Opinion ID: 844286
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Rebuttals

Text: The prosecutor called a number of witnesses on rebuttal. Eugene Luna, Jr., the coworker of Ivan‘s who had an affair with defendant, testified that she had initiated the 23 encounter. He had seen defendant throw a plate at Ivan on one occasion, and from his observations of their relationship he believed defendant ―had the upper hand.‖ Luna also related an incident when defendant, intoxicated after a party, threw a temper tantrum in a parked car with Ivan, Luna, and some of the Gonzales children present. Defendant was screaming incoherently and kicking the dashboard. Neither Ivan nor Luna could calm her down, and witnesses called the police, who took defendant into custody. Luna‘s father testified. He had socialized with defendant and Ivan over a period of four or five years, and he also deemed defendant the ―boss of the apartment.‖ He had seen her hit Ivan in the mouth. She would tell Ivan what to do, and he would usually do it. If he did not, she would curse at him and push him. The wife of the grocery store owner who visited the apartment on the day of the murder testified that she had seen defendant and Ivan in the store together about eight times. Defendant seemed to be in charge of the relationship; she told Ivan what kind of cigarettes he could buy, and he would stand behind her watching the children. Rosemarie Price, a childhood friend of defendant‘s who was Ivan‘s cousin, testified that she had introduced Ivan to defendant. On one occasion, defendant had shown Price some papers relating to her molestation claim against her stepfather. Defendant did not seem embarrassed, and snickered when Price asked why she had not told her about it before. Lorena Peevler was a friend of Ivan‘s, with whom defendant and Ivan had lived for a period of months in 1990 or 1991. Peevler said the two fought a lot. Defendant blamed the conflict on Ivan‘s mother. Defendant would push and scratch at Ivan and threaten to leave; he would not retaliate and pleaded with her to stay. After they moved, Peevler visited defendant and they talked. She did not complain about abuse by Ivan. Peevler felt defendant was the boss of the relationship. Ivan‘s sisters, Patricia Andrade and Guadalupe Baltazar, testified to the same effect. Baltazar had visited the apartment in early July, and saw the burn on Genny‘s head. Genny had no other scars at that time. 24 Mark Mills, a forensic psychiatrist, testified for the prosecution. The court had ordered defendant to submit to an evaluation by Dr. Mills. She refused on the advice of counsel, as the jury had learned during her testimony. Dr. Mills had reviewed the videotaped interviews of defendant, and transcripts of her trial testimony. He offered no clinical or forensic opinion, but gave his opinion on three issues. First, Mills said the fact that defendant faced the death penalty provided a motive for malingering, i.e., a conscious attempt to deceive psychological evaluators about her mental state. Second, he opined that if defendant had posttraumatic stress disorder, it did not interfere with her ability to perceive reality or vitiate her free will. Finally, Mills believed the inconsistencies in defendant‘s various accounts of events in her life made it impossible to reliably conclude that she had posttraumatic stress disorder. Defendant did submit to an evaluation by the other mental health expert called by the prosecution, Nancy Kaser-Boyd. Kaser-Boyd, a psychologist, met with defendant over the course of two days for around 15 hours, seven of which were spent on testing. Defendant communicated well and Kaser-Boyd estimated her intelligence as ―certainly average and probably above average.‖ Defendant‘s test results were inconsistent with those usually obtained from battered women, and consistent with those of a subject who is exaggerating her symptoms. Kaser-Boyd reviewed the second MMPI test given by Ryan, the defense psychologist, going over the answers with defendant and making corrections. On this test, which showed some exaggerated features but was within the range of a valid profile, defendant‘s scores were elevated in categories reflecting a tendency to act out angrily in socially unacceptable and irrational ways. This was not the typical profile of battered women. Kaser-Boyd testified that defendant‘s account of Ivan‘s spousal abuse did not approach the level of violence at which women are immobilized by terror and unable to come to the aid of an abused child. Kaser-Boyd found it difficult to say whether defendant did suffer from battered woman syndrome, due to her tendency to exaggerate 25 and to give inconsistent accounts of the traumatic events in her life. Kaser-Boyd found it ―completely illogical‖ to conclude that defendant had been protecting Ivan in her statements to the police, when she implicated both him and herself in Genny‘s abuse. Kaser-Boyd agreed with Ryan that defendant suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. She deemed it a complex, chronic form of the disorder that could have resulted from defendant‘s childhood experiences alone, though being a battered woman might have contributed. On surrebuttal, the defense called another expert psychologist, Thomas Mac Speiden. He had given defendant an intelligence test and a reading achievement test. Defendant‘s intelligence was in the low average range, and her reading ability was that of a beginning eighth grader. The tests given by Ryan and reviewed by Kaser-Boyd required an eighth grade reading level. Mac Speiden believed the profile derived by Kaser-Boyd from the second MMPI test was flawed because she had only reviewed certain answers with defendant. Mac Speiden found the validity of this test highly questionable. He also believed Hispanics were underrepresented during the test standardization process, so that the results might reflect a cultural bias.