Word: sirhan
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...psychiatrist jabbed his finger to simulate Sirhan's cheap .22-cal. revolver: "It was very dramatic and very real-the convulsive movement, the grabbing of the gun and the expression on his face of the most violent contorted rage. Then there was a momentary pause and he started to choke. He was actually re-experiencing the choking when they held him down and took away the gun. He was gasping for breath...
...testimony about murder in a trance. A far-out tale? Perhaps. A grave problem of determining mental health in criminal trials is that expert witnesses are almost always available to back up either prosecution or defense with their testimony (see BEHAVIOR). After two more psychologists declared that Sirhan suffers from grave mental disorders, avuncular Attorney Grant Cooper rested for the defense. And though a handwriting expert called by the prosecution saw no evidence that Sirhan's diary had been written under the mirror's hypnotic influence, even the star rebuttal witness, Psychiatrist Seymour Pollack, told of the assassin...
...Sirhan Sirhan fully responsible for his actions when he shot Robert Kennedy? No, say the four defense psychologists and psychiatrists who have examined Sirhan; as a paranoid schizophrenic, Sirhan was, in effect, incapable of fully premeditating his deed or weighing its risks. Yes, says the prosecution, and to back up the contention, it is calling counterexperts of its own. Such disagreements are all too typical when psychiatry and psychology go to criminal court...
...psychiatry and its related fields. Nor does the fact that psychiatrists in the witness chair frequently couch their findings in language that either boggles the layman's mind or defies surface credibility. Even highly respected California Psychiatrist Bernard L. Diamond, key defense witness last week at the Sirhan trial, admitted that the jury might have trouble believing his testimony that Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy while in a self-induced hypnotic trance. To the layman, this would be an "absurd, preposterous story, unlikely and incredible," he allowed. The reputation of psychiatric wisdom was certainly smudged when another expert witness...
Although the experts at the Sirhan trial are all fully qualified, the fact is that many of the best minds in the profession refuse to appear in court, on the grounds that they cannot give adequate and accurate testimony under the rigid rules of the adversary system. As a result, supposedly expert opinion as to a defendant's mental state is sometimes put forward by second-rate practitioners with a talent for publicity...