Psychologist in court: Rampage driver schizophrenic

Though he says he has no recollection of the incident, Abdullah El-Amin Shareef believes he is not guilty of the road rampage that killed one person and injured four on April 14, 2004, according to a psychiatrist who testified in the case Monday.

Shareef's capital murder trial entered its third week of testimony in Cumberland County Superior Court.

Shareef, 31, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murder and attempted murder.

With the jury absent from the courtroom, Raleigh psychiatrist Dr. George Corvin read over notes he had taken during interviews with Shareef at the request of Assistant District Attorney Cal Colyer.

The notes were attempts to quote and paraphrase Shareef during their meetings at Dorothea Dix Hospital. Dorothea Dix is a state mental health facility in Raleigh.

Some of the notes included Shareef's thoughts on a possible plea bargain. Colyer expressed concerns to Superior Court Judge Jim Ammons about introducing that information to jurors.

Shareef told Corvin that he looked forward to the trial, and that he was not going to take a plea bargain. "Not going to trial would be ducking my responsibility. That would be wrong," Corvin quoted his patient as saying from his medical notes.

"I'm not sure why it happened," Shareef said during an interview with Corvin on Oct. 5, 2009. "I think I've got a chance to be found NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity) in court."

Doctors at Dorothea Dix told Shareef he was paranoid schizophrenic, Corvin said. But during the interview, Shareef denied having hallucinations.

"I know I'm not guilty," Shareef said, according to Corvin's notes.

Once the jury was called back into the courtroom, Colyer and Corvin went back over lines from Corvin's medical notes.

"I feel very sympathetic - sorry about what I did," Corvin quotes Shareef as saying during the interview on Oct. 5, 2009.

Colyer questioned those feelings of guilt, despite Shareef's assertion that he has no recollection of the incident six years ago. Corvin told the jury that this is common. At this point, Corvin said, Shareef "had accepted what he did."

"I was smoking marijuana before it happened," Shareef told Corvin. In the course of the examination, Corvin said Shareef was not clear on "it."

"I think 'it' is before April 14," Corvin said.

Shareef, who has a drug history, told Corvin that he had started smoking marijuana during the second half of his senior year of high school. Corvin, in looking to bolster the defense's case that Shareef's crimes were the result of a defective character, undue stress and extensive substance abuse, said the defendant was known to be smoking four to five "blunts" a day.

A blunt is slang for a hollowed-out cigar, filled with marijuana.

Smoking four or five blunts a day would represent a regular marijuana user, Corvin said.

During cross-examination, Corvin told Colyer that studies have shown that increased marijuana use can make the symptoms of psychosis more pronounced. Though Corvin said increased use of marijuana does not cause schizophrenia, he added that early cannabis use increases the risk of psychosis.

The defense is trying to show that mental illness caused Shareef to commit the spree of crimes over a two-hour period in Cumberland and Harnett counties.

Earlier in the day, a psychologist testified that he had determined Shareef as psychotic after meeting with him five times between 2004 and 2009.

"It's what we could call crazy. Psychotic is crazy," said Dr. Tom Harbin, who has been practicing psychology in Fayetteville for 20 years.

He said he also found evidence of extreme anger.

Most of Harbin's testimony focused on a series of tests he administered to make an evaluation of Shareef's mental condition. Harbin concluded that, in his opinion, Shareef suffered from schizophrenia, which was a contributing factor to his road-rage actions.

"It (schizophrenia) pretty well destroys the person's mind, I do believe," Harbin said.

Carl Ivarsson, one of Shareef's lawyers, asked Harbin if he thought that Shareef suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. An evaluation of Shareef's condition, conducted in the days before the road rampage at a mental health center in Raeford, determined he suffered from marijuana abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Harbin said the term PTSD gets overused. He said, from his assessment, Shareef did not qualify for that disorder since he had not suffered a serious injury, a traumatic rape or served in combat under stress for an extended period of time.

The trial is scheduled to resume this morning at 9:30 in Room 4A of the Cumberalnd County Courthouse.