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CCA upholds death sentence but shoddy forensic psychiatry takes a hit

Having been focused a great deal lately on flawed forensics, I should point out the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' decision (pdf), authored by Judge Cathy Cochran, upholding the death sentence of Billie Wayne Coble, but declaring that psychiatrist Dr. Richard Coons, who has testified in the punishment phase of some 50 capital murder cases, is not qualified to opine as an expert on future dangerousness. Coons, wrote Cochran had:testified at appellant?s 1990 trial that he would be a future danger. Dr. Coons testified at the 2008 retrial that appellant would still be a future danger even though appellant did not have a single disciplinary report for the eighteen years that he had been on death row. Dr. Coons explained this discrepancy by stating that all those on death row have an incentive to behave because their convictions are on appeal, and thus they are less violent than they would be in the general prison population...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on October 16, 2010 (boomark / email).