I think it's abhorrent to him, the idea that he's mentally ill...he rejects that," DeMier said, adding that accepting a diagnosis of mental illness would also invalidate Mitchell's belief system.
"He would probably consider it greatly offensive to God to abandon his beliefs," DeMier said.
Defense attorneys don't dispute that Smart, then 14 years old, was taken from her home at knifepoint on June 5, 2002, and recovered nine months later on March 12, 2003. But they've tried to build an insanity defense, claiming Mitchell is mentally ill and can't be held responsible.
Now, 23, she has testified that she was forced to enter a polygamous marriage with Mitchell, endured near daily rapes, was forced to use drugs and alcohol, and was taken to California against her will.
As he has been every day of the trial so far, Mitchell was removed from court Thursday after spending more than 20 minutes singing Christmas carols. He watched the trial from a holding cell elsewhere in the courthouse.
COMPLETE COVERAGE OF ELIZABETH SMART ON CRIMESIDER
