JURORS LOOK INSIDE ACCUSED'S BRAIN

By Jonathan Jenkins Staff Writer

  Doctors took jurors on a tour of the mind of accused drug trafficker
George Hardy yesterday, complete with maps of the electrical activity in
his brain.

 Hardy, 52, was caught redhanded trying to sell four ounces of heroin to
an undercover cop in May 1993 but testified earlier in the trial he did so
under the deluded belief he was working for the RCMP.

 Psychiatrist Dr. Pierre FlorHenry called the former defence lawyer a
"classic case of amphetamine psychosis." Hardy's epilepsy and narcolepsy
alone would predispose him to the paranoia, hallucinations and delusions of
amphetamine psychosis, FlorHenry told defence lawyer Hersh Wolch.

 On top of that, he was popping about 120 mg of amphetamines a day, when as
little as 40 mg can cause the psychosis, he said.

 FlorHenry also showed the 10woman, twoman jury electroencephalogram
maps of Hardy's brain, showing the epileptic abnormality in his left
hemisphere.

 Hardy has said he was trying to work a reverse sting and catch a drug
dealer so he could banish hallucinatory visits from his dead mother.

 Racked by guilt over her 1986 suicide, Hardy was haunted by her and an
imaginary Mountie named Scott Turner.

 FlorHenry said he's certain amphetamines and not schizophrenia caused
Hardy's psychosis because the hallucinations have cleared up since he quit
taking the drugs.

 Under crossexamination by Crown prosecutor Larry Ackerl, FlorHenry
agreed that his diagnosis depended entirely on Hardy honestly recounting
both his drug use and his hallucinations from 1993.

 "By the time Mr. Hardy told me about working for the police, he had
retrospective insight," FlorHenry said. "He knew well by then it was wrong."

 Earlier, psychologist Paul Sussman, who has seen Hardy off and on since
1985, told jurors how amphetamines work in the chemical pathways of the
brain.

 Chronic use can mean normal brain chemistry takes three years to reassert
itself, Sussman said.

 He's now treating Hardy with hypnosis, encouraging him to talk to his dead
mother while undergoing the therapy.