Park Dietz

Park Elliot Dietz (born August 13, 1948) is a forensic psychiatrist who has consulted or testified in many of the highest profile US criminal cases, including spousal killer Betty Broderick, mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, and serial killers Joel Rifkin, Arthur Shawcross, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Richard Kuklinski, the D.C. sniper attacks, and William Bonin. He came to national prominence in 1982 during his five days of testimony as the prosecution's expert witness in the trial of John Hinckley Jr., for his attempted assassination of President Reagan on March 30, 1981. Then an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dietz testified that at the time of the shooting, Hinckley knew what he was doing, knew it was wrong, and had the capacity to control his behavior thus was not legally insane. Dietz is also a criminologist, and in 1987 he created the specialty of ...