ayres Competency Hearing Redux (again)

TODAY, October 26, 2012 william hamilton ayres was in court for his latest competency hearing. This is to be a hearing or trial in front of Judge Grandsaert, and was expected to last about two weeks. There is no jury, only presentation of reports and expert witnesses in front of the judge. The pervert child molester's defense attorney has stated that he will be taking the stand as well, to testify about his observations and alleged statements attributed to him in the Napa State hospital reports.

Recap of this morning's events:


These notes are an as-told-to, and will therefore be somewhat brief (to keep the observer from killing me with my incessant questions and clarifications.)

In the Courtroom: 

The usual group of ayres-turbators are there:  Barbara “Stand still and look stupid” Ayres, the Slattern, Fake Blind Hat Guy, and Granola Hippy-Dippy-Shit Chick.  Robert is still back in Chicago directing bad plays or something. (Hey, pipe down, all you Sonepar USA freaks!)

The child molester has two lawyers representing him: Jonathan McDougall, ayres' regular Shyster, as well as Josh Bentley, who is doing most of the questioning so far. McDougall will be taking the stand, and so Bentley was added to the team to "deepen the scum."

General Background for this morning’s commentary:

Activities at this morning’s hearing, or trial, in front of Judge Grandsaert (not a jury trial) revolved around two of the defense’s witnesses, both of them doctors from Napa State Hospital. Both make statements that ayres is NOT competent to defend himself at trial.

According to discussion in the courtroom this morning, Napa State is in the process of re-vamping some of the policy and procedure relating to the way evaluations are done and reported. Apparently there is some feeling that clinical evaluators can become closer and more sympathetic to the people they are evaluating, and in order to maintain some objectivity, clinical and forensic evaluators are being more compartmentalized with forensic evaluators having less regular contact with patients to help maintain a subjective view.

Reports coming from the institution now are reviewed by more than one doctor (a committee?) rather than just being released directly from any one doctor to anyone outside the institution as apparently happened in the past.   These changes are not due to the ayres situation, but they DO come into play in today’s testimony.

As the hearing started, the prosecutor asked if any member of the Attorney General’s office was present, and then mentioned an executive order to seal the personnel records of the Napa Staff.


On the Stand Today:

The two staff clinical psychologists on the stand today were Dr. Knoblauch and Dr. Sutherland. They were questioned by both the defense shyster and Prosecutor McKowan.

Before the testimony started, Knoblauch approached ayres family  in a friendly manner, seemingly apologetic in his statement to them that he didn't think that "it was going to take all this time.” (Bias much?)

Knoblauch apparently seemed very convinced that ayres is not competent to defend himself, and he apparently felt  that ayres should not have been sent to Napa State to begin with.  Knoblauch met with ayres every day for the time that he was there, sometimes several times a day, but it was noted that he did not take DAILY notes, as (I guess) is customarily the case, instead his notes are sporadic and he filed only a few official reports / monthly reports.

Knoblauch was asked if he knew ayres prior to his incarceration at Napa, and he stated that he did not, but knew someone in San Mateo who knew him fairly well.

Knoblauch feels that ayres has trouble organizing his thoughts. He didn't at any time feel that ayres was faking his dementia.  Reports filed indicate that ayres is mentally performing well in most areas, including his capacity to challenge witnesses. His “capacity to disclose pertinent info is impaired.”  I guess that explains why he can’t just admit that he likes to molest little boys.  

Significantly, there was no change in impairment levels on the second such report, taken at a later time.

Questioning with Knoblauch also touched on the fact that in the Admissions Unit, they are more aggressive with the patients, trying to get them to “health” so that they can testify, and ayres was apparently very belligerent when he was there, but the intensity of his resistance dropped off when he was moved to Knoblauch’s unit.

Knoblauch apparently seemed to bristle at the mention of Dr. McIlnay. (The director, and forensic  psychiatrist.)

New defense attorney Bentley mentioned to the prosecution that “At least Dr. Knoblauch is legitimate...” apparently in reference to Dr. McIlnay.

Courtroom observers report that Knoblauch seemed a bit dull-witted.

Sutherland also contends that ayres is not competent, and apparently wrote a letter reporting this incompetence, but the letter didn't go out, because of the new vetting regulations.

The Director, Forensic Shrink Dr. McIlnay asked for a re-evaluation and commented about findings that ayres was malingering.  utherland says that that didn't change his evaluation that ayres was incompetent, and that he also didn’t think that ayres was malingering, but that he DID change the report to talk about malingering, but not in the sense that malingering is traditionally meant – Sutherland said this about ayres: “ayres is in a very unique situation, he is a psychiatrist of great skill and reputation.”  He feels that ayres wants people to respect him as they once did, and that because his mind is going, ayres perceives that people respect him less (I guess most of his colleagues don’t respect ayres less because he likes to molest young boys then? – shrinks are very troubling….) and therefore he is “faking good.” ...So he’s malingering, but only because he wants people to not treat him like he’s becoming a drooling moron (allegedly).

TL;DR: Napa State Doctors are in the middle of a pissing match, and the touchy-feely shrinks who virtually live with the patients won’t ever see eye-to-eye with the objective forensic shrinks. Testimony from these middling ass-clowns will be a wash.


What did we learn:

Prosecution DID make some very interesting headway:

Discussed today was the fact that there is NO record of any kinds of medical complaints or neurological tests until AFTER the hung jury, and THEN medical records start showing up. (We already knew this, but it’s good to have it put succinctly, I think.)

Malingering:
There apparently is a litany of information available on the internets about how to pass malingering tests, primarily centering around language processing and memory, which are the ONLY symptoms that ayres keeps “failing.”

The doctors complained that ayres would have had little chance to access the internet from Napa, the prosecution pointed out that ayres has been out on bail for years. (DUH. – I swear, I’d have a freaking aneurysm if I ever heard of a shrink that had a lick of common sense – talk about an un-grounded profession...)

ayres was participating in recreational activities, but at NO time did he ever participate in any treatment activities; on multiple occasions ayres made reference to not wanting to be found guilty, etc, as we've mentioned before.

Finally this little nugget: 
ayres was not under forced order to take any medications, but the Napa docs did contact his Stanford doctor to convince him to take Risperdal, (An anti-psychotic, NOT a drug for dementia) but soon, ayres was complaining bitterly to nurses about being dizzy and weak, and so he whipped out the drug information sheet talking about side effects, and got them stop giving them to him.

So much for diminished capacity. 

There are articles in the press as well, I’ll provide a link if any of them have interesting info. (Where's the beef?)




william hamilton ayres was arrested on April 5, 2007 on charges relating to his molestation of many young boys while he was alleging to provide psychiatric care to private patients as well as referrals for evaluation from the juvenile court system in San Mateo County. ayres has been delaying his way through the system free from custody until this latest gambit to skirt prosecution by playing demented for the courts. ayres is currently under the conservatorship of his daughter Barbara Ayres of Sacramento, CA. 

ayres has had significant interaction over the years with local politicians on boards like the "Children and Families First Commission,"  including the DA who was serving when prosecution began Jim Fox and Assemblyman Rich Gordon. In fact, Gordon nominated ayres for a lifetime achievement award for his "Tireless effort to improve the lives of children." ayres has also been vocally supported during his criminal trial by local head-shrinkers like Bart Blinder, Etta Bryant, Mel Blaustein, Harry Coren, Tom Ciesla, Robert Kimmich, Larry Lurie, Maria Lymberis, Richard Shadoan, Captane Thomson, and Harold Wallach.