Opinion ID: 833872
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Testimony of Defense Mental Health Experts

Text: Three mental health experts testified that defendant was legally insane. Only one of those experts, Dr. Heffner, specialized in forensic psychology. The other two mental health experts specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry and general psychiatry. Both Dr. Dhanu Mahesh and Dr. Curt Cunningham candidly acknowledged having no expertise in forensic psychology. Ignoring this weakness, the Court of Appeals emphasized the number of defense experts. The Court ignored outright the prosecutor's effective cross-examination that discredited these experts' views  testimony that the jury heard and heeded. For example, when defense counsel asked whether defendant could tell the difference between right and wrong, Dr. Mahesh responded, [T]hat can be at so many different levels, you know, so I don't know how to answer that. The prosecutor also questioned how Drs. Mahesh and Cunningham could opine about defendant's mental state at the time of incident when they did not see her until after her arrest. The prosecutor specifically asked Dr. Cunningham how he could offer a professional opinion regarding insanity even though you don't know any of the details of the crime and how she was acting in that crime beyond what was told to you by defendant and her husband. Dr. Heffner admitted that she would never make a determination of someone's legal responsibility without first reviewing the police report or some third-party's source that described the incident. Notably, Drs. Mahesh and Cunningham were impeached because they did not review the police report or any third-party accounts of the incident. They relied only on defendant's and her husband's accounts of what transpired. Thus, the prosecutor effectively discredited this defense testimony. The prosecutor also elicited testimony that neither Dr. Cunningham nor Dr. Heffner compensated for the probability that defendant, as a veteran attorney, understood better than the general population the difference between a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity and a verdict of guilty but mentally ill. Dr. Heffner acknowledged that among the approximately 100 individuals that she evaluates each year, only two or three percent of them were highly educated professionals. Nevertheless, Dr. Heffner could not recall whether she spoke to defendant about the conceptual difference between a verdict of guilty but mentally ill and not guilty by reason of insanity in light of defendant's professional background. Moreover, the prosecutor repeatedly questioned the defense experts regarding whether defendant could have eluded the police when she was suffering symptoms of mental illness, and only after a triggering event, such as crashing into the officer's vehicle or being arrested, did she suffer a full manic episode that rendered her legally insane. The prosecutor elicited testimony that none of the defense experts could specify when defendant's mental state crossed the line from mental illness to legal insanity. Significantly, Dr. Heffner could not opine about the exact moment defendant became legally insane: Q. All right. Can you say with any sort of certainty when the Defendant lost her ability to be sane? A. At the exact moment? Q. Yes. A. Certainly I could not. Q. How do you know it didn't happen in the middle of the chase? How do you know that [sic, the] first decision she made to flee and elude the police was not made when she was sane? A. (No response.) Q. You can't answer that question? A. I cannot answer that. The prosecutor reiterated the importance of Dr. Heffner's inability to answer questions regarding the temporal shift between mental illness and legal insanity during his closing argument, stating: So there's this sort of undulation like this of mania, and the doctor said some certain point you reach the point where you're insane about this line. In other parts you're still manic but not insane. All right? So I asked the doctor, Tell me at what point she reached insanity along this continuum, Dr. Heffner; can you answer that question? And her answer to that question was, I cannot say. She has not given you enough of an informed opinion in order for you to find by a preponderance of the evidence that at the time of the crime the defendant was legally insane. Having carefully reviewed the record, I conclude that the Court of Appeals wrongly emphasized the number of experts testifying on defendant's behalf instead of the nature and quality of their testimony.