One week after Morgan’s plea deal, Angie and the Leutners returned to Bohren’s courtroom to hear his ruling on the plea. Bella’s family and friends wore Harley-Davidson motorcycle jackets. Angie sat across the aisle from them. Outside, the American flag waved at half-mast, in honor of the victims of a recent mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Judge Bohren opened the hearing by asking Morgan, “You’re 15 years old, true?”
Morgan’s heart pounded as she rose to her feet. She had been warned ahead of time that Bohren would be asking her some questions that day. But having never spoken to him directly before, she felt scared. She answered in a soft, high-pitched voice: “Yes, sir.”
“So you’re now a sophomore in high school?”
“I believe so.”
Bohren asked if she knew and understood her diagnosis.
“Early-onset schizophrenia,” she said. “Major depression.”
“How many different medications do you take?”
“Quite a few.”
Bohren proceeded to ask Morgan about the stabbing. He specifically wanted to how Morgan had straddled Bella—where her legs had been, where Bella’s legs had been, et cetera. Tony jumped in to explain that Morgan’s medication and overall condition made it difficult for her to remember much of what had happened in the woods off Big Bend Road.
“Then tell me what happened,” Bohren insisted.
Tony indicated that Morgan should respond.
“I hurt Bella,” she said.
“We call her ‘PL,’” Bohren corrected.
“I hurt … PL.”
Sounding impatient, Bohren pressed: “All right, so what did you do?”
“I stabbed her.”
Morgan sounded uncertain, as if trying to guess the right answer. She started to cry. Her wrists were handcuffed to a chain around her waist. Unable to wipe her face, she bowed her head and blinked, letting her tears fall onto the floor.
“I’d like you to tell me in your own words what you did on May 31st, 2014. What happened between you and Payt—” Bohren stopped himself. “PL.”
Morgan said that she and Anissa had taken “PL” into the forest. “And I said we were going to play hide and seek. And Anissa said she couldn’t do it, and that I had to.” She began sobbing so hard that it was difficult to understand her.
Bohren assured her that they had all afternoon to wait for a coherent answer.
After some heavy breathing, Morgan responded, “I tackled her and I stabbed her.”
“Well, tell me about the tackling,” Bohren said. “How did you do that?”
“I came up from behind her and I jumped on her?”
“And then what happened?”
“And then I stabbed her?”
“So then when she’s on her back, how did you stab her? How did you do that?”
The courtroom remained silent except for the sound of Morgan’s crying. Finally, she said, “I stabbed her with the knife I had taken from my house earlier that morning.”
“Now, when you say you stabbed her, were you somewhat straddling her?”
When Morgan did not answer to his satisfaction, Bohren suggested that maybe if she had read the police report, she would be able to speak in greater detail about the event in question. Morgan reminded him that she had not been shown the criminal complaint since she was twelve years old. But Bohren was unrelenting. “How did you do it?”
“I … I stabbed her with a knife.”
“And what part of her body did you stab her?”
“Everywhere.”
Every time Morgan finished her description of the crime, Bohren wanted her to start at the beginning.
Angie saw Morgan’s pain. She wanted to shout at Bohren to stop. “Haven’t you heard enough?” she thought.
“Especially after she said, ‘I don’t remember a lot of it,’” Angie later explained. “She was retelling things that she read on the criminal complaint and not necessarily speaking from memory. Which, what’s the point of that? Just reciting something that you’ve read on a piece of paper. I don’t know what his reasoning was. It felt, from where I was sitting, it felt excessive.”
Legal experts agreed. “The idea of having her recount … in detail—everything that she did, with the understanding from the court that she’s a very mentally disabled, disturbed child, is kind of wild to me,” commented Juvenile Law Center cofounder Marsha Levick. “Just in terms of the trauma that that could impose, which is of course borne out by her weeping through trying to tell that story.”
“Well,” Bohren concluded finally, “I’m satisfied that Miss Geyser has an understanding of what the operative circumstances are that bring her into court.” He proceeded to announce that he’d accepted the plea deal that was on the table. Morgan was not guilty by reason of insanity and would remain at Winnebago for a period of time that, once again, had yet to be determined by Bohren.
Morgan’s fate at the disposition hearing depended on whether she was nonthreatening. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that forensic patients could not be hospitalized against their will unless they posed a clear and present danger to themselves or the community. Morgan’s doctors were prepared to say that she didn’t. Morgan spent her days at Winnebago crying. She had not hallucinated in a long time, and her doctors said the hospital was no longer beneficial to her because of its lack of resources for people who had stabilized on medication. Now that Morgan had gained insight into her condition, she needed continuity of care with familiar doctors and therapists. Such things were not available at Winnebago. Morgan’s assigned psychiatrist was ever-changing, owing to high job turnover at Winnebago. At any given point, the hospital had about fifty open positions for nurses, doctors, and other staff. It proved difficult for the institute to attract or retain pedigreed professionals. Not many qualified people wanted to move to Winnebago County, an economically depressed region known for its larger than average population of convicted pedophiles.
Now cogent, Morgan’s surroundings struck her as insane. She was fifteen, with a high IQ, stuck in a population of adults with severe mental illnesses and various intellectual challenges. For therapy, she met once a week with a social worker, whose busy schedule limited their visits to fifteen-minute increments. Sometimes the social worker did not show up at all. Defunding of public psychiatric hospitals left few resources for nonmedical treatment, including educational support. Under pressure from Morgan’s lawyers, Winnebago had jerryrigged a “school,” where once a week, a man who wore white cat-eye glasses sat with Morgan for ninety minutes while she drew pictures of Sev as quickly as she could, before the tremors took her pen. Sometimes he watched her play educational games on an iPad.
There was nothing left for her at Winnebago. Even Morgan’s doctors wanted her to go home. She was fifteen. Her family was prepared to build their lives around her outpatient treatment. She had been found “not guilty.” Her psychiatrists were prepared to testify that she no longer posed any danger to the community.
If Bohren believed them, he was bound by law to send her home.