Opinion ID: 2159325
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Was the defendant prejudiced by the exclusion of the testimony of the psychiatric social worker on the defense of diminished capacity?

Text: In support of his mental defense at the guilt phase of the trial, defendant offered the testimony of Diana Aviv, a psychiatric social worker who had interviewed him on fourteen occasions prior to trial for a total of approximately twenty-five hours. Aviv had completed undergraduate and graduate studies in social work, graduating from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa and obtaining a masters degree from Columbia University. At the time of the trial, Ms. Aviv was director of the National Council of Jewish Women of New York and was engaged part-time in a private practice specializing in marital and family therapy. Previously, she had served as the clinical director of a domestic violence clinic in Bergen County where she was responsible for the clinical assessment, diagnosis and review of all cases [approximately 1,000] that came to the agency as well as the treatment plans of every single case. Aviv is nationally certified and is licensed in New York; she serves on a number of advisory boards and belongs to a number of professional associations. She has presented a number of professional papers on the topics of violence, alcohol, and child abuse. Aviv has also trained social workers, psychiatric interns, police officers, and secondary and college students. She had previously testified as an expert in two New Jersey cases involving domestic violence: in a child abuse trial, she was not asked to diagnose that defendant's mental condition or to express an opinion on that defendant's intent; her testimony in a prior murder case concerned the question of whether the defendant suffered from battered women's syndrome. A Rule 8 hearing was held to determine whether Aviv was qualified to give a diagnostic evaluation of defendant's mental state at the time of the murder. Aviv testified that psychiatric social workers are qualified to make assessments of an individual's present and past emotional health because they are trained to understand how personal and environmental factors shape behavior. She also distinguished psychiatric social workers from other mental health professionals: psychiatrists' specialty lies in their examination of the biomedical and pharmacological factors causing mental disease, while psychologists are specially qualified to administer psychological tests to analyze mental health. Defendant argued that Aviv was qualified under Evid.R. 56 to give a diagnostic evaluation of defendant's mental state at the time of the murder and that the State was free to cross-examine her on any perceived weaknesses in her credibility. The State countered that the role of the psychiatric social worker is not so much as diagnostician but as one who administers care to the mentally ill. After hearing arguments, the trial court ruled that Aviv was not qualified to testify as an expert during the guilt phase of the trial. The court reasoned that in light of other expert testimony produced by defendant, Aviv's testimony would have confused rather than assisted the jury. Defendant argues that the preclusion of Aviv's testimony impeded the search for truth, thereby violating his constitutional rights to compulsory process and to present a defense. Citing State v. Briley, 53 N.J. 498, 506 (1969), and Evid.R. 7, defendant contends that the exclusion of Aviv's testimony at the guilt phase violated the presumption that an expert's competency should be regarded as the rule and incompetency as the exception. ( Evid.R. 7 deals, however, with general abolition of disqualification privileges and exclusionary rules, and not the qualifications of expert witnesses.) Expert testimony is admissible under Evid.R. 56(2) if such testimony will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or determine a fact in issue. If expert testimony is otherwise competent under Evid.R. 56, the fact that it may embrace the ultimate issue does not render it incompetent. Evid.R. 56(3). In State v. Kelly, 97 N.J. 178, 208 (1984), we held that Evid.R. 56(2) imposes three basic requirements for the admission of expert testimony: (1) the intended testimony must concern a subject matter that is beyond the ken of the average juror; (2) the field testified to must be at a state of the art such that an expert's testimony could be sufficiently reliable; and (3) the witness must have sufficient expertise to offer the intended testimony. No reported New Jersey cases discuss the competence of psychiatric social workers as expert witnesses, and only two decisions mention the testimony of psychiatric social workers without questioning it. See Beck v. Beck, 86 N.J. 480, 492 (1981) (testimony at trial in joint custody case); Fusco v. Fusco, 186 N.J. Super. 321, 324 (App.Div. 1982) (evaluation of five-year-old girl whose imprisoned father was seeking visitation rights). Defendant urges, however, that the great weight of authorities in other jurisdictions favors admissibility. See State v. McDonald, 89 Wash. 2d 256, 268, 571 P. 2d 930, 936-37 (Wash. 1977) (psychiatric social worker permitted to testify to defendant's sanity where rules permit lay opinion on insanity and expert had clinical background and close contact with defendant). Courts have also admitted the testimony of psychiatric social workers when that testimony remained within the experts' areas of specialization. See In the Interest of C.W. and B.W., 342 N.W. 2d 885, 887 (Iowa Ct. App. 1983) (psychiatric social worker with six years experience in child psychiatry competent to testify in termination of parental rights setting). However, because psychiatric diagnoses are generally outside the competence of psychiatric social workers, appellate courts have sustained the discretion of trial courts that excluded such testimony. State v. Baucom, 28 Or. App. 757, 561 P. 2d 641 (Or. Ct. App. 1977); see also Wilburn v. State, 289 Ark. 224, 227, 711 S.W. 2d 760, 761 (Ark. 1986) (determination that social worker was not qualified to diagnose defendant's mental condition held not to be an abuse of discretion); Wisehart v. State, 484 N.E. 2d 949, 954 (Ind. 1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1189, 106 S.Ct. 2929, 91 L.Ed. 2d 556 (1986) (trial court in capital case did not abuse its discretion in sustaining prosecutor's objection to defense question asking treatment-diagnostics specialist to diagnose the specific mental disease from which Defendant was suffering.). In this case, the trial court applied the correct legal principles in evaluating the expert's competence to aid the jury. In its view, Dr. Aviv's special competence lay more in the treatment than the diagnosis of mental disease or defect. Our determination that defendant's right to present a defense was not unfairly circumscribed by the exclusion of Aviv's testimony during the guilt phase is bolstered by the fact that better-qualified mental health experts for the defense presented thorough and competent analyses of defendant's mental state at the time of the murder. We add a note of caution, however, that in capital cases trial courts must be especially mindful of the stakes involved. Had defendant been denied the defense of diminished capacity or precluded from introducing any expert testimony on his mental state at the time of the murder, the court's discretion to exclude such evidence would have been severely tested. However, such was not the case here.