Defense Derides Psychiatrist as a Witness-for-Hire

Dr. Park Dietz, a California psychiatrist, is a legend in law enforcement circles. He is a specialist in a strange niche market that involves telling corporations how to prevent mass workplace killings and celebrities how to avoid obsessed fans.

He has, said fellow forensic psychiatrist Steven Pitt, “no peer in our business.”

But attorneys for Andrea Yates, the Texas woman who confessed to drowning her five children, derided Dietz on Thursday as a “spin doctor” whose opinions were for sale, after his false testimony led an appellate court to throw out her murder convictions.

Dietz was paid at least $50,000 to testify that Yates understood right from wrong -- and could, therefore, be convicted. His testimony about an episode of the television drama “Law & Order” -- an episode he said bore an eerie resemblance to Yates’ case, though it never existed -- prompted the court’s move Thursday.

Dietz, 56, heads two firms, Park Dietz & Associates, a group of forensic experts, and Threat Assessment Group, which teaches workplace violence prevention. (One of the latter’s clients is Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times.) He has been a professor at UCLA since the late 1980s.

He has worked on about 1,000 court cases, by his estimate, including those of John Hinckley Jr., who tried to kill President Reagan; Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed 17 men and boys; and Susan Smith, who strapped her sons into car seats and rolled the vehicle into a lake, then blamed their deaths on a mythical dark-skinned kidnapper.

In almost every case, Dietz was a paid witness for the prosecution.

In an interview at his two-story home on Newport Harbor, Dietz called his false testimony a “source attribution error.”

“But it’s an error,” he said. “If my mistake did influence this case, it should be corrected. There’s no villainy in that.”

Dietz said that if he had any bias in the case, it was “compassion for Andrea Yates.”

“I thought it was so tragic this woman was convicted under Texas law merely because she knew [that what she did] was wrong,” he said. “She was very sick.”

Those who have seen Dietz in action describe him as dashing and articulate. Daucie Shefman, the attorney who wrote Yates’ appeal, said Yates’ lawyers shuddered when they learned he would testify.

“He’s good. He’s real good,” Shefman said. “But this shows something about his character.”

The problem, said Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School in New York, who has done extensive research on Dietz’s testimony, is that he has become a professional witness.

He acknowledged during the Yates case that he had not seen any patients of his own since the early 1980s.

“His credentials to testify are, in large part, that he has testified before,” Denno said.

“It’s circular.”

Alan Curry, Harris County assistant district attorney, said Dietz was a fine witness in the Yates case, and even some whom Dietz has battled in court defend his honor.

Gerald Boyle, a Milwaukee defense lawyer, represented Dahmer, who kept severed heads in his refrigerator.

Boyle watched in disbelief as Dietz declared Dahmer sane.

“I didn’t agree,” Boyle said. “But that doesn’t change the nature of the man. There’s nothing I saw that would cause me to question his integrity.”

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Gold reported from Houston and Gottlieb from Newport Beach. Times staff researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this report.