By Veronica Gonzalez
Veronica.Gonzalez@StarNewsOnline.com
Published: Friday, August 13, 2010 at 9:23 p.m.
David Bryant says he loved his wife and wishes he wouldn't have killed her.
Eight years ago next month, Bryant said he shot his wife, Gladys Bryant, inside the living room of her Wilmington home. The weapon: a 32-caliber revolver.
She was shot in the head.
They had divorced after 30 years of marriage, and David Bryant couldn't stand that she was seeing another man, even as he was seeing another woman. That's because she was his childhood sweetheart, the mother of his three sons.
In David Bryant's mind, Gladys Bryant wanted him there. The 53-year-old had asked him to come over.
"She was really my life," the 63-year-old said Wednesday during an interview at the county jail where he's currently incarcerated. "I wouldn't have hurt her intentionally. You wouldn't hurt your life."
Her family says he broke the safety lock on her apartment door and caught her by surprise.
To Gladys Bryant, her husband's actions were anything but loving – and in fact were about control.
Before she died, Gladys Bryant said that her husband raped, stalked her and threatened to run her over with his car.
Those are her words, written in court documents when she filed for a restraining order after they had separated.
"I am very fearful of him," Gladys Bryant wrote in 2001. "Very afraid he will do something else."
On the surface, her murder on Sept. 4, 2002, appears to be an open and shut case.
So why is David Bryant still awaiting trial for first-degree murder?
The hurdle to justice is his mind – specifically his ability to grasp court proceedings.
Complicating matters is while Bryant appears to be somewhat intelligent, coherent and lucid, psychiatrists who have studied him since he was first arrested have said he has dementia that is likely to worsen with time, and that his short-term memory is impaired enough that he might have trouble at trial.
Since his arrest, Bryant, a former DuPont employee who served in Vietnam and has no criminal record, has yo-yoed between mental hospitals and the New Hanover County Jail – see-sawing numerous times between mental stability and mental incompetence, which has prevented his case from moving forward.
In a jail interview on Wednesday, just as in a previous interview and in letters to the StarNews, Bryant insists he's ready to be judged because he's sure he wouldn't be found culpable.
He is eager to talk about the case, saying it gives him closure and is a "load off his shoulders" as well as a form of therapy.
"I know I'm fit to stand a trial and more," he said. "I'm fit to win my battle because it wasn't intentional."
But Bryant's competency isn't his decision to make.
That decision will be up to a judge who will again hear from psychiatrists and decide whether to proceed.
Gladys Bryant's youngest sister, Helen Davis, doesn't buy that he has mental issues. His middle son, Eric Bryant, doesn't believe it either. They say he's working the system, that his attorneys, Assistant Capital Defenders Rick Miller and Kevin Peters, told him to act crazy to delay the case.
Whether Bryant stands trial or not, what's certain is that both sides of the family are ready to move on with their lives.
"We're not grieving as much as we did maybe seven years ago," said Eric Bryant, who is 33 years old. "But we're without a mother, and now, without a father."
A question of competency
Before an inmate can go to trial, he has to be mentally competent enough to help his attorney and provide the information needed to mount a defense. And usually, psychiatrists can spot when someone is feigning a mental illness, said Ron Honberg, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Arlington, Va.
"You can't try people who are so impaired they aren't able to mount a defense for themselves," he said, adding that since someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, everyone has a right to a fair trial, and part of that right is understanding what's going on.
But it's not enough to simply suffer from mental illness, and if it's that bad, a trial will be delayed until the person is well enough.
"Our system ... would be really compromised if you didn't have a requirement that a person was competent to defend themselves," Honberg said.
Honberg said it's not unusual for inmates who have been deemed incompetent to stand trial to wait days, weeks and even years to go to trial.
Recently, after months of being fed up with their services, Bryant said he couldn't agree with his lawyers on how to proceed.
So a judge on Thursday accepted a request from his attorneys to withdraw from the case, and Assistant Public Defender Nora Hargrove took over. She's the fourth attorney to represent him.
In some cases, a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity might be in order, but that doesn't mean the person is going to be released into society, Honberg said.
Family left with unanswered questions
It's difficult to resolve the image of David Bryant -- the provider, father and husband --- from the David Bryant who said he drove to Gladys Bryant's Grouse Court apartment near the university and shot her – possibly through a pillow.
What you see today is David Bryant in full beard and mustache wearing a khaki jail jumpsuit whose hair forms an untidy mass on his head that he refuses to cut as an act of protest until he's set free.
But Gladys Bryant, a longtime county employee, has three younger sisters who can't escape what happened and a mother who died without seeing justice.
In fact, the murder has so affected Gladys Bryant's youngest sister, Helen Davis, that she says she's on medication because she's afraid David Bryant is going to come after her. Before she goes to sleep, she blocks her front door with a wooden folding chair.
"I'm going through changes every time we have to go to court," she said. "My nerves are shot."
She said seeing him in court on Thursday sent chills up and down her spine.
She said her sister stayed with David Bryant as long as she did because she wanted more than anything for their three sons to have a father.
As soon as their youngest, Marcus, graduated high school, the two split up, said Eric Bryant.
But his father didn't take the separation well.
"He had no more control," he said. "You sleep with this lady for 27 years – it's gotta hurt."
But he said his father was selfish for killing his mother.
"The big question is why?" his aunt said. "Why was he so selfish? She had grandkids. She wanted to see her grandkids be raised. She wanted to see her sons graduate college."
What happened?
David Bryant's version of what happened the night of Sept. 4, 2002, in many ways is his unique reality.
While Bryant says he never meant to hurt his ex-wife, it's well-documented that Gladys Bryant feared for her life.
What he perceived as come-ons from his former wife, her family says were unwelcome stalking attempts.
"She acted like I wasn't supposed to be there," he said. "She said, ‘What are you doing here?'|"
He said he sat down across from her and took the gun out of his back pocket and placed it on a coffee table between them.
She said the two began to struggle for the gun during an argument. She held the barrel; he held the other end, and then suddenly, it went off, he said.
"She fell back on the sofa," he said. "Her eyes were still open."
David Bryant said he thought she was still alive, but before long, he said he realized she was hurt "because I noticed the blood."
"I got mad at myself," he said. Bryant said he became disoriented as he tried to leave her apartment. Police reports indicate her apartment was ransacked.
"I don't remember how I found my way out to go get help," he said.
Bryant said he went to his mother's house at Ninth and Orange streets.
"I had blood all over me," he said. "When my mom saw it, she freaked out too."
He said he remembers telling her that he hurt Gladys.
"I want to go to trial because I don't think I did intentionally hurt her," he said. "It was an unsane accident that happened."
When asked whether he meant to say "insane" instead of "unsane," Bryant said he meant "unsane."
"I hate myself sometimes," he said. "I know I wasn't at fault. This wasn't what I wanted. It just happened."
Veronica Gonzalez: 343-2008
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