Pawlyk Case's Legacy May Be More Limited Use Of Insanity As A Defense

Convicted murderer William Pawlyk has left a troublesome legal legacy for defense attorneys and psychiatrists in insanity cases.

It's a legacy that changes the rules about how the expert-witness game is played - and one that may discourage some attorneys from seeking an insanity defense for their clients.

Pawlyk, 50, was convicted yesterday of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder in the deaths of local television personality Larry Sturholm and Debra Sweiger, a nurse and business woman.

The Pawlyk case signals the end to lawyers "shopping around" among several different psychiatrists, then using only the expert or experts whose testimony would best bolster an insanity plea, says Seattle defense attorney Robert Leen. Because of a pretrial ruling in the case, defense attorneys now risk having to tell the enemy - prosecutors - about an expert whose testimony turned out to be unfavorable to the defense.

"It will skew the choices attorneys make in selecting a psychiatrist," said Jeff Ellis, one of Pawlyk's two attorneys. "You will have one shot. There is the fear that if you contact the wrong person, you will be creating a witness for the state."

That's exactly what happened.

When the Pawlyk team was building its case two years ago, defense attorneys consulted Dr. G. Christian Harris, a well-known psychiatrist, thinking he would determine Pawlyk was insane.

Instead, the doctor said Pawlyk was sane. That started a long legal battle between prosecutors and the defense, with the prosecutors saying they wanted to call Harris as a prosecution witness and the defense team saying Harris' unwanted diagnosis was confidential to the defense.

Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court sided with the state, concluding it could have access to Harris' medical conclusions. Deputy Prosecutors Jeff Baird and Lee Yates then made Harris one of their star witnesses.

After the case finally went to trial, jurors were told that Harris had been rejected by the defense and that the defense team had gone on to hire a second expert, Dr. Emanuel Tanay. That had an impact on their decision to convict, the jury foreman said yesterday.

"He (Tanay) was at least the second psychiatrist they hired, and there may have been others," said William (Roy) Royston, the jury foreman. "If you think about it, the defense had no case at all if they couldn't find a psychiatrist who agreed with them. It was very relevant that they had to go out and find someone else."

Defense attorneys argued in the trial that Pawlyk, facing the breakup of his affair with Sweiger, was in a psychotic, depressed state when he fatally stabbed her and Sturholm in her home near Issaquah on July 31, 1989.

But prosecutors maintained that Pawlyk premeditated the attack and killed the two in a jealous rage, believing Sweiger and Sturholm were having an affair.

Before the pretrial ruling, the defense could simply have ignored the Harris determination. Ellis believes the ruling eventually will go to the U.S. Supreme Court because the decision raises unique constitutional questions on privacy and the attorney-client relationship.

Attorney Leen agrees, saying the prosecutor's role is to present evidence to convict. In contrast, the defense attorney's role is not necessarily to establish the truth of what happened but to present a legal defense to show why the government's case is lacking.

John Henry Browne, another well-known Seattle attorney, said defense lawyers will choose only those experts the lawyers know will agree with the defense position. Browne says he tries to choose psychiatrists who are objective and middle-of-the-road.

The ruling will make lawyers much more cautious about using a mental defense, he said.

Deputy Prosecutor Baird says the ruling means prosecutors and defense attorneys will now play by the same rules.

Prosecutors long have had to turn over such information to the defense.

"They now are experiencing just a fraction of the obligation that is on the state in every case," Baird said.

Jury foreman Royston said jurors were thrown by the fact that defense lawyers had to look for a second psychiatrist to support their contention that Pawlyk met the state's test for insanity. To settle the issue, they listened again during deliberations to tapes of Tanay's testimony.

"None of us are psychiatrists on the jury," Royston said. "None of us was qualified to make the decision, and here we had two psychiatrists, one saying he was and one saying he wasn't."

The jury found that Pawlyk didn't fit the state's definition of an insane man. Pawlyk may have been out of control when he killed Sweiger and Sturholm, jurors decided, but he knew right from wrong.

The jury will be forever changed by its verdict, said Royston, a Boeing engineer who lives in Bellevue.

"It wasn't easy," he said. "We were very touched by this experience. Three people have lost their lives over this - because Pawlyk has lost his life too."

The legacy of the case reaches beyond the jury room and legal circles, and into the next generation in a much more personal way.

Pawlyk, who could spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole, has two college-age children, John and Karen.

Sturholm's widow, Judy, hopes the public continues to remember her husband as "a very funny man."

Sweiger's 5-year-old daughter, Jenny Leigh, lives with her father, Dr. David Sweiger, in Maple Valley. The couple were getting a divorce when Sweiger was killed. Her son, Marco Nunez, 15, lives with his father in California.

"We try to deal with this in as positive a way as we can," David Sweiger said sadly yesterday.

"The children are in contact with each other. Jenny has had a lot of support from friends, family, the church and the Maple Valley community. Thanks to all of them she's doing well.

"But they both love their mother very much, and they both miss her a lot."