This case involves a thirteen-year-old girl who became interested in satanism. This caused the student to have an obsession with death. The student told several of her friends that she was going to commit suicide. Several of the student’s friends reported the suicide threats to the school counselor. The counselor questioned the student about this and the student denied having any suicidal thoughts. The school counselor did not notify the student’s parents about what he heard regarding her plan to commit suicide. The student was later killed as part of a “murder-suicide pact” with another student. The other student shot the student before killing herself. The student’s father sued the county Board of Education for negligence.

A school counselor has a duty to prevent a student’s suicide if it is foreseeable. The general duty of a school official to protect students from foreseeable injuries is even greater in cases where a school official knows that a student is considering committing suicide. In these cases, school officials must exercise the appropriate amount of care in looking out for the student that the circumstances reasonably require. In some cases involving the suicide of a student, the school official who knows about the student’s suicidal intent can be held to have a quasi “therapist-patient” relationship with the student. This means that the school official, like a therapist, has a great duty to prevent a foreseeable suicide by the student. There is a growing concern over the issue of student suicide and this has expanded the duty of school officials to prevent a suicide if they know it might happen. The relationship between the student in this case and her school counselor would probably be considered a very special one. The school counselor might even be held to be in a relationship where he was “in loco parentis” or in the place of a parent in regards to the student in this case. Because of this, the school counselor would probably be held to be in a position where he could exercise custody and control over the student, like a parent could. This means that he had a duty to exercise reasonable care in preventing her from trying to commit suicide. The school counselor probably breached his duty and was negligent in not telling the student’s parents about her suicidal intent.

1. Does a school counselor have a duty to try to prevent a student’s suicide when they have knowledge of a student’s suicidal intent?

School Counselor Breaches Duty to Inform Resulting in Student’s Death

This case involves a mother in her twenties who was being treated for seven years by the same psychiatrist for paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis. The patient had been stabilized on an antipsychotic for 5 years with no episodes. The treating psychiatrist then left the state, leaving the patient’s care under a new provider. In the months after the new individual took over the care of the patient, he felt that the patient was exhibiting signs of anxiety and paranoia. Without consulting the previous psychiatrist or another psychiatrist, the provider discontinued the antipsychotic with no taper and started the patient on another antipsychotic. Within one week of the medication change, the patient caused serious injuries to her child during a psychotic episode. An expert forensic psychiatrist to review the records and opine on how the care provided by the nurse practitioner could have impacted the patient’s behavior.

I am board certified in psychiatry and forensic psychiatry and I have been practicing psychiatry since 1996 and forensic psychiatry since 2005. I am a professor of psychiatry and neurology and I teach medical students and psychiatry residents. I am also licensed to practice and currently work in a private practice in an east coast state. I am very familiar with the effects of discontinuing antipsychotic medications and relapse of psychosis as well as switching strategies for antipsychotics and tapering schedules. I have reviewed similar cases and treated 1000+ cases of schizophrenia and related disorders.

1. What is your experience reviewing cases involving patients with histories of paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis? 2. Are you familiar with the effects of discontinuing antipsychotic medication without tapering?

Schizophrenic Patient Suffers Psychotic Episode After Abrupt Change In Medication

This case involves a woman who fatally stabbed her husband while having a schizophrenic episode. The woman had been diagnosed with schizophrenia the year prior to the incident and prescribed antipsychotic medication. The woman had developed insomnia from the antipsychotic, and elected to stop taking the medication in the 2 months prior to the incident. The woman was subsequently treated at a state mental hospital and as a result of treatment, her episodes stopped. The woman was interested in moving to a half-way house designed to rehabilitate such individuals. An expert forensic psychologist was sought to review the medical records and evaluate the woman to determine whether or not she remained a danger to the public.

As a forensic psychologist at a state hospital for 14 years, I frequently evaluated patients for violence risk regarding potential conditional release into the community. I also supervised postdoctoral fellows in forensic psychology who conducted over 100 such evaluations. Conditional release generally requires that the person would not be a danger to others while under conditional release settings in the community. As such, one's mental illness would need to be under good control pharmacologically, the patient would need substantial insight into the nature of the mental illness and the need for continued treatment, and the patient should otherwise have few significant risk factors for violence. Evaluation generally would require a probing face-to-face interview, possible psychological testing, and review of the extensive records from the psychiatric hospitalization.

1. Please describe your background in forensic psychology. 2. What might qualify such an individual for release on conditions? 3. How would you evaluate such a patient?

Forensic Psychologist Evaluates Potentially Dangerous Patient

: Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division 

The defendant, Dawan Ingram, appealed against an August 9, 2016 conviction judgment for the murder of Najee Montague.

In the evening of September 21, 2013, police officers responded to a disturbance at Salem Street and South Orange Avenue in Newark, New Jersey. Upon arriving at the scene, officers found Montague lying on the ground. A friend of Montague’s was inside a bodega just before the shooting. When the friend was trying to help Montague, a bystander either pointed out the gun to the friend dropped by the shooter or handed over the gun to him. Montague’s friend took said gun, hid it in a backyard garage down the street, and did not mention the gun to the police officers at that time. One day after the friend identified the defendant as a shooter, he led Detective Tyrone Crawley to the place where he hid the gun. Two live rounds were also recovered from the gun. These two rounds were consistent with the rounds recovered from the scene of the shooting.

The state called a ballistics expert witness to testify. The expert was a retired police sergeant and firearms examiner with the Newark Police Department Ballistics Laboratory for more than 20 years. During his tenure, the expert evaluated and identified all weapons submitted as evidence. His experience also included conducting microscopic examinations, identifications, and comparisons of discharged projectiles, discharged casings, cartridges, and shotshells.

The expert opined that all the 9 shell casings were identical and concluded that all rounds were fired from the same gun. When the shells were compared to the markings made by the gun recovered, the expert concluded that the bullets were fired from the same gun that Montague’s friend led to the police.

The court rejected the defendant’s arguments that the testimony of the expert relating to the murder weapon should be excluded. The defendant did not take any objection to the testimony of the expert at the time of trial. The court reviewed for plain error.

The defendants argued that the expert’s opinions were subjective and were not backed by reliable, scientific analysis. The defendant sought re-examination of firearm toolmark identification testimony of the expert. The defendant’s main argument was that the expert should not be allowed to testify with certainty that bullets found at the crime scene were from the same gun that was found. The defendant pointed out that the expert had no way to opine that the bullet was not fired from a different but identical gun. The friend had testified that the shooter had dropped the gum he picked it up and later turned over the gun to the police. Therefore, there was little doubt that the expert had examined the gun used in the shooting.

It was determined that the methodology adopted by a firearm expert witness must be backed by scientific analysis in order to be admissible.

Firearms Expert Conducts Ballistics Analysis On Alleged Murder Weapon

: United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division 

In this case involving first-degree murder, the court found that it is not necessary for a forensic pathology expert to specify a particular time period to establish premeditation. Rather, in the case that two experts differ in their forensic opinions with regard to time, then cumulative expert testimony is sufficient to establish the element of premeditation.

The petitioner was found guilty of premeditated first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the option of parole. The victim was the petitioner’s wife, who was found dead with a head injury in the Lower Herring Lake. The police found bloodstains on the concrete pavement that extended from the boathouse the victim had apparently fallen from, to the wall of the lake. The police also found a white smear on the petitioner’s shoe which was chemically consistent with the paint on the railing of the boathouse deck.

After numerous appeals were denied, the petitioner moved the current motion for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that:

The state court unreasonably applied Federal law in holding that the petitioner’s trial counsel provided effective assistance in his handling of expert-witness testimony

The state court’s denial of the petitioner’s claim that trial counsel was ineffective in failing to object to numerous instances of prosecutorial misconduct was both contrary to, and an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law.

The petitioner argued that his counsel ineffectively handled the prosecution’s forensic pathology expert witness. According to the petitioner, the forensic pathology expert’s testimony regarding the time interval between the victim’s injury and time of death was paramount to the prosecution’s case.

A professor at the University of Michigan School of Medicine and chief of the neuropathy section of the department of pathology testified as an anatomical and neuropathology expert. He reviewed the victim’s autopsy report and studied slides of her brain tissue. The expert’s application of several staining techniques showed axonal swelling in the victim’s corpus callosum. The expert testified that axonal swelling does not happen after death, and the victim must have survived for at least ninety minutes after her injury for it to be detected using immunohistological staining. He based this opinion on articles published in peer-reviewed journals and used a Medline search to collect these sources.

On cross-examination, the expert was asked about a 2003 Japanese study which said neuron-specific enolase (NSE) staining could detect axonal swelling as early as 30 minutes after injury. He indicated no familiarity with the study and expressed surprise at the 30-minute timeline.

When he was deposed later during the proceedings to determine custody of the petitioner’s children, he testified that both neurofilament (NF) and NSE staining can show diffuse axonal swelling of corpus callosum and that he was unable to “pin down the time of death”. The expert testified that in his effort to establish the time elapsed between injury and death using a Medline search, he found that “with the NSE stain you could detect diffuse axonal injury 1-1/2 hours after the trauma”.

The defense counsel also questioned the trial counsel’s cross-examination of the expert regarding his 90-minute time frame. They claimed that had he done so, there would have been a reasonable probability of a different outcome. The court rejected this argument, accepting the trial court’s position that the trial counsel’s conduct was not inappropriate, holding it to be the correct application of 

. It also noted that even if the expert was not pushed on his 90-minute time frame, the cumulative evidence of the other expert witnesses indicated a 30-minute time frame to the jury, which was sufficient to establish the element of premeditation. The court also dismissed the petitioner’s claim of prosecutorial misconduct because it did not meet the standards set by 

The court held that the petitioner’s trial counsel had provided adequate assistance and his claim of prosecutorial misconduct did not meet the standard set by 

 and hence denied him a writ of habeas corpus.

Forensic Pathology Experts Disagree On Brain Swelling Time Frame In Murder Trial

: United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida 

This case involves a writ of habeas corpus filed by a death row prisoner. The prisoner petitioner was on death row following a conviction of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and armed kidnapping. He had previously appealed the trial decision to the state’s supreme court, where the decision was upheld. After this, the petitioner filed a petition to a state district court for the writ of habeas corpus, including a claim that his defense counsel had failed to provide sufficient assistance by not retaining a forensic expert witness to support his case. The petitioner claimed that a lack of a forensic expert witness left his counsel unable to rebut the prosecution’s forensic evidence. He asserted that his defense counsel failed to fulfill their duty and, thus, a new trial was needed, citing 

The court discussed the supreme court’s ruling that the defense counsel was not deficient in not hiring a forensic expert witness. They explained that this was consistent with federal law as there was no requirement to hire forensic experts. The supreme court had also asserted that there was no need for a forensic expert witness because the defense counsel was a former medical examiner and had unique qualifications. The supreme court found that the petitioner could not just claim ineffective counsel under 

but must also provide proof that effective counsel would have reasonably changed the case outcome.

The supreme court had noted that the defense counsel was able to rely on his experience as a former medical examiner. He had carefully cross-examined each of the prosecution’s forensic expert witnesses to identify the shortcomings of their conclusions and repeated those points during the first closing argument of the defense. The supreme court upheld the trial court’s decision that this was sufficient to avoid the presentation of forensic expert witnesses.

The court, in considering the petitioner’s writ of habeas corpus, stated that the petitioner had the burden to show that the counsel’s decision to not retain a forensic expert was strategic and an improper determination of the facts. To present a successful challenge, the plaintiff also needed to demonstrate how this was an improper application of clearly established federal law. In reviewing the supreme court’s decision, the court agreed that the defense counsel had employed a sound trial strategy. This was supported by the fact that the defense counsel was a former medical examiner and able to effectively cross-examine witnesses.

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Murder Expert Witness Case Studies

School Counselor Breaches Duty to Inform Resulting in Student’s Death

Schizophrenic Patient Suffers Psychotic Episode After Abrupt Change In Medication

Forensic Psychologist Evaluates Potentially Dangerous Patient

Firearms Expert Conducts Ballistics Analysis On Alleged Murder Weapon

Forensic Pathology Experts Disagree On Brain Swelling Time Frame In Murder Trial

Death Row Writ of Habeas Corpus Blames Lack of Forensic Expert Witness

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