Late yesterday King must have finished his direct examination of Dr. Gur, as first thing this morning Brachler is cross-examining Gur. She seems very defensive. She's coming off as ... a little deceptive. While Dr. Gur is the defense's key witness, I don't think she's been a very good one. And she's doing that thing again where her answers aren't answering the question that was asked. What she may not realize is that by not answering the question it makes her (a) look suspicious and (b) reveal information that's not beneficial for the defense.
Brachler is asking Gur about her report. Her 'final' report is only 15 pages long and is in the typical format that a psychiatrist would write for a patient assessment in a clinical setting. Brachler is asking her why she'd write a typical clinical report when she knew her report would be used in a capital criminal trial, and would be read by lawyers and not mental health professionals. Gur even admits that in this case she read over 100,000 pages of background information, which is not typical for a clinical situation.
Now Brachler is asking her about the background information and is asking her what she actually looked at, and what she didn't look at. And it appears that she either did not review, or did not consider important, several pieces of information that other psychiatrists included and thought were important. More interestingly, she admits that she excluded background info and conversations with the defendant from her notes and report - and is only now speaking about it from memory.
Brachler is also going through her report and asking her about specific items she wrote. He points out, for example, a quote she includes where someone describes Holmes, but she doesn't put it in context as to who said it, when and what the conversation was about. Oh ... and now she admits that she doesn't cite or reference many of the quotes she includes in her report. You'd think an academic would know to do that. She can't remember or refer to where she obtained some of the info she's included in her report.
Apparently the report includes a background section that starts off by talking about the reports and documentation reviewed (blah blah blah), but she admits she wrote this section after talking to Holmes at least twice. Brachler, I think, is going to come back to that fact, but it's interesting that she doesn't actually mention which aspects of the background section are from material she reviewed versus
Interesting ... she mentions a date Holmes had, but doesn't indicate who asked who out. Brachler asked her whether it's important who asked who out in this case. She says it's not important, but Brachler is asking why it isn't important when they're talking about a person who is a known introvert for his whole life. I don't know about you, but I think who asks who out is actually very important, on many levels. Asking people out can be a huge deal for some people - taking that step could be a massive accomplishment for some people. Why would she think it's unimportant? I would think that a guy whose never asked anyone out in his life, and suddenly does one day, is pretty damn important.
Oh oh ... even the judge is telling the doctor she can't say stuff. Brachler is asking her about a quote she claims Holmes said to her - "a call to action" - which she put in her report. Holmes claims he never said that to her. And it's never written in any of his other writings (including his notebook) and no other person who has ever talked to him has ever heard him say it. However, she used that exact term in a book she wrote about schizophrenia.
Brachler now just asked her about something Holmes also said (Holmes claimed to her that he only meant to wound, not kill, people in the theater). Brachler asked the doctor why she didn't question him further about this statement, because it is something he's never told to anyone else. She thinks it's because he was trying to pretend he wasn't sick the first time he spoke to her. She also claims she did follow-up with him about the statement, but she neither put that in her report or notes, and King never asked her about it in direct examination. Brachler then asked her to tell the court about it now, since no one had ever heard about it before. She got mad!
Brachler is now asking her if the fact that he was trying to pretend he wasn't sick, that he was changing his answers to her to manipulate what she thought about him. While she admits that he was trying to show he wasn't sick the first time they met, before he came to trust her, she won't admit that he was purposely trying to manipulate her. But isn't pretending to be something you're not manipulation?
She seems to be getting quite upset. I'm actually surprised she hasn't got up and tried to leave the courtroom in a huff!
I think she really shot herself in the foot by not video taping her sessions with Holmes. Reid did and the court watched it in its entirety. So everything Reid had an opinion about also had video backup to show what he was referring to. Reid even mentioned that he thought video taping the sessions made sense when it was a court case so that other experts could use it to make their own conclusions. But no other experts video taped their sessions, so there's no backup to show what their reports/notes said actually happened, or even simply to provide examples to the jury.
Gur did mention at one point that she had no problems with sessions being video taped, and did not think it was unprofessional, etc. But she was not asked to video tape her sessions, and since it isn't her normal practice, she didn't bother. The defense should have asked her to video tape the sessions. I suspect they didn't ask her to because if there was something in there that didn't help their case, and they edited it out in court, that would look bad for them. But if the conclusions she's coming to are accurate, then a video of the situations she's referring to would have been extremely helpful. Plus, since her report is so short and un-detailed, to be able to show her interviews would have filled in the gaps and a summary report would have been more reasonable.
I seriously think I'm watching the defense lose their case at this very moment. This is the beginning of the end.
I wonder if they know that though? I wonder if they've already determined that the chances of them winning is slim to none and their entire defense is based on trying to throw any type of doubt at the jury. Obviously they have to pretend in court that they think they have a strong case, and they'd never admit it in the press, but they have to know their losing. They have to have a backup plan as to how their going to proceed knowing their losing.
Oh geez ... she's getting into a lot of trouble. Without quoting in detail what everyone is saying, basically she's said two things that are significant. One is that she didn't probe further about the possibility that he was having a hallucination during the session because it was near the end of her evaluation and it was "not time to probe further." She has also mentioned that the fact that Holmes claimed to see something on the wall behind her during the session may or may not mean he had an hallucination - she was unable to determine it because he would not answer any of her further questions about the situation. However, her notes state specifically that she did NOT ask him anymore questions about the situation, but then she says she did ask him some things, but did not include them in her notes. If you ask me, she's sort of perjured herself here.
Today's testimony is a heck of a lot more interesting than yesterday's. Brachler is a great lawyer (if you ask me) but she's also a terrible witness, so it's not really that hard to make her look bad!
OMG ... OMG ... OMG ... she has SO perjured herself. It's unbelievable! We're back to how she's quoted statements Holmes said and the fact that she doesn't cite or reference those quotes properly. In this specific example, she has a quote in her report she CLAIMS the defendant said in one of their sessions. She claimed, originally, that Holmes said those exact words, in that exact order, without any breaks. But then Brachler asks her to refer to her notes and in her notes she specifically states that she asked multiple questions and got multiple responses and combined the answers into one response - in quotations - in her report. She LIED! She totally LIED! And now she's claiming that "maybe" she didn't put the three dots in the quotation to show it wasn't said all at once, but that's it. Except that's not it, she has apparently paraphrased things the defendant said IN QUOTATIONS. If I did that in a school report, I'd be expelled!
[lunch break]
I'm watching The Denver Channel's commentary on this morning's testimony. Interestingly, the legal expert (a lawyer of course) thinks that Gur is doing well standing up for herself on the stand, and that Brachler might be not doing so well. But then the reporter mentioned that as a lay person he was thinking that Brachler was doing well and that Gur wasn't. And that Brachler is pointing out a lot of inconsistencies with Gur's methods compared to other expert methods already talked about. The legal expert did mention that the jury is allowed to take all that into consideration when they're deliberating - and they're allowed to determine, on their own, whether they think a witness is credible, or if their opinions are credible. They also talked about when too much arguing turns off the jury - but I think they haven't reached that point yet and that, if anything, the jury is probably sitting there agreeing with Brachler and his line of questioning. The legal expert did admit that Brachler is a very skilled cross-examiner and it's exciting to watch this happen - so I'm not so sure he actually believes that Gur is doing that well.
Something happened to the feed. The "LIVE" feed is re-showing the morning testimony. No idea why. So now I have no idea what's going on this afternoon.
=^..^=
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