Dying Man Fit For Trial, Doctor Says Aids Victim Accused Of Attempted Murder
A Spokane Valley man accused of attempted murder for exposing his girlfriend to AIDS is fit to stand trial - “barely.”
That’s the conclusion of Dr. Verne Cressey, an Eastern State Hospital psychiatrist who testified Monday for the prosecution.
Jeffrey Walker’s competency hearing, which will determine whether he stands trial, will continue today and Wednesday in Spokane County Superior Court.
Walker, 28, suffers from AIDS-related dementia and plainly is dying, Cressey said.
But he found Walker “able to work with his attorney and understand the proceedings against him.
“We think he is still competent - barely.”
Prosecutor Jim Sweetser’s only other witness, a Post Falls psychologist, accused Walker of fabricating answers to questions in order to appear more brain-damaged than he is.
“I believe he malingered - most definitely,” Karen Sheppard testified. “I got a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ and evasiveness.
“A 5-year-old child would do better than he did,” she said.
Cressey said his examinations of Walker - in June 1994 and last April - raised similar concerns.
“We had our suspicions that he was presenting himself as worse off than he was,” he said.
Defense attorneys L. Neil Axtell and Dana Kelley will counter with their own experts, who say Walker is gravely ill - both mentally and physically.
Walker’s physician, Dr. Daniel Coulston of Spokane, offered his opinion via videotape Monday afternoon.
Coulston said the AIDS patient requires around-the-clock care and is on more than a dozen medications to control his pain and fend off opportunistic infections.
He described Walker’s memory loss as severe.
Asked by Axtell how Walker would fare on the witness stand, Coulston replied: “I don’t think you’d get the same answer twice” to the same question.
Walker is the first person in Washington to be charged with attempted murder for exposing someone to AIDS. If convicted, he faces a 20-year prison sentence.
The former construction worker and convict is accused of deliberately poisoning his girlfriend by exposing her to the virus that causes AIDS in August 1992.
Susan Wyatt, 43, claims he didn’t tell her he was HIV-positive until after they had unprotected sex.
Months later, she tested HIV-positive.
In an interview last week, Walker insisted he informed Wyatt of his HIV status before they had sex. He said he wanted to wear a condom but she insisted otherwise.
He met Wyatt in August 1992 after getting released from prison. He served a 21-month sentence for selling black-tar heroin.
Walker was repeatedly counseled by probation officers and doctors about transmission of the virus, the importance of practicing safe sex, and the urgent need to tell his girlfriend that he’s a carrier, according to Sweetser.
, DataTimes