A Traralgon man believed he was the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler the night he allegedly struck another man’s head repeatedly with a baseball bat last year, a Supreme Court has heard.
Nineteen year-old James Gibson told psychiatrist Remy Glowinski he heard messages from the TV and radio telling him to kill and make himself “stand out so that he could be easily rescued by the ‘Nazi Recovery Team'”.
“I remember that I believed I was Hitler. That I was to be driven away. I remember though that I ended up walking away,” Gibson said.
The evidence was heard on Tuesday at the Morwell courthouse during the trial of Gibson, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder of 42 year-old Glenn Sullivan.
Two independent psychiatrists, Remy Glowinski, a witness for the prosecution, and Lester Walton, for the defence, provided their opinion of Gibson’s mental impairment to the 13-panel jury.
The court heard the accused had no recorded mental-health history prior to the incident at a Tyers home on 3 April last year. He had been hospitalised for eight-and-a-half months at Thomas Embling Hospital after incarceration.
Arguments centred on whether the alleged attack was a drug-induced psychotic episode or Gibson’s first episode of schizophrenia.
Dr Glowinski said Gibson was “quite keen on saying he was unwell”, showing the doctor evidence of self-mutilation on his fingers and speaking about his hallucinations during his interview in June this year. When shown a video of a police interview of the accused, recorded hours after the alleged attack, Dr Glowinski said there were inconsistencies in Gibson’s self-reporting of symptoms.
He said he saw evidence of illogical thinking, shifting from one topic to another, but could not see evidence Gibson was deluded or hallucinating.
The psychiatrist said usual symptoms included distraction, hyper-vigilance and searching for the source of the voices.
“He (Gibson) acknowledged during the interview that he disliked the victim and found him to be rude and abrupt and that he’d laughed too much,” Dr Glowinski said.
“If you put that in contrast with what he told me later about him being – about the victim being a Nazi, it doesn’t add up in that respect.”
Dr Walton said his preferred conclusion was that Gibson was in the “grips of his first episode of schizophrenia, triggered and aggravated by drug and alcohol abuse”.
He said Gibson had described a passivity phenomenon, where he experienced loss of self-control.
“It would seem probable, he was not able to reason with a moderate degree of sense and composure as to the wrongfulness of his act,” Dr Walton said.
Prosecutor Campbell Thomson argued it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt Gibson bashed Glenn Sullivan two to six times with his baseball bat on the evidence of witnesses Adam and Lucas Charleston.
He said the evidence was confirmed by the nature of the injuries to Mr Sullivan’s skull.
Defence barrister John Kelly said the case against Gibson relied squarely on the Charlestons’ words, but their accounts were different in material respects.
Mr Kelly told the court Adam Charleston said the first blow took place in the kitchen, while his son Lucas Charleston said the attack occurred in the bedroom, adding his account was “a little exaggerated, a little cartoonish, a little unlikely”.
“One has him face down, one has him face up. One has him chucking the bat in the end, the other hasn’t. So these are details that might make you pause before saying there is support for one account by the other,” Mr Kelly said.
He said if there was any doubt, the appropriate verdict was one of not guilty in relation to murder.
The trial continues.
