The Measure of Madness:. Katherine Ramsland
Mr. Bailey was brought to the precinct in Queens, New York, where he signed a waiver of his Miranda rights. In a few scribbled paragraphs he explained that he had wanted to kill himself because he was infected with HIV. He had found a gun two weeks earlier and saw it as a sign from God. The night before the shooting he got on the subway and rode around in a loop for miles, thinking of ways to kill himself. When he got off the train near the precinct, he saw some policemen and thought, “I’ll let them shoot me.” He pointed the gun at the officers, aiming high so as not to hurt them, and yelled “Shoot me!” He heard gun shots, and, thinking he was hit, fell to the ground.
His confession concluded, “I didn’t want anyone to die but me.”
Mr. Bailey was taken to a psychiatric hospital immediately after his arrest. He told the staff that he was infected with AIDS and wanted to die, but could not bring himself to commit suicide. He was charged with six counts of attempted murder in the first degree, attempted assault, and criminal possession of a weapon.
Almost five months later I got a phone call from Mr. Bailey’s defense attorney. He wanted me to assess his client for an insanity defense. After he filled me in on the details of the case, he told me a surprising fact—his client’s HIV test was negative. The defendant had never been infected in the first place.
“Could this be a case of ‘suicide by cop’?” he asked.
“It certainly seems so,” I said.
“Suicide by cop” is a desperate act that is difficult for most people to understand. One of the earliest researchers of this phenomenon was Marvin Wolfgang. Of the 588 deaths he studied, he concluded that 26 percent could be classified as victim-precipitated suicide.1 Daniel Kennedy and associates conducted a study in 1998 based on newspaper articles of 240 police shootings of which they determined nine were definitely suicide by police and another 28 could possibly be classified as such.2
Why commit suicide in this way? Some people want to go out in a blaze of glory, others lack the nerve to carry out the suicide act. Some want their families to collect on their insurance policy or even to create community unrest by provoking police violence. Many tell hostages they want to die, saying they prefer death over prison. Some even make religious references to resurrection.3
One of the earliest recorded examples of this behavior occurred in England in 1800, when James Hadfield entered the Haymarket Theater armed with a loaded pistol and shot at the king. One witness testified at the trial that Hadfield had told him, “I am a man tired of life; my plan is not to take away my own life, I sought therefore to get rid of it by other means; I did not mean to take away the life of the king, but I thought this attempt would answer my purpose as well.” A judge later found that he was insane and ordered him confined to a psychiatric hospital.4
Mr. Bailey’s attorney sent me a packet of legal and medical records to review. I picked up the grand jury minutes first. The grand jury is a group of people who hear evidence presented by the prosecution and vote whether there is enough evidence to indict the defendant for trial.
Five officers had testified in the grand jury. I read through their testimony and imagined how those officers must have felt when Mr. Bailey aimed a gun at them. One testified that the suspect “stopped about ten feet away from me and my partner, turned, pointed it at me and my partner, and pulled the trigger again. I heard the gun click…after I heard him pull the trigger, I heard another round go off on my side, which I assume was my partner’s. I ducked for cover.”5
His partner testified that he fired at the suspect and saw him fall. A third officer testified that he saw the suspect clench his stomach and collapse. A fourth recalled that he yelled, “Police, stop! Drop the gun!” He described the clicking sound of the suspect’s gun. “At this time I thought he was shooting at me,” the officer said. “I just let off a couple of rounds ’cause I thought he was going to kill another cop. I thought he was going to kill me…I had no choice but to try to neutralize the threat…. [I felt] scared, scared that I was going to get shot or killed.”6
How did all the officers miss when they shot at Mr. Bailey? I wondered.
I tried to imagine how the policemen felt when they made that split-second decision to fire. I understood from personal experience how the police might have panicked and shot wildly. In 1981, my husband and I were held hostage in a bank’s automatic teller lobby. It was early evening when we walked in. A man pointed a gun at us and told my husband to take out money from the cash machine. Looking around the small vestibule, I realized that there were a few other people being held hostage by a second gunman. The minutes seemed to pass unnaturally slow as more customers walked in, unaware of the robbery in progress. Each one looked horrified as soon as they realized what was going on.
Whether it was because I was young, naïve, or in shock, I did not understand the gravity of the situation. I felt strangely calm as the room filled with hostages. Eventually there were about fifteen of us crowded together. Fortunately, someone had a friend waiting outside who, after a long wait, became alarmed and called the police.
That’s when the situation devolved into chaos. It seemed to me that almost fifty police officers were waiting outside as the gunmen started out the door, using two hostages as human shields. As soon as they opened the door, I heard dozens of gun shots being fired. We dropped to the floor as glass broke over our heads and bullets ricocheted off the walls. The shooting seemed to last forever, although in reality, it was just a few minutes. Luckily, one of the hostages was an off-duty police officer. He threw his badge out the open door and the barrage of bullets stopped. Miraculously, none of the hostages was injured. I heard the police whispering to each other afterwards, “Who started shooting?” they all asked.
My memory of this terrifying experience made me wonder if the police who shot wildly at Mr. Bailey were also in a panic. I heard from another attorney that they actually shot into a store behind the suspect, barely missing the owner.
The next day, I went to interview the defendant. When I arrived at the Supreme Court building, I took the elevator to the third floor and knocked on the door labeled “Corrections Department.” The plate covering the small viewing window slid aside and the officer peered at me, then looked down at the I.D. badge I held up. The key turned and the heavy metal door opened. Once inside, I stopped to chat with the officers sitting behind the high desk in the front office, who invited me to help myself to some coffee. I grabbed a cup and headed toward the back where the cells and interview offices were located. I felt the familiar stab of guilt as I walked past the row of cells.
“Are you an attorney?” one defendant called out to me. “Do you know when I’m going to court?” I kept my head down, trying to avoid eye contact. The last thing I wanted was to be pulled into conversations with the desperate men waiting there.
I left my bags in a locker outside the offices, said a brief hello to the on-duty officer, and gulped down the rest of my coffee. Then I took a seat in the largest interview room available. I did not have to wait long.
I have given up any preconceptions about defendants’ appearances, but when Mr. Bailey walked into the interview room, I was struck by how young and shy he was. He was 20 years old, and at 5-feet 5-inches tall, weighed only about 145 pounds. I would never have pegged him as a man charged with the attempted murder of police officers.
Mr. Bailey grew up in Jamaica. His parents were unmarried and both moved separately to the United States, leaving him to be raised by his maternal grandmother. His early life was unremarkable; he had no history of developmental delays, medical problems, or abuse. He told me that he never liked school and dropped out when he was 15 years old.
“What kind of grades did you get?”
“I was an average student, not perfect.”
“And your reading?”
“I could read, just not as good as everyone,” he admitted. He sounded defensive.
Mr. Bailey’s hair was in dreadlocks and I was not surprised when he told me he became a “Rasta” (Rastafarian)