THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994 TAG: 9406240537
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940624 LENGTH: NORFOLK
The murder was over Phelps' dog. In his confession, Phelps admitted killing Roger Whitehair on July 15, 1993, in Phelps' home at 4882 Windermere Ave. Moments before the shooting, the 37-year-old Whitehair was taking potshots at Phelps' dog with a pellet gun. When Whitehair stepped back inside the kitchen, Phelps grabbed a .38-caliber revolver from the water heater and fired once.
{REST} Whitehair fell, a bullet through his chest. Three times before his trial, Phelps got drunk and attempted suicide for what he did to his friend, records show.
On May 4, Phelps was convicted of second-degree murder and use of a firearm. Last Thursday, Circuit Judge Robert Stewart sentenced him to 13 years in prison.
The Phelps incident was one of at least 13 local cases since 1989 in which once-hospitalized mental patients have been involved in violent crimes. The cases, the majority in Norfolk, ranged from Phelps' slaying of his friend to the shooting of three men in Philadelphia by a Surry County doctor. They include the deaths within the past year of two Norfolk men during confrontations with police, a phenomenon mental-health professionals sometimes call ``suicide by cop.''
Local events reflect a national trend, experts say. As more patients are released from institutions without adequate follow-up care, more end up in jail, in court - or dead.
Although the cases still represent a minority of violent crimes in Hampton Roads, the numbers of cases involving the mentally ill are greater than at any other time in recent memory, experts say. And they predict the trend will continue.
``When the mental health profession was deinstitutionalized in the '70s, it really served in some ways to criminalize the mentally ill,'' said Alan C. Brantley, supervisory special agent for the FBI.
``When they drastically cut the funding for mental institutions, they forced people who would have at one time been committed for long periods of time, or even for their entire lifetime, into the streets,'' said Brantley, an instructor of applied criminal science. ``Too often . . . these people wound up in the criminal-justice system.''
The majority of cases occur in ``urban cores'' like Norfolk, where the poverty rate is higher and families of the mentally ill more often cannot afford private care.
Deinstitutionalization was made possible by the development of mood-stabilizing drugs. Patients were told to take their medicine and sent home, where support and housing would be waiting. The heart of the plan was the assumption that patients would take their medicine.
But many didn't, due to the drugs' unpleasant side-effects. In almost every one of the 13 cases in Hampton Roads, the suspect or victim abandoned his or her medicine or negated its effects with alcohol or illegal drugs, court records show.
The solution is better supervision at the community level, said Farrell Fitch, communications director of the Arlington, Va.-based National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. But that's not happening. State money once allocated to mental hospitals has not been equally rechanneled into the cities' community service boards, which care for the mentally ill. Virginia is no exception.
``In most states, that money has gone back into the general revenue funds,'' Fitch said. ``The community service boards have been swamped. . . . In the 1980s, the system didn't get any better, and now, in the 1990s, you're seeing the result - these patients in court or jail. Things have gotten to the crisis stage where prisons and jails have become our new mental hospitals.''
A 1992 survey of 1,391 jails showed that one in 14 inmates suffered from some form of serious mental illness. The report, by the National Alliance, estimated that more than 30,700 former mental patients served time in jail daily. This was during the same period that the number of patients in state mental hospitals decreased from 552,150 in 1955 to 110,000 in 1990, national figures show.
In addition, laws were being drafted that made involuntary commitment more difficult. A person must now pose an imminent danger to himself or others - meaning holding a gun or a knife, not just hearing voices or making threats.
``In this country, people have the right to refuse treatment,'' said Norfolk Community Services Board Director Harry Bleh. ``So, you've got drugs that help but patients who don't want to take them. These things work against each other. You don't commit a person because he's acting strange. If he refuses treatment, you may run into situations'' like the local violent cases.
Norfolk has traditionally had more people institutionalized at Eastern State Hospital than other local cities, largely because of its higher poverty rate, Bleh said. But now, with these patients re-entering the community, there are only 30 caseworkers to handle 900 to 1,000 clients. ``That spreads things kind of thin,'' Bleh said.
But illegal drug use, not violent crime, is the main criminal problem among the mentally ill, Bleh said. There are many more former patients charged with or serving time for this offense, he said. Exact numbers are not known.
``What we're seeing now is people who are dually diagnosed,'' Bleh said. ``They've got a drug or alcohol addiction and a mental illness. That complicates matters.''
Phelps, now 46, fit into this picture. He was diagnosed at age 9 as manic-depressive, the same year he was raped by three men, court records show. First admitted to a mental hospital at 17, he would be institutionalized a total of 20 times. Four admissions occurred after the murder.
Doctors heavily medicated Phelps to control his illness. Records showed he was on five mood-stabilizers and anti-depressants - a total of 19 pills daily.
But he was also an alcoholic and had been since age 17, records showed. The alcohol negated the drugs' effects, making Phelps more impulsive, less able to control his emotions.
This is what happened the day of the murder. He drank four or five beers, growing more and more angry about people teasing his dog. When Whitehair walked inside the house, the dog by his side, Phelps fired once. He said he shot at the doorjamb to scare his friend. The slaying was accidental, he said.
``I didn't shoot at Roger,'' Phelps said in his rambling statement to police. ``I was teed off, but I'm just tired. . . . I'm tired of them teasing with the, um, gun. But I didn't mean to shoot Roger. If I did I wouldn't have got on the floor and got blood all over me giving him mouth to mouth, checked his heart and pulse 'cause I still loved Roger. He's a friend of mine.''
But the court saw it otherwise, calling it murder by a man mentally impaired.
{KEYWORDS} MENTALLY ILL MENTAL ILLNESS MURDER
by CNB