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  #11  
Old 01-06-2005, 03:38 PM
Toro Toro is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

Not to nit pick, but your avatar's breasts are very veiny.
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  #12  
Old 01-06-2005, 03:40 PM
PhatTBoll PhatTBoll is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

[ QUOTE ]
Sucks. The government should get to use witnesses who lie under oath all they want. I don't know what the appeals court wsa thinking.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see how the TX supreme court lets this stand. It appears that there was just an offhand comment about a Law and Order episode on the witness stand, and that the jury was made aware of the error before they deliberated. There is no way you can call this "material".

Park Dietz is by far the most respected forensic psychologist in the land and has testified in almost every important multiple-murder case over the last 20 years. You can take it to the bank that he never meant to intentionally mislead the jury.
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  #13  
Old 01-06-2005, 03:43 PM
stabn stabn is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

It was on the news here last night. It's absolutely sickening.
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  #14  
Old 01-06-2005, 05:26 PM
LaggyLou LaggyLou is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

[ QUOTE ]
I don't see how the TX supreme court lets this stand. It appears that there was just an offhand comment about a Law and Order episode on the witness stand, and that the jury was made aware of the error before they deliberated. There is no way you can call this "material".

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, could you be any more misinformed?

(1) It was hardly an "offhand" comment. Dietz -- the only one of ten testifying psychiatrists to opine that Yates was legally sane -- testified that there had been a "Law&Order" episode on shortly before the crime in which a woman had drowned her children in the bathtub and had been found not guilty by reason of insanity. (NOTE: that Deitz is a consultant for L&E, which was before the jury) The prosecutors used this testimony plus evidence that Yates watched Law&Order to suggest in the closing that she had gotten the idea for the crime from the show, and, thus, knew it was wrong (i.e., she wasn't legally insane).

(2) The jury WAS NOT made aware of "the error" before it deliberated. Rather, the false testimony came to light only after the jury returned a guilty verdict but before the jury returned its death penalty verdict (10-2 against, IIRC).

[ QUOTE ]

Park Dietz is by far the most respected forensic psychologist in the land

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, the humanity. Dietz is by far the forensic psychologist with the best PR in the land. Aside from that, he's a professional witness (i.e., a hired gun). This time, he was hired by the prosecution (as he is in most of his cases). When he is hired by the defense, he sings a different tune. See, e.g., Deanna Laney.

So tell me, did you even read the court opinion you criticized?

I didn't think so.
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  #15  
Old 01-06-2005, 05:34 PM
wacki wacki is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

[ QUOTE ]
Sucks. The government should get to use witnesses who lie under oath all they want. I don't know what the appeals court wsa thinking.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you saying it's ok to lie under oath? This coming from a lawyer....
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  #16  
Old 01-06-2005, 05:43 PM
PhatTBoll PhatTBoll is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

I admit that I got my information from a different article that put things in a much more favorable light to the prosecution. It appears that you are right. Thanks for pointing out my errors and not being patronizing at all [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img].

I made the post right after I heard about the news and like a lot of people I was disturbed and annoyed by the decision. Quite honestly, I think a woman who kills her own children deserves to go to jail whether she was insane or not when she did the deed. She is clearly a danger to society.

As for your personal attacks against Dietz, there is usually a reason why certain experts become "hired guns" in well-publicized trials. I'll give you a hint, it's not because they tend to present testimony that is half-cocked or easily debunked. He f'ed up here, and his reputation will suffer for it, but he still played a big role in putting Dahmer, etc. behind bars.
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  #17  
Old 01-06-2005, 06:31 PM
LaggyLou LaggyLou is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

Ok, I apologize if my tone was patronizing. Being a lawyer and a former Court employee, I detest it when the media distort judicial decisions in their reporting, which was just about inevitable in this case. And I had no doubt that you had gotten the misinformation in your post from some media outlet, as you have confirmed.

Frankly, I was shocked to hear of the decision, as well, because (1) in high-profile cases the DA's office almost always has the resources to dot all the i's and cross all the t's so as to avoid reversible errors; and (2) this was a TEXAS appellate court -- the least defendant-friendly jurisdiction in the country.

Because of (2), I knew that whatever the reversible error was, it had to be pretty bad, which was contrary to number (1). So I read the opinion, available here.

Sure enough, it's pretty bad -- bad enough that I can't believe that the trail court didn't grant the motion for a mistrial. In fact, I doubt that even the Tex. Ct. Crim. Appeals will touch it. And, if they do, it would be an unreasonable application of constitutional law warranting federal habeas relief.

As for Dietz, I made no "personal attacks" on him. Professional witnesses are not necessarily bad scientists or bad people. But they are very, very seldom the "most respected" in their profession. The "most respected" people do not generally get in the muck of the court system. So, the "hint" you gave me aside, I'll rely on my years of experience in actually dealing with expert witnesses like Deitz to say that I seriously doubt that he is held in as high regard as your original post suggests.

That having been said, I do doubt that he _intentionally_ lied (whether he did so intentionally is irrelevant, BTW). That would be stupid, and he's obviously not stupid.

But he sure screwed the pooch this time.

So, care to disclose where you got your original information?
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  #18  
Old 01-06-2005, 07:12 PM
PhatTBoll PhatTBoll is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

I think it was a blurb in the local paper's or news station's website. One of the ones that gets updated as people figure out the details. Bleh, lesson learned.

I apologize also for my presumptuousness. I have a connection with Mr. Dietz (I have never actually met him), so maybe I let my bias shape my opinions. Perhaps a better description of him would be that he is by far the forensic psychologist most respected by the legal profession. Or was, at least. That is nothing to sneeze at, since I'm sure you will agree that many brilliant scientists and professionals would be horrible in a courtroom setting. By all accounts I have read, He has a talent for getting into the heads of murderers.

By the way, according to this he was hired by the prosecution in the Deanna Laney case: link . So maybe he's not such an automaton.
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  #19  
Old 01-06-2005, 11:01 PM
elwoodblues elwoodblues is offline
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Default Re: Anyone remember Andrea Yates?

I forgot to add the sarcasm tag because I thought it would be too painfully obvious.
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