Under the Banner of Heaven (41 page)

The next expert to testify for the prosecution was a psychologist from Utah County named Richard Wootton, a practicing Mormon who was educated at Brigham Young University. Hoping to persuade the jury that Ron’s beliefs were so kooky as to be certifiably mad, defense attorney Mike Esplin asked Wootton what he thought of Ron’s assertion that not only was the angel Moroni a homosexual “traveler” who invaded people through the anus but the reason a statue of Moroni adorns most modern LDS temples is that the angel made a deal with Brigham Young back in 1844, after the death of Joseph Smith. According to Ron, Moroni agreed to make Brigham the next leader of the LDS Church if Brigham would promise to render the angel’s likeness in gold atop the highest spire of the Mormon temple.

Dr. Wootton agreed that this was a bizarre belief on Ron’s part, but he insisted that it was no more bizarre than many notions held to be true by religious folk, including members of his own faith, Mormonism. All kinds of things are accepted by one culture or another that would appear crazy or extreme to those outside the culture, Wootton argued. Asked for an example, he mentioned the multitude of visions and other supernatural experiences Joseph Smith had had throughout his lifetime. “Some outsiders,” Wootton observed, “might see that as being delusional.”

If one were to compare Ron’s revelations and belief in spirits to “material from LDS doctrine,” Dr. Wootton continued, “you’d find that his statements were not as extreme as some people might think.” Wootton explained to the court that spirits were a frequent topic of conversation among ordinary Mormons: “We talk about spirits being on ‘the other side.” It’s not unusual to talk about what is ’beyond the veil‘ and what is on ’the other side‘ in the spirit world.“

Wootton acknowledged that Ron “has a tendency to take things of a religious nature and carry them to a real extreme. However, I would add that I know dozens and dozens of people who do the same thing and never commit any crime. So it’s not unusual to find people who take some religious ideas or other ideas to an extreme.”

The final expert to testify for the prosecution was Stephen Golding, a forensic psychologist who in 1980 coauthored a much-praised book about the legal parameters of mental competency and helped develop the leading methodology for determining fitness to stand trial. Challenging Dr. Golding during his cross-examination, Mike Esplin pointed out that the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
fourth edition (commonly referred to as
DSM-IV)*
stated that “false beliefs,” by definition, are delusions. Because everyone seemed to agree that Ron Lafferty’s beliefs were not based on fact, and were therefore false, Esplin demanded to know why Golding refused to characterize Ron Lafferty as delusional.

* Published by the American Psychiatric Association,
DSM-IV
functions as the bible of the mental-health professions.

“You can’t take a word in a diagnostic manual and lift it out of context,” Golding answered. “Almost every religious belief system that I know of is made up ninety percent of things that are articles of faith and cannot be reduced to fact. So by using your definition they would all be false—they would all be delusional.” Whether Ron’s beliefs were true or false, he explained, was irrelevant in determining whether he was mentally competent. One had to consider other criteria.

“Mr. Lafferty’s approach to the world,” said Dr. Golding, “is no different than other kinds of political or religious zealots in this country, in Iran, in Montana, in a variety of places.”

When Esplin continued to press Golding, arguing that Ron’s brand of religious zealotry was so excessive that it must be considered a symptom of psychological instability, Golding stated, “I do not believe that zealots are mentally ill, per se.” He explained that there were “zealots of all stripes and colors” in the world—political, religious, and otherwise: “A zealot is simply someone who has an extreme, fervently held belief” and is willing to go “to great lengths to impose those beliefs, act on those beliefs… For example, the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas. Hamas means ‘zeal.” “ Golding reiterated, ”I guess my actual point, to try and say it again, is the existence of an extreme religious, personal, or political belief system is not, per se, an indication of mental illness.“

As part of the prosecution’s efforts to portray Ron as fanatical but utterly sane, at one point Assistant Attorney General Michael Wims asked Dr. Noel Gardner to compare Ron to schizophrenics he had examined. Gardner was adamant that Ron bore little resemblance to such seriously ill individuals. “You can’t interview Mr. Lafferty without sensing the vibrancy and intensity of his affect,” he testified. “This is a man who enjoys a good joke.” Gardner recalled that Ron laughed a lot, and “laughter is always something that is a shared experience… One thing I can tell you in working with hundreds of schizophrenics over my lifetime, is schizophrenics don’t have shared humor with people around them. Most of the time they are quite humorless. Once in a while, they’ll have their own idiosyncratic humor, laughing with themselves at things that have nothing to do with their environment. But a rather sensitive marker of psychosis is whether people have enough of the same shared reality to not only understand the facts of one’s reality, but the subtle and social meaning and significance that is irony.”

Dr. Gardner made it very clear that Ron Lafferty “is a man who enjoys and seeks out engagement with other people. Schizophrenics by nature do not seek out relationships; they’re isolated, lonely, very self-contained.”

Gardner pointed out, “Mr. Lafferty had stacks of books in his cell.

Show me a schizophrenic at the State Hospital who actually has the books and actually reads them. You know why? They can’t stay focused. Their thoughts keep getting distracted. You don’t find schizophrenics that can read the books, and then discuss the details about the content of the book. Mr. Lafferty can do that wonderfully. He can show you where he accepted this idea, rejected that idea… the way all of us do.“

“Now, when you read in the newspaper Mr. Lafferty had revelations from God to do something, it sounds like he’s crazy,” Dr. Gardner admitted. But Ron didn’t strike him as the least bit crazy, Gardner quickly added, when one considered that Ron’s revelations occurred within the context of the School of the Prophets: a group of devout, like-minded individuals who regularly met to evaluate those revelations. “That is a very different thing,” Gardner said, “than the psychosis of somebody who believes that God is talking to them when they’re schizophrenic. And the difference is this: These are six people who shared the same reality, doing the same thing; praying together, reading together, talking together, weighing whether these really came from God or not, whether they were genuine.

“That’s exactly the tradition of the Christian church,” Gardner asserted, in which people tried to determine whether spirits they encountered “were from God or not. It’s a communal experience, the real world of six or seven people getting together, sharing the same ideas, talking about them in the real world. You do not find schizophrenics sitting in a group together talking about shared experiences.”

If Ron wasn’t insane—or at least no more insane than anyone else who believes in God—what was he? Why had the Lafferty brothers’ religious beliefs turned them into ruthless killers? Dr. Gardner told the court that although Ron was not psychotic, he did exhibit the symptoms of a psychological affliction called narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. According to
DSM-IV,
NPD is distinguished by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy… indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance…
   
2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
   
3. Believes that he or she is “special” and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people…
   
4. Requires excessive admiration
   
5. Has a sense of entitlement…
   
6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
   
7. Lacks empathy
   
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
   
9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes
   

Although narcissistic personality disorder was not even listed as a formal diagnosis in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
before 1980, it has been estimated that 1 percent of the American population is afflicted with it; NPD is a disconcertingly common ailment. Indeed, to a noteworthy degree, narcissists fuel the cultural, spiritual, and economic engines of Western society, as Dr. Gardner readily acknowledged from the witness stand. “Many successful people are narcissistic,” he said, stressing that narcissism is especially prevalent among accomplished businessmen, attorneys, physicians, and academics. Such people have a sense of vast self-importance, Gardner explained, and believe “they’re smarter and better than anybody else. They’re willing to work incredible hours to provide confirmation to support their grandiose ideas.”

As examples, Gardner cited some of his own colleagues at the University of Utah Medical School: “I can go through the school of medicine and just pick them out at the tops of many of the departments… they’ll work three or four times as hard as anybody else… So it can be adaptive in the sense of making them high performers. On the other hand, it really impairs their ability for intimacy and closeness, because they lack empathy, and can’t understand the importance of other people’s life experiences, so they’ll work and ignore their wives and children because they’re pursuing this grandiose vision of themselves, which may make them successful… but really impair their social and interpersonal interactions.”

Grandiosity and lack of empathy, Dr. Gardner emphasized, were the hallmarks of NPD, and Ron Lafferty was nothing if not grandiose and emotionally cold. Ron had readily volunteered that Brenda’s death had aroused in him no feelings whatsoever. And he’d insisted to one and all that he was an especially important person in the eyes of God—that God had anointed him, Ron Lafferty, the “one mighty and strong.”

Although an exaggerated desire to mete out justice is not listed among the defining characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder in
DSM-IV,
it probably should be. Narcissists erupt with self-righteous indignation whenever they believe others are breaking rules, acting unfairly, or getting more than their fair share of the pie. They have no compunction about breaking the rules themselves, however, because they know they’re special and the rules don’t apply to them. In Ron’s case, he was quick to castigate anyone he thought was behaving selfishly or unrighteously—indeed, in the case of Brenda and Erica Lafferty, he didn’t hesitate to assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner. Yet nobody howled louder about unfair persecution when he was accused of moral, ethical, or legal lapses by others.

When narcissists are confronted by people who disparage the legitimacy of their extravagant claims, they tend to react badly. They may plunge into depression—or become infuriated. As Gardner explained to the court, when narcissists are belittled or denigrated “they feel horrible… They have this sense they’re either grandiose, perfect, and beautiful people, or absolutely worthless. So if you challenge their grandiosity—these are the words in the diagnostic manual—‘They respond with humiliation or rage.” Their reaction to criticism is intense. And I think that is a characteristic that’s very clearly demonstrated by Mr. Lafferty.“

Gardner described Ron as “a man whose grandiose self had been severely challenged by divorce and by rejection by his community. He was excommunicated. And in those moments of sitting quietly and thinking, he came up with a set of ideas that gave him a sense of release and relief. They’re logical. They may not be based in fact, but it has a logical quality, because it serves his purposes in a very logical way.” A skeptical Mike Esplin demanded, “It’s logical for him?”

“For him,” Dr. Gardner asserted. “Any psychiatrist looking at that would say this is a set of defenses he’s using so he doesn’t feel the pain of his loss so much. So he’s created some ideas that are soothing to him. Many people looking at religion would say religion is a set of ideas created by people as a way to soothe them, because we live in a very uncertain and oftentimes tragic world.”

Many people would also argue that virtually everyone who has introduced a new framework of religious beliefs to the world—from Jesus to Muhammad to Joseph Smith to Ron Lafferty—fits the diagnosis for narcissistic personality disorder. In the view of psychiatrists and psychologists, any individual who proclaims to be a prophet or guru—who claims to communicate with God—is, almost by default, mentally or emotionally unbalanced to some degree. As William James wrote in
The Varieties of Religious Experience,

There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion had been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are “geniuses” in the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence.