John Wayne Gacy - Trial

Trial

John Gacy was brought to trial on February 6, 1980, charged with 33 murders. He was tried in Chicago before Judge Louis Garippo; the jury was selected from Rockford, Illinois, due to saturation of press coverage in Cook County.

In the year before his trial, at the request of his defense counsel, Gacy spent over 300 hours with the doctors at the Menard Correctional Center undergoing a variety of psychological tests before a panel of psychiatrists to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial.

Gacy had attempted to convince the doctors he was suffering from a multiple personality disorder. His lawyers, however, opted to plead not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges against him, and produced several psychiatric experts who had examined Gacy the previous year to testify to their findings. Three psychiatric experts appearing for the defense at Gacy's trial testified they found Gacy to be a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered from a multiple personality disorder.

The prosecution's case was that Gacy was sane and fully in control of his actions. The prosecution produced several witnesses to testify to the premeditation of his actions and the efforts he went to in order to escape detection, plus doctors who refuted the defense doctors' claims of multiple personality and insanity. Two witnesses who testified were PDM employees, who confessed Gacy had made them dig trenches in his crawl space. One of these employees, Michael Rossi, testified that in August 1977, Gacy had marked a location in the crawl space with sticks and told him to dig a drainage trench.

When asked where in the crawl space he had dug, Rossi turned to a diagram of Gacy's home on display in the courtroom. The diagram showed where the bodies were found in the crawl space and elsewhere on the property, and pointed to the location of the remains of an unidentified victim known as "Body 13". Rossi stated he had not dug any other trenches, but—at Gacy's request—had supervised other PDM employees digging trenches in the crawl space.

Rossi also testified that Gacy would periodically look into the crawl space to ensure employees did not deviate from the precise locations he had marked. Gacy had testified after his arrest that he had only dug five of the victims' graves in his crawl space and had had employees (including Gregory Godzik) dig the remaining trenches in order that he would "have graves available".

During the third week of the trial, Gacy's defense team attempted to raise the possibility that all 33 murders were accidental erotic asphyxia deaths: the Cook County Coroner countered this assertion with evidence that Gacy's claim was impossible.

On February 29, one of the youths Gacy had sexually assaulted in 1967, Donald Voorhees, testified to his ordeal at Gacy's hands, and that Gacy had subsequently paid another youth to beat him and spray Mace in his face so he would not testify against him. The youth felt unable to testify, but did attempt to briefly, before being asked to step down.

Robert Donnelly testified the week after Voorhees, recounting his ordeal at Gacy's hands in December 1977. Donnelly was visibly distressed as he recollected the abuse he endured at Gacy's hands and came close to breaking down on several occasions. As the youth testified, Gacy repeatedly laughed at Donnelly's expense, but the youth finished his testimony. One of Gacy's defense attorneys, Robert Motta, during Donnelly's cross-examination attempted to discredit his testimony, but Donnelly did not waver from his testimony of what had occurred.

During the fifth week of the trial, Gacy wrote a personal letter to Judge Garippo requesting a mistrial on a number of bases, including that he did not approve his lawyers' insanity plea approach; that his lawyers had not allowed him to take the witness stand (as he had desired to do); that his defense had not called enough witnesses, and that the police were lying about statements he had purportedly made to detectives after his arrest and that, in any event, the statements were "self-serving" for use by the prosecution. Judge Garippo addressed Gacy's letter by informing him that under the law he had the choice as to whether he wished to testify, and he was free to indicate to the Judge if he wished to do so.

On March 11, final arguments from both prosecution and defense attorneys began (these arguments concluded the following day). Prosecuting attorney Terry Sullivan argued first, outlining Gacy's history of abusing youths, the testimony of his efforts to avoid detection and describing Gacy's surviving victims—Voorhees and Donnelly—as "living dead".

After the state's four-hour closing, counsel Sam Amirante and Robert Motta argued for the defense. Motta and Amirante argued against the testimony delivered by the doctors who had testified for the prosecution. The defense lawyers attempted to portray Gacy as a "man driven by compulsions he was unable to control". In support of these arguments, the defense counsel repeatedly referred to the testimony of the doctors who had appeared for the defense. Amirante and Motta then argued that the psychology of Gacy's behavior would be of benefit to scientific research and that the psychology of his mind should be studied.

Following the testimony of Amirante and Motta, William Kunkle again testified for the prosecution. Kunkle referred to the defense's contention of insanity as "a sham", arguing that the facts of the case harked to Gacy's ability to think logically and control his actions. Kunkle also referred to the testimony of a doctor who had examined Gacy in 1968; this doctor had diagnosed Gacy as an antisocial personality, capable of committing crimes without remorse. Kunkle indicated that had the recommendations of this doctor been heeded, Gacy would have not been freed. At the close of his argument, Kunkle pulled each of the 22 photos of Gacy's identified victims off a board displaying the images and asked the jury to not show sympathy but to "show justice". Kunkle then asked the jury to "show the same sympathy this man showed when he took these lives and put them there!" before throwing the stack of photos into the opening of the trap door of Gacy's crawl space, which had been introduced as evidence and was on display in the courtroom. After Kunkle had finished his testimony, the jury retired to consider their verdict.

The jury deliberated for less than two hours and found Gacy guilty of the thirty-three charges of murder for which he had been brought to trial; he was also found guilty of sexual assault and taking indecent liberties with a child; both convictions in reference to Robert Piest. The following day, March 13, both the prosecution and defense made alternate pleas for the sentence the jury should decide: the prosecution requesting a death sentence for each murder committed after the Illinois statute on capital punishment came into effect in June 1977; the defense requesting life imprisonment.

The jury deliberated for more than two hours before they returned with their verdict: Gacy was sentenced to death for the twelve counts of murder upon which the prosecution had sought this penalty. An initial date of execution was set for June 2, 1980.