Competency Trial Day Seven - Prosecution Cleans Up!

[Original Post by DS: 06/15/2011 9:00PM PST]
ayres just got his ass kicked.


Today, Paul Good Ph.D took the stand for the prosecution. 
Good was one of the doctors appointed by the court to evaluate ayres for competency well before the competency trial.

Good was professional, credible, and a VERY strong witness overall. He flat out stated that ayres is competent, and he left little room for doubt. Defense attorney Jonathan McDougall poked, cajoled, and harassed to try to get Good to admit otherwise, but Good simply did not budge in his assessment.

On discussion about one of the tests, McDougall questioned Good on segments of the testing, and was trying to get Good to say that some level of incompetence was shown, and that ayres couldn’t answer simple story questions. Good told the jury that that the story he used in the test was very complex and abstract, and that it is THE most challenging test sample. He said that initially ayres refused to answer questions, and that if those non-answers were scored, he wouldn’t have passed, but Good says that because he knew that ayres is intelligent, he needed to have a challenging enough test to get him to cooperate, and when he actually got ayres to participate, ayres scored absolutely fine on the test. There seems to have been an implication here that the Defense doctors may not have been persistent and patient enough to overcome ayres stubborn refusals, and simply accepted non-response as a failure. 

McDougall kept hammering at Good about ayres’ off-topic rambling as was discussed yesterday by the Frumpy Liberal Hippy Ph.D.  Good was adamant that these instances were NOT off-topic rambling. He says that ayres clearly wants for his attorneys to understand his points, and ayres is trying to keep these points central to the discussion. Good says that ayres wants everyone to know that he was trained to “examine” young boys and that he does not want to plead guilty because he is not guilty.  When his attorneys stray from that topic, ayres is bringing the point to the center of attention again.

Prosecutor McKowan on several occasions asked Good about specific examples from the past that demonstrate that ayres  is, in fact VERY competent to remember and process information.  (Interestingly, most of these examples seem to also reflect on ayres typical stubborn, narcissistic arrogance.)


Good relayed that ayres sounded mildly paranoid about police and patients, He felt that an officer had lied in order to get a search warrant.  ayres complained about Dr. Ponton who testified in the 2005 civil trial and in the 2009 criminal trial against ayres.

McKowan points out that this shows well functioning memory, and it’s also a good example, because Ponton testified that “physical exams” are not standard practice, which causes ayres to laser beam focus on his sore point – his insistence that he was trained to do “physical exams.”

The “training” line of discussion allowed McKowan to discuss the fact that while ayres insists that he was trained to do “physicals,” while McDougall was preparing for the re-trial, he was unable to find a doctor willing to testify to that fact. Even Gil Kliman wouldn’t come back to testify.

Good also discussed ayres being upset about his attorneys. He says that they are deceptive and lie to him. ayres thought that Weinberg was lying to him. Specifically, a plea bargain was discussed  in the criminal trial, but ayres claims he didn’t know about it, but Solveig did. ayres insists that he won’t plead guilty to anything because is not guilty. [ NOTE: Joshua Melvin covers this better in his MercuryNews article.]

Good mentioned that ayres complained about a scientologist reporter who had a vendetta against him. McKowan asked Good if ayres had specifically mentioned Victoria Balfour to him. Good said that in fact ayres had: ayres told Good that Balfour got complainants to come out against him and that she has put up a web site against him!  At first, Good thought that ayres might have a problem with  paranoia,  but then Good said that he looked at the blog, and realized that ayres was fine. (I must admit: I very nearly choked to death laughing when i heard this! By the way: Victoria is NOT a scientologist.)

(I’ll take the moment to thank Victoria Balfour for her extensive contributions on my blog. She HAS made it a point to see that an animal who has hurt so many has finally been pushed into the justice system where he belongs. Her fact finding has been nothing short of amazing, and there’s no way I could accomplish what she has. I don’t have the necessary skills, and it’s too painful to keep all the fact straight. So, Thank You! )

ALL of these memories that ayres has recounted demonstrate that he is not at all incompetent. He clearly is able to focus when engaged. 

In the afternoon Dr. George L Wilkenson MD, a forensic psychiatrist, testified.

Wilkenson interviewed ayres in January and June of 2011. Wilkenson was reserved and seemed a bit more casual. He says that ayres IS competent, but that he probably needs some minor accommodations if he's going to testify, like the use of notes as was the case in the criminal trial, or more frequent breaks.

Wilkenson related a pair of questions that he asked ayres. In January, he asked ayres if he had any three wishes, what would the be. Ayres answers were: Legal problems solved, physical ailments solved, all of his lost cash back. Wilkenson said that these were selfish wishes. When he saw ayres in June, to the same question, ayres replied: Stop wars, Help people be kinder, A social justice system. Wilkenson said that these answers show an improved mental state, and are more altruistic.

Distracting a bit from Wilkonson’s testimony was that desperation had already set in, and the Defense team was behaving very badly:

For one thing, Frumpy Liberal Hippy Ph.D. had remained in the courtroom from her morning cross examination, and was sitting right in the front, disturbing the proceedings with antics that I easily could have predicted yesterday, had I known that she was planning to linger.  She rolled her eyes wildly while looking back at Solveig whenever she didn’t like Wilkenson’s answers. 

McDougall saw that Wilkenson was using notes, and he took the opportunity to use Wilkenson to show how hard it would be for ayres to use notes. McDougall aggressively would try to hurry Wilkenson whenever he would look at his notes. As McDougall was questioning Wilkenson, Frumpy Liberal Hippy Ph.D animatedly wrote a note on a big piece of paper, and put it up on the rail. Several times when McDougall paced nearer to her, she would wave around to get him to notice her. Finally she passed it over to him like a third grader passing illicit love notes to the class jock. 

McDougall then went on the attack: He asked Wilkenson to compare the scores from his test to the scores from the same test that another doctor did. As Wilkenson flipped through his notes McDougall harangued him more. Finally, he said to Wilkenson: “You don’t have alzheimer’s do you???” 

Needless to say, McKowan objected to the badgering going on. The judge agreed.  

Great job McDougall! You did a bang-up job demonstrating an easy accommodation if the prosecutor is pushing your client too hard. You can just ask the judge to intervene to slow things down a bit. Perhaps you should thank McKowan for helping you with your courtroom style.

The case is rested. The Jury will be given instructions tomorrow at 9am.

The jury was given extra specific instructions about researching the web given the mention of this blog during the trial.

I’m feeling pretty good about having put up my jury warning. I hope they do the right thing. 

Funny how all of these lovely Ph.Ds are sucking up to ayres. Maybe no one told them that ayres thinks that they are inferior, and that psychiatrists are better than Ph.Ds


Update:
Joshua Melvin has filed his story in the MercuryNews about today's testimony. He has lots of great information about the plea bargain, as well as some great quotes from Good, and from McKowan.
We also now know that the Frumpy Liberal Hippy Ph.D  has a name. Go read Melvin's article!