Opinion ID: 37721
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence by the Defense

Text: Mrs. Shields testified that Shields had a close relationship with his family until two years after they moved to Colorado from Texas. At that point, Shields became withdrawn and did not get 10 along with his father. When the family moved back to Texas, Shields’s grades were average, and he was a typical fifteen-year old. Shields’s relationship with his family deteriorated after an arrest for theft. He began to associate with “undesirable” people and at times would disappear from home for a day or two. To ensure his graduation, the Shields decided to drop him off and to pick him up every day from high school. A month or two before graduation, however, Shields moved out of his parents’ home without notice. Shields returned only to inform his parents that he could not live by his father’s rules. When Shields left again, it was to Florida in a neighbor’s stolen car. Mrs. Shields arranged professional counseling for Shields in 1993, but he quit after three or four visits. Shields then refused to see another professional. By June 1994, Shields was no longer taking the anti-depressant medication that the St. Joseph’s doctor had prescribed, and his behavior deteriorated. Shields left his parents’ home for good in July 1994 to live in an abandoned house in the Woodlands. Mrs. Shields testified that in her opinion, Shields could not have murdered Mrs. Stiner unless Mrs. Stiner confronted him first. She also testified that she did not believe that he had entered the home with the intent to hurt Mrs. Stiner. On cross-examination, Mrs. Shields admitted that she and her husband had twice changed the locks on the house 11 to prevent Shields from breaking in and stealing. Clinical social worker Fran St. Peter performed a biopsychosocial assessment on Shields. St. Peter performed a three-hour assessment on Shields the night before her testimony and interviewed Shields’s mother, father, sister, and brother-inlaw. St. Peter testified that one of Shields’s close friends had been killed when Shields was eleven. The incident, she testified, traumatized him. The family’s move to Colorado then isolated him and caused him to withdraw. St. Peter testified that Shields’s first introduction to narcotics occurred when he was a thirteen- to fourteen-month old baby, when doctors prescribed medication to him to ease the pain after he burned himself. Shields tried Valium when he was eleven. St. Peter also testified that Shields had consumed alcohol continuously since the age of fourteen. By the age of seventeen, 70 to 75 per cent of Shields’s time related to procuring, using, or recovering from drugs and alcohol. St. Peter questioned the Shields’ attentiveness to their son and stated that the family essentially led separate lives. Dr. Fred Fason testified as to Shields’s alleged future dangerousness. He testified that a psychiatrist would need to perform a scientifically-based medical evaluation on an individual before making a diagnosis of future dangerousness. He 12 also stated that the American Psychiatric Society has recommended that its members not testify as to future dangerousness because no test has demonstrated that these opinions are scientifically valid. Responding to a hypothetical question that traced the facts of Paula Stiner’s murder, Dr. Fason admitted that his diagnostic impression was that “he’s a sociopath or antisocial personality disorder.” Dr. James Marquart, a professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston University and a sociologist, testified as to study results that show that the majority of former death row inmates in the general prison population do not commit acts of violence in the prison any more than any other prison inmate. Dr. Marquart testified that it is difficult to predict accurately future dangerousness based solely on the offense committed. Perry Evans and Jose Lozano, employees of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department, testified that Shields was involved in four instances of jail misbehavior in over a year. Although officials had classified Shields as a minimum security inmate, they based this classification on Shields’s representations that he had no prior criminal record, no chemical dependency problem, and lived at his family home. While in jail awaiting trial, Shields was involved in a fight, was in an unauthorized area, and destroyed, altered, or damaged county property or the property of 13 another. After hearing both the State’s and the defense’s evidence, the jury answered the special issue question of future dangerousness in the affirmative and recommended death.