A near-empty courtroom was thick with tension Thursday afternoon as the defence lawyer in Gary Edwin Mattson's dangerous offender hearing went so far as to belittle the practice of psychiatry while cross-examining the very psychiatrist who examined Mattson.
As Dr. Curtis Woods used the word "psychodynamics" to explain, at defence lawyer Naeem Rauf's request, the phrase "cognitive schema of a personality disorder," Rauf turned to a lawyer not associated with the case and scoffed, "Psychodynamics!" Though Crown prosecutor Patricia Innes tried to object, Judge Harry Bridges refused to listen, saying it had been a private conversation between two lawyers even though the entire courtroom had heard it.
"That how I really feel," Rauf said during an adjournment. Woods defended his field from the stand when court resumed.
"To undermine the theory is to undermine the treatment," he said.
The report on Mattson, who pleaded guilty last year to the vicious beating and stomping of St. Albert resident and Edmonton Transit bus driver Tom Bregg, was ordered for Mattson's dangerous offender hearing. If found a dangerous offender, Mattson will be incarcerated for an indefinite period of time.
Rauf spent the afternoon attacking Woods' two main assertions — that Mattson persistently bears grudges and frequently reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events. Reading from Woods' own report, Rauf would select a highlighted passage and ask how that particular example demonstrated either assertion. Woods repeatedly reiterated that each example was part of a larger picture of Mattson gleaned through interviews, previous arrests and police reports and other available data.
Woods also asserted the likelihood Mattson would reoffend was high or very high, but that, with intensive therapy, he could potentially be treated and rehabilitated.
"He has in the past shown some capacity for self-control and self-restraint," Woods said. "He's not running around all over the place assaulting people."
When asked by Rauf if Mattson was a psychopath, Woods quickly replied, "Categorically no. He is not a psychopath."
Blame game
What Woods found, according to the report he spent much of Thursday morning reading aloud, was a man emotionally stunted by repeated drug use and alcoholism with a severe hatred of authority figures such as the police, and a tendency to blame the rest of the world for his problems.
"I contend that, because he has a sensitive sense of self worth, he expects to be mistreated by authority figures, has a tendency to withdraw and a proclivity to misinterpret the intentions of others. It's part of the [paranoid] personality."
Touching briefly on Mattson's early childhood years, which were marred by instances of sexual abuse, being abandoned by his father and flipping between living with his mother and a foster family, Woods stated Mattson's paranoia and narcissism stemmed from repeated instances in which he had been disappointed in life just when it seems he had taken positive steps.
"There is some capacity for closeness and to settle, then he's hit with disappointment and creates aggression towards self and others. That disappointment wipes out everything that came before it."
Woods cited Mattson's father, who abandoned him, a relationship in which a pregnant woman led Mattson to believe the child she was carrying was his before revealing it wasn't, and numerous other examples that proved Mattson had come to expect disappointment — and when it came — reacted violently.
He also explained it was difficult for Mattson to believe he was responsible for his own actions and empathize with others. In the case of Bregg, Mattson told Woods that it was likely something Bregg said that set him off.
"I think he said, 'You can afford booze but you can't afford bus fare,'" Woods quoted Mattson. "'I punched him, yeah, but stomping on him was a little too far. Because he was probably being a dick. I don't punch someone for no reason.'"
When asked how Bregg might be feeling, Mattson found it difficult to empathize, pointing only to the disfigurement Bregg suffered from the attack and how hard it would be to have people always staring at you. Mattson told Woods he would need a feeling sheet because, "I don't know words for feelings."
The Crown will re-examine Woods on Tuesday when the hearing resumes.
