Being In Trial

If you are a lawyer, there is a state of being, during jury trials, when you (or your office assistant, or partner) will tell anyone who tries to contact you that you are "in trial." It means, among other things, that all the rest of life is suspended until the trial is done; that you will get back to whomever, and whatever, whenever the jury comes back. It really is a different state of being, unlike any other that I have known in my varied life endeavors. In just about any trial, you will experience: intensity, focus, absorption, boredom, drama, triumphs, defeats, tears, rage, joy, brilliant tactics, dumb mistakes, and many contradictions (many truths, and frequent non-truths, as well).

Yesterday I spent the whole day at a trial. Part of that time I was out in the hallway, sometimes sitting on a bench, reading case documents, checking my email, or staring off into space; sometimes, out in the hallway, I stood talking with the defense attorneys, discussing the trial and making comments and observations about various of the other people involved. One guy, for example, was wearing a plaid jacket and a striped shirt. The patterns clashed in a way that was difficult to look at, but also hard to ignore. He was somehow involved in the prosecution case, but he never actually testified, and I never did figure out what his role was. Much of the time, I was in the courtroom, either waiting to testify, or testifying, or watching somebody else on the stand, testifying. Inside the courtroom, in the back where the spectators sit, there were two opposing camps set up. It was a bit like a wedding in which the bride's people sit on one side, and the groom's people sit on the other. On one side of this courtroom, the MSHP trooper who was the victim of the shooting incident sat up front, in uniform, with a woman who I guess was his wife. Along with them, on that side, there were a bunch of guys who were not in uniform, but who were obviously troopers, friends of the victim (Trooper Brashear). On the other side of the courtroom were family and friends of Tommy Rollins, the defendant. There was no obvious hostility that I saw between these two groups, but there was certainly no mingling between them, no communication at all, that I could see.

It was my opinion, as a forensic psychologist who examined Tommy Rollins several times, that Tommy suffered from psychiatric disorders that signifiicantly contributed to his terribly irrational behavior on the night that he shot Trooper Brashear. But Dr. Kline, another forensic psychologist, saw it differently. He testified that, in his opinion, although Tommy did have psychiatric disorders, those disorders did not play any role in his thinking, his decision-making, or his actions. Such a disagreement is (unfortunately) not unusual. It is the nature of forensic psychology is that not all qualified experts who examine a criminal defendant will come to the same conclusion about whether or not he had a mental disorder when he did whatever awful thing that he did... nor as to whether any disorder that he did have caused or contributed to his behavior. It's the nature of the beast, and such was the case in this trial. Dr. Kline and I saw the same guy, we talked to him, we read all of his psychiatric records, and every other piece of paper we could find about him... but we disagreed. Perhaps one factor is that the prosecution psychologist is paid by the State, and I was hired and paid by the defense. Forensic psychologists and psychiatrists try very hard (I think we all do; certainly I do) not to let the source of our payment influence our opinions... but there may sometimes be unconscious factors at work that we cannot control. I do know that in well over half of the cases in which I do evaluations for defense lawyers, my findings are not helpful to the defense; so I can be relatively confident that my decision-making is not dictated by financial considerations.

After Dr. Kline and I testified, the trial testimony was pretty much all wrapped up, as far as I could see. I expect that the jury will hear final arguments and instructions, and begin deliberating, today. As I testified, I tried to communicate directly to the jurors; some of them made eye contact with me, and appeared to be listening to what I had to say with some degree of interest and engagement; a few others seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me. I have no idea what, if anything, that means; nobody can ever predict what a jury will do.

I know that today Tommy Rollins and his family, and Trooper Brashear and his family, are waiting, and hoping for entirely different outcomes. And each group truly believes that the outcome they hope for represents True Justice. One side will probably end up being terribly disappointed, and one side will probably find some satisfaction, or possibly even joy, in the jury's verdict. I wish that somehow our criminal justice system were not structured in such a way that there is always this deep and bitter divide between the victim and the defendant; I wish that there were some way to integrate an element of reconciliation into the process. The movement in the direction of "restorative justice" (see my previous posts here) has created a few inroads in that direction; but it represents only a very small beginning.