Accused Murderer's Mental Health
The mother of an accused murderer says laws need to be changed to prevent these crimes from happening. Denver Simmons is charged with the murder of Sheila Dodd and her teenage son William. Phyllis Simmons showed us medical records outlining his mental health. Those records show he's been in and out of counseling for years... She says he was diagnosed with a mental disorder when he was only twelve. Doctors say the condition gets worse with age and Denver Simmons told his mother that now, after what he'd done, it's unbearable. Simmons says, "I wanted people to realize that I know it appears he's a monster, but he's bi-polar."
A disease this mother says led her son Denver Simmons to kill Sheila and Wiliam Dodd. Phyllis Simmons says he never laid a violent hand on anyone, until now. Simmons says, "And he told me, you see these hands, and I took his hands, and he pulled them back and said you don't know what these hands are capable of. And he looked at me and said, I'm lost, I'm a lost boy, and he just started to cry."
Leaving Simmons wondering what more she could have done. "You know when they start to spiral out of control, you can see the signs, you know when they're there. But they told us they couldn't do anything until he did something, well now he's done something."
Simmons says she tried to make her son stay on his medication, but couldn't force him after he turned 17. Phyllis says if Denver had been forced to receive more help for his condition, then this may never have happened. But doctors tell us there's no law requiring patients to take medication. They say it raises a question with no easy answer.
Psychiatrist Balancing the rights, the right to safety and the right to treatment on one hand, which are important and also the right for the individual to make his own choices.
In general, Psychiatrist Peter Brown says the current laws limit who and when a patient must take medication, especially when the patient is in an unstable condition. Brown says, "But we're also dealing with something where in the throws of the illness, the person's insight may not be effective at all, they may not understand what people are doing for their good or not."
Or what they are capable of... Simmons says this has devastated their lives. "Because they're not going to be a day that goes by that I don't ask myself if I could have done more, if there's anything I could have done."
Phyllis Simmons says her goal is to change the law so that other people with her son's condition are required to take their medication. But, she also says Denver was also addicted to drugs. Doctors we spoke with tell us that is common among bi-polar patients. Denver Simmons is now being held in South Carolina.
