Audit Finds Physicians Are Overpaid as Witnesses

A county auditor’s report indicates that the Los Angeles Municipal Court system is overpaying two physicians and a laboratory testing service for expert-witness testimony and urine analysis on behalf of indigent persons accused of being under the influence of drugs.

The auditor’s report, the second in recent days to criticize the county-run Municipal Court system for excessive expenditures, estimates that $800,000 annually could be saved if court practices were changed.

The report was circulated among court officials last month and made available to The Times Thursday.

Although it makes no charges of wrongdoing, the report recommends that the two physicians return $52,000 in overpayments for cases in which the defendants, all represented by the public defender’s office, apparently pleaded guilty and the doctors did not testify.

The report suggests that the two doctors--both psychiatrists specializing in forensic psychology and the study of drug abuse--be replaced by less-expensive experts: physician assistants, nurses, retired police officers specializing in narcotics investigations and others with similar backgrounds.

The two Los Angeles doctors named in the report were Ronald Markman and Donald Trockman. Markman could not be reached for comment, but Trockman described himself and Markman to United Press International as “two of the highest trained doctors in the field. There are only about 150 in the nation and 15 or 20 in the county,” he said.

“Which would you want?” Trockman asked. “A nurse defending your case or the best possible person?” Trockman characterized his and Markman’s testimony for the defendants as “really their only chance. There’s not much you can do when a policeman says, ‘This guy was intoxicated on PCP.’ That means jail. You’re not talking about something where the guy just walks away.”

He said his bills to the court were comparable to those most doctors would charge.

In 1983, Markman and Trockman received almost 75% of the total expert-witness payments made at the Los Angeles Municipal Court and all of the payments for medical expert-witness testimony in drug cases at the court, the report said. The total payments to Markman in 1984 were $447,490 and to Trockman $255,169, the report stated.

The investigation by the auditor’s office was prompted by a large increase in the amount spent for expert witnesses in recent years and was requested by the Board of Supervisors last September.

It comes on the heels of a similar investigation by the auditor that showed three court-appointed defense lawyers collected more than $900,000 in fees during a 15-month period. Apparent irregularities uncovered by that report spurred the county Board of Supervisors to ask the district attorney’s office to investigate.

The auditor’s report on expert witnesses puts much of the blame for rising costs for such witnesses on public defenders and judges working in the Central Arraignments Court in downtown Los Angeles and the Van Nuys branch.

“Public defender personnel had been requesting and the court had given blanket approval for expert witnesses on every . . . case,” it said.

In some cases, defendants were examined twice, effectively doubling the cost to taxpayers, according to the auditor’s investigators.

The report also said the cost of urinalysis for the cases handled in 1984 was too high--$55 a sample--and that $179,000 could be saved if the court had contracted with the same laboratory that handles Probation Department testing at $16 a test.

The auditor’s report was circulated among county officials last month, and in a response dated Jan. 7, Public Defender Wilbur F. Littlejohn made these points:

- Expert witnesses are needed for the defense in cases of alleged drug use where those charged could serve anywhere from 30 to 90 days in jail.

- His office will no longer automatically consult the expert physicians, but will consider their use only on a case-by-case basis.

- He has no objection to the use of non-physicians as expert witness for the defense.

- In regard to the appointment of the doctors as expert witnesses in cases where guilty pleas were entered at the arraignments and the physicians did not testify, “an overwhelming number” of the public defenders had consulted with the doctors beforehand.

- In some cases, what appears to be duplicate doctor’s appointments for the same defendant are explained by the fact that the defendant was placed on probation or transferred to a diversion program and then later returned to court on a charge of using drugs; the defendant would then, by necessity, be examined twice. In other cases, the first doctor might not be available at the time of trial and the second called in.

Malcolm H. Mackey, presiding judge of the Municipal Court, in a response dated Jan. 10, agreed with most of the auditor’s recommendations and said “blanket approval of requests for (expert witness) appointments has stopped.”