Monday, September 22, 2003

Could the psychiatrist have been temporarily insane?

I came across this editorial on the psychiatrist in the Andrea Yates Case. He was found to have made up credentials, such as having been a consultant for the network TV show Law and Order.

I think I know why a grand jury declined Thursday to indict celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz for his spectacularly false testimony in the Andrea Yates trial. [...]

I think grand jurors saw something else.

Dietz, after all, makes a great witness or he wouldn't be able to charge the $50,000 he received for this case. Listening to him, grand jurors couldn't believe he would simply lie to put down a hostile defense attorney.

But if he didn't lie, there's only one other explanation.

His mind played tricks on him. That's right. He was temporarily insane. He didn't know right from wrong. It could happen to anyone, even a good-hearted psychiatrist.

And there is some good in Dietz's heart. For example, he doesn't always find murderers to be sane. He does in the vast majority of cases, or he wouldn't make so much money from prosecutors. But I found several examples of him finding defendants to be insane, even in cases where he was hired by the prosecution. So I do believe he has a conscience, and I have an idea for how he can assuage it.

That $50,000 he was paid? That happens to be almost exactly what the Yates family, already strapped from funding her defense, had to pay to obtain a trial transcript so she could appeal. For Dietz to pay for that transcript would be an ideal atonement, especially since his misstatement will be a central point of appeal.

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