Dr Park Dietz: Dangerous minds
August 16, 2006
Excerpted ~
As America's leading forensic psychiatrist, Dr Park Dietz puts killers behind bars. Now he has another role, making TV crime dramas. He tells Andrew Gumbel why mixing fact and fiction can be deadly serious
He has been profiled in all sorts of magazines and for the past several years has been a consultant on the cop show Law & Order and its offshoot Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which has just started airing a new season in Britain. (The character of Detective Robert Goren, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, is based on Dietz, and they share what Dietz describes as an "idiot savant knowledge of obscure things that pop up in the relation to crimes".) Full article.
18 Comments:
And, Dietz is the "expert' who testified that Andrea Yates drowned her five children after she saw a Law and Order episode where a woman did just that and got off by mental defect. In reality, no such Law and Order episode was ever shown, but his "expertless" testimony convinced the first jury that Ms. Yates did methodically plan the drownings of her children thinking she would be found not guilty by reason of mental defect - or whatever that term is in Texas. Dietz's error got Ms. Yates a new trial, and she was convicted by reason of mental defect and will now do her time in a facility appropriate to her condition.
Now, just as I'm reading through his concerns with media saturation perpetuating like-crimes and am thinking 'I like this guy!'; I get to the part about his seeing danger in the association of violence with sexual titillation: This is exactly what pissed me off with Strange Days other films with graphic rape and murder, or just rape, scenes to the point of my carrying the anger around with me way back when and still bothers me on a less visceral level today. At this point, I'm thinking I love this guy!!! (... now back to reading the article...)
na
ooo, js - I didn't follow the Yates case, so I completely missed that whole situation. Just googled and came across an article around the new trial and false testimony on CNN.com. No matter if someone wants to debate whether she was or wasn't insane at the time of the murders, that's just terrible.
na
Bobby, based on this jackass? Highly unlikely.
Well, whatever his expert testimony record looks lile, I have to admire the doc's integrity re not wanting tv shows to educate criminals to be better criminals.
Kinda funny he says a tv crime plot doesn't have to be 'plausible', just possible....and some CI storylines have stretched even that..ahem, Nicole Wallace episodes.
Even funnier was his referring to 'Goren', and himself, as sharing an 'idiot savant knowledge' of arcane info...Goren's treasure trove of Jeopardy answers hasn't been all that outragous - he probably wouldn't last a week on the show.
What I'd like to know is what shrink, cop, or German Shepherd Goren's nose took after..it's that sense of smell so acute he can detect Nike vs Reebok rubber off one sniff of a blade of grass that amazes me, not his mastery of Trivial Pursuit cards.
Neat article!
js completly misrepresents what happened in the Yates trial. Dietz NEVER testified that Yates committed her crimes after seeing an episode of L & O about a woman killing her kids and getting away with it.
In the original trial, it had previosuly been established by other witnesses that Yates regularly watched L & O. Then Dietz testified for the prosecution as to Yates' state of mind -- his opinion was that, UNDER TEXAS LAW, she was not criminally insane. Then, on cross-examination, the defense attorney jumped on the fact that Dietz was a consultant for L & O, and started asking Dietz if there had ever been an episode where a mother killed her children. Dietz said (correctly) that there had been. The lawyer kept asking Dietz if there had ever been an episode that resembled the Yates murder. Finally Dietz said (erroneously) that there had been a episode where a woman drowned her kids and claimed insanity (in fact there'd been an episode where a woman threw her kid in an incinerator and then claimed God had told her to do it).
A few days later, Dietz realized his error and informed the prosecutor. Dietz even sent the prosecutor a letter stipulating he'd made a mistake, and he wanted the prosecutor to inform the judge of his error. But the prosecutor refused to do so. Then, at sentencing, it was the prosecutor who, despite knowing of Dietz's error, argued that Yates had watched this non-existent episode of L & O before planning her murder.
Those are the facts. Dietz made an error and tried to correct it. The prosecutor ignored him and then argued Yates had seen the episode and used it to plan her murder.
And by the way, Balcer himself has said that he based Goren on Dietz.
interesting Maigret...what went down in that trial, I mean.
I have also seen numerous references and articles about Goren being based on Dietz..but exactly how much the doc figured in Vincent's creation, well, I'd only 'trust' the actor on.
(and my guess is Goren is 99.9% VD'O)
Whether Dietz corrected himself or not didn't help Ms. Yates. The jury never heard about his correction.
I'm not saying that based on one error that Dietz is a bad person or doctor. All I'm saying is that he did make a mistake that cost Ms. Yates dearly. That has now been corrected.
Thank you, maigret... Should have known better than to stop looking for corroboration after reading just the one news story! I stopped shy of making a personal judgment against Dietz in the situation, though, just from having read his views within the posted article. There seemed to be quite a bit of conflict between the two representations of the man.
and, firefligh: "shrink, cop or german shepard.."? HAAAH!
oh - sorry, another comment:
On one of the DVDs from the first season, there's a piece called 'Who is Robert Goren?' in which Dietz _or at least some forensic criminologist whose name I can't remember, but had to have been him_ is noted as the person on whom Goren is based and is even interviewed along with Vincent, Balcer, and Wolf. Both netflix and Blockbuster.com have the disk available for rental, but only netflix took the time to break down the content of each LOCI disk for folks.
na
this article on Dietz is 12 years old, but is very much worth the read...he's apparently been very consistent in his views...
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1194web/dietz.html
*sorry again!*
Correction:
"Who's Robert Goren?" is on the last disk of Season 3.
na
He sounds (surprisingly) decent - especially when an individual of his reputation could easy whore himself into his own Court TV show in this day and age.
And Andrea Yates was (is) batshit insane, and she deserved a new trial. Instead of vilifying her case, she should be used as an example of what repetitive untreated postpartum depression can lead to. The LO:CI episode that covered this did a remarkably thought-out and yes - kind - version of the story. It was one of the best episodes of the season.
The Yates family need to be used as a lesson so that it does not happen again - not as a finger-wagging morality tale.
The CI epi based on the Yates case (Magnificat)is in my top five episodes, because the writers took the tact that the father shared culpability in the terrible tragedy as well as the mother.
To get some viewer empathy from a mass audience, they had to whitewash the mother by making her suicidal, which was not the case with Yates. But I was pleased to see the storyline revolve around the moral liabilty of the father, as well as the criminal liability of the actual murderer... an aspect of the real case that I personally found infuriating was how there was no legal recourse for the callousness of some of the folks around Yates. Particularly her husband
It was also a top epi, imo, because it allowed Goren to reveal more of that value system I really like seeing exposed. The detective's plaintive but of course futile request to "Mr. Carver" to indict the father was especially moving.
Which reminds me..Vance's character (for a small role, I think CV developed it nicely, he brought considerable nuance to it) will be missed, regardless of what Bogosian does.
I have to make a correction: I wrote that Yates was found guilty by reason of mential defect at her second trial; in reality, she was found not guilty by reason of mental defect and will spend her time in a mental health facility.
I, too, was glad to see that the father in "Magnificat" was shown to share responsibity for his wife's condidion and actions. I've always maintained that Rusty Yates should be in a locked facility right next to Andrea.
I acknowledge that Dietz has strong points; I agree that there is so much terrible violence shown on TV, so much sexuality in even ads, that it's not surprising to me that there are killers/torturers who say that they did it just to see how it would feel.
I still wonder, however, how, as an expert, Deitz could have been so lax with testimony that had such an impact. He did correct himself, but the prosecution made sure that the first jury did not know that, so all they had to go on was that first erroneous testimony.
Postpartum depression is an ugly, debilitating thing, and a good discussion was held on another board at the time of the Yates incident and trial. Some men weighed in saying that Yates was just evil. My response is that men have no clue about the disease as they have no clue about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and all the hormone changes that accompany carrying and delivering a baby. Only someone who has experienced this dreadful affliction can understand its ramifications. I have and I can
My hope is that Andrea Yates will get the help she needs and find some peace. Her real punishment is worse than prison or a mental hospital; it is the realization of what she did.
So beautifully said, JS!
I agree with all your points, but also feel Dietz, because he recognized and admitted his error, with evidently no attempt to protect his own ego, deserves to be applauded for the professionalism he demonstrated by doing so.
Yes, he made a mistake, mis-spoke, and should have re-checked his facts before giving an answer, whether it was a high profile case or not.
But I'm willing to view his error as an extremely minor blip on the radar screen of his very impressive life's work.
From your post, I suspect you are, as well. :)
I agree that rusty "which one" yates should have been held - somehow - accountable for the tragedy, and I was so happy that 'Magnificat' (thank you Firefligh for reminding me of the name) basically said what most people were thinking: WTF happened with the dad?!?
doctors warned of the consequences of them having a 5th child, and warned that rusty was 'controlling'. he kept her away from her therapist and medication.
in another world - somewhere away from the horrid, claustrophobic, fundamentalist world she had to live in - someone with common sense would have kicked the damned door down and insisted she got help. medication and/or therapy - whatever worked. then those children would have likely survived, and andrea would be a receptionist in some small-town insurance office, while her ex-husband trolled church socials for another baby machine.
i'm not 'letting her off of the hook' - i'm anything but a bleeding heart - but christ, I've read posts on other message boards comparing her to charles manson. anyone with even the slightest knowledge of mental illness knows how inaccurate this is.
rusty yates said some things in front of the press that would make a person's hair stand on end. a quick google search will reveal a lot.
kudos to LO:CI for actually providing a 'ripped from the headlines' episode that was actually very humane. Vincent and Katheryn were wonderful in the episode - and since both of them are parents, it couldn't have been 'just another script' for either of them (I'm projecting - maybe they didn't care about the script at all). No matter - it was a great episode, tha hopefully gave a few 'casual' viewers something to thing about.
That's an aspect of the CI/LO writing I've been suitably impressed with, defixiones...the tendency to go for 'spirit' as well as 'letter' of the law storylines.
Altho I realize there are many who see it as 'political', (sigh!) to me the transcendence of the strictly legal is what makes a plot engaging, ie. 'human'. Too much preaching, finger-wagging, and moralizing isn't appreciated, but in stories like Magnificat/Yates, we can't even begin to understand the nature of the crime without delving into the conditions (both external and internal) that spawned it.
Another epi that went out on a similar limb was "Want" - I wasn't anywhere near as taken with it as Magnificat (the empathy-tweaking in Want was taking the sexual thrill motivation out of the Dahmer-like killer's profile), but these epis have something to say worth pondering, and they also tend to make for more entertaining Goren "arias". :)
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