Strangler sees self as 'scum', psychiatrist says
PICKENS -- As a boy, Jerry Buck Inman was sexually abused by an alcoholic father who later abandoned him.
His mother, a paranoid schizophrenic with violent mood swings, didn't protect him.
By age 10, Inman was doing drugs. In his teen years, he was running away from home and living on the streets. By 19, he had been convicted of raping a Tampa, Fla., woman and a male inmate.
That's the picture a psychiatrist portrayed Tuesday in explaining Inman's long, violent history that culminated in the 2006 rape-strangulation of 20-year-old Clemson University student Tiffany Souers.
"He feels shame and guilt about this rape and murder," said Dr. David Price, a Greenville forensic psychiatrist who was the first defense witness in the sentencing phase of Inman's death penalty case.
"He thinks of himself as scum that the death penalty would be appropriate for what he had done," Price testified.
Several more defense experts are expected to testify today.
Prosecutors rested their case earlier Tuesday with the testimony of the doctor who performed the autopsy on Souers.
Circuit Judge Ned Miller will decide whether to sentence Inman, who pleaded guilty last month to killing Souers, to death or life in prison without parole. Inman's attorneys have asked Miller to impose a life sentence.
The 37-year-old Tennessee man had wanted a jury to decide his fate, but Miller earlier rejected that request.
Inman often looked away Tuesday during a slide presentation showing a computerized model of the strangulation wounds. But he appeared to listen closely to Price's testimony, conferring with his lawyers and taking notes.
Souers' parents, Jim and Bren Souers, who live in the St. Louis area, were not present during the autopsy testimony but listened later to Price's testimony.
Attempted suicide seven times
Inman suffered for years from a number of mood and personality disorders, including severe depression, Price testified, basing his opinion on prison records he reviewed and interviews with Inman and others.
He said Inman attempted suicide seven times -- six times while in prison, including an episode in which he swallowed barbed wire or fence wire.
But Inman, who served about 18 years in Florida and North Carolina prisons for rape, also is a serial rapist, Price testified. Inman is charged with raping a Tennessee woman and attempting to rape an Alabama woman in the days before Souers was raped and strangled.
Price said Inman's crimes likely stemmed from his genetic makeup, as well as his fixation on his earlier childhood abuse.
Bob Ariail, the 13th Circuit solicitor for Greenville and Pickens counties, took issue with that theory.
"He chose to kill Tiffany Souers, so he has the ability to make choices," Ariail said.
Dr. Erik Christensen, the former assistant chief medical examiner for Greenville County, testified Tuesday the bikini top used to strangle Souers was twisted so tightly around her neck that it caused a permanent indentation of "at least a half an inch, possibly more."
This story was originally published September 10, 2008 at 1:06 AM with the headline "Strangler sees self as 'scum', psychiatrist says."