Opinion ID: 3166086
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: McKinney’s Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Text: Dr. Mickey McMahon, a psychologist, made a formal diagnosis of PTSD resulting from the horrific childhood McKinney had suffered. Before arriving at his diagnosis, Dr. McMahon had spent eight and a half hours with McKinney, talking to him and administering a battery of tests. He had also spoken with Susan for an hour and with Diana for half an hour. Finally, Dr. McMahon had listened to Susan and Diana’s testimony in court before providing his own testimony. When asked, “[D]o you have any doubts about your diagnosis of James McKinney having Post-traumatic Stress Disorder?” Dr. McMahon answered, “No. None.” Dr. McMahon testified that his diagnosis of PTSD rested not only on the abuse that McKinney himself had suffered. He testified, “We know in research that witnessing can be even more damaging than actually being the recipient of abuse. . . . [T]here is a helplessness that is involved when you’re witnessing . . . violence and you’re too small to do anything about it.” When asked whether “violence upon his sisters and brother would be . . . more traumatic to him possibly than himself,” Dr. McMahon answered, “Yes.” Dr. McMahon testified that his interview with McKinney “had gone into great depth about him witnessing Dian[]a being abused and beaten by her stepmother.” 16 MCKINNEY V. RYAN Dr. McMahon testified that McKinney’s PTSD was characterized by “flashbacks,” by “some sort of voidness, numbing, withdrawing,” and by “substance abuse.” The substances were “generally downers, opiates in prison, alcohol, marijuana.” Dr. McMahon characterized McKinney as “basically passive,” “quite submissive,” and “susceptible to manipulation, exploitation.” “He can be emotionally overwhelmed by environmental stress and act in poorlyjudged ways just to [re]duce the internal emotional turmoil.” “He does not present [i]n the testing [as someone] who is . . . manipulative, sensation- or thrill-seeking, and we know often that people that get involved with violent kinds of crime are thrill-seeking sociopaths. These results do not look like that. It looks the opposite of that, since these tests are pretty much consistent. He is a lo[]ner; depressed.” When asked whether someone with PTSD would “suffer . . . constantly” from it, or whether it “may rear its head under certain situations,” Dr. McMahon responded that for someone with PTSD “there is the potential for the trauma to be retriggered, if things happen that are similar to what happened when you’re originally traumatized.” When asked about the Mertens burglary and murder, Dr. McMahon testified that if an altercation had taken place between Ms. Mertens and another person (not necessarily McKinney), it could “very possib[ly]” have “re-triggered” McKinney’s trauma and could have produced “diminished capacity.” When asked about the McClain burglary and murder, Dr. McMahon testified that it would have been very uncharacteristic of McKinney to have shot a sleeping person. “Mr. McKinney’s test[] results, in the more than eight hours I spent with him, did not indicate that he was that thrillseeking kind of, execution-kind of person. He’d rather MCKINNEY V. RYAN 17 withdraw from the situation.” Shooting a sleeping person “would be the exact opposite of what I would expect from Mr. McKinney.” Dr. Steven Gray, also a psychologist, testified for the prosecution. In preparation for his testimony, Dr. Gray had reviewed two presentence reports, a report prepared by Dr. McMahon, the raw data and results of tests performed by Dr. McMahon, and McKinney’s school records. He had also interviewed McKinney in jail, in the company of one of his lawyers, for “an hour, hour-and-a-half.” Dr. Gray had not spoken with Susan, Diana, or other family members. Dr. Gray testified, “I don’t think there’s enough evidence or diagnostic materials or work that’s been done to conclusively diagnose [McKinney] as having Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.” Dr. Gray’s “tentative or provisional diagnosis” was “Antisocial Personality Disorder.”