Greedy Trial Lawyer
Expert's Competence To Evaluate Competence May Be Questioned
Category: Desperate Defendants
Sometimes the words just don't come out right during testimony. What's a witness to do when left should have been right, up should have been down or not competent should have been competent.
From Overlawyered we learn the dangers of being Overdoctored.
One of those clients, Seymour Lazar, has been trying to escape prosecution by claiming to be ill, trotting out doctors to testify to a "litany of ailments," including "heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and gout." But there's more: he also claimed to be suffering from a "mental condition [that] could make following significant events of the trial impossible," as well as "major depression, memory loss, and fatigue." And, he's mentally incompetent.
That was two weeks ago... Now he's all better. Turns out that if he were mentally incompetent, the prosecution could lock him up for up to four months to determine whether he would become competent in the future. Whoops! That wasn't what defense attorneys wanted. So they had to repudiate their own expert's testimony:
A psychologist who testified that a defendant was not competent to stand trial in a federal criminal case against a leading class action law firm now says that assertion was mistaken.[...]
"I believe that I testified in error when I stated that he is not competent," the psychologist retained by the defense, William Jones, wrote in a declaration filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles.
You have to admire the unselfish act of self-repudiation by this expert. As soon as he became aware of his error he stepped forward to correct it. Now, his competence as an expert will likely suffer in future testimony. Does anyone see poetic justice here?
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