US fugitive Nicholas Rossi wanted to be sectioned over his mental health after being arrested at a Glasgow hospital, a court has heard.
Dr Angela Cogan, a psychiatrist at the city’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, was asked to assess Rossi. She said the review came in the days after Rossi was arrested by Scots cops on an international warrant.
Dr Cogan said Rossi “thought he was suffering from delirium”, but she concluded he wasn’t suffering from mental illness. The witness was giving evidence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Wednesday in the extradition proceedings against Rossi.
Rossi was arrested at the hospital in December 2021 while receiving treatment for Covid-19. The 35-year-old, who is fighting a bid to return him to his US homeland to face charges including rape in Utah, continues to claim he’s an Irishman called Arthur Knight.
Dr Cogan said she spent around an hour with Rossi when he was still a patient. Her report at the time concluded Rossi was “often inconsistent, evasive and hard to pin down”, the court heard.
Rossi told her he needed “psychiatric help” but wouldn’t provide further detail or information on his past psychiatric treatment.
Dr Cogan said Rossi believed he was suffering from “delirium” but she saw no evidence of it. She concluded Rossi didn’t have delusions, abnormality of perception such as hallucinations, or disordered thoughts.
She added: “He asked if he could be sectioned.”
Later Deborah Golden, an attorney based in Washington DC in the US, gave evidence about prison conditions in Utah.
Ms Golden said inmates in Utah prisons had a much higher mortality and suicide rate than the general American population.
Mungo Bovey KC, acting for Rossi, said previous testimony had suggested his client may suffer from an undiagnosed personality disorder. Mr Bovey said that included the possibility of narcissistic personality disorder.
He asked Ms Golden, 50, whether Utah prison would carry out work to diagnose and treat such a condition.
Ms Golden, who advocates for clients confined in US federal prisons, said there might be a “superficial diagnosis or very little attempt to diagnose” an issue.
She added: “I would suspect there would be minimal treatment available.”
Mr Bovey asked whether someone with a “capacity for conflict hard-wired” into their personality would function well in Utah prisons.
She replied: “I think it would be quite difficult. If something about his personality draws him to conflict, he would still be held to the same standard as any prisoner but his personality might prevent him from de-escalating a situation or understand the rules.
“That may make him more likely to be assaulted by other prisoners or guards and he would be more likely to spend time in solitary confinement.”
Ms Golden said 122,000 inmates in the US were in solitary confinement on any given day, a new study had shown, and the effect of this practice were “disastrous” on an individual’s mental wellbeing.
The hearing before Sheriff Norman McFadyen continues.
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