Opinion ID: 2365387
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dr Kenneth Weiss

Text: Dr. Weiss, the defense psychiatrist who testified at Nelson's penalty trial, met with defendant five times between 1995 and 1997, and reviewed her records. According to Dr. Weiss, defendant suffered from the following mental illnesses and disorders: (1) dysthemia, a long-standing depression, which was a major depression at the time of the murders; (2) a sexual identity disturbance, hating the gender into which she was born; and (3) adjustment disorder, which is an acute disturbance... that happens in a short period of time due to something happening to an individual. In Nelson's case, Dr. Weiss concluded that Nelson suffered particularly from adjustment disorder during the events prior to the murders. Dr. Weiss testified that the sixth and seventh factors offered in mitigation were true. As noted, those factors were that defendant has a long history of mental illness and psychological problems that contributed to her conduct on the day of the murders, and that defendant's psychological and psychiatric makeup made her susceptible to an emotional breakdown and loss of judgment and reason on the day of the murders. The threat of taking away her guns and of going to jail, where she could not keep up her appearance as a woman, caused an emotional breakdown that affected Nelson's ability to reason. Weiss believed that she was at the point of suicide on the day of the murders. He stated that the loss of control attributable to Nelson's mental illness that occurred during the McLaughlin murder continued through to the Norcross murder. Weiss' opinion was that defendant should not have been allowed to have the sex reassignment surgery because she was not a classic transsexual; she did not feel like a woman trapped in a man's body. She hated her body and wanted, for some reason, to excite men. He testified that if a person is mentally ill, it calls into question whether that person is choosing surgery for the right reasons. Weiss also testified that defendant treated her guns as if they were her children. The psychiatrist testified that it is typical of those diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder to develop such attachments to inanimate objects. [2] Such people are not well equipped to deal with stress because they lack a mature self-understanding or mature adaptations. Dr. Weiss estimated that defendant's global functioning at the time of the murders was at about forty out of a hundred, which he described as basically a failing grade ... in living.