Park Dietz
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Park Dietz (born 1948) is a forensic psychiatrist who was educated at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania. As a full time academic at Harvard Medical School and the University of Virginia Schools of Law and Medicine, he contributed over 100 publications to the professional literature, including seminal work on the epidemiology of violence, sex offenses, and the stalking of public figures. He founded the first company devoted to the prevention of violence in the workplace (Threat Assessment Group, Inc.).
He has interviewed, and testified at the trials of, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Hinckley, Andrea Yates, and many more murderers of the last 30 years.
On January 6, 2005, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the convictions of Andrea Yates because prosecution witness Dr. Dietz gave false testimony. He stated that shortly before the killings, an episode of Law & Order had aired featuring a woman who drowned her children being acquitted of murder by reason of insanity. It was later discovered that no such episode existed; the appellate court held that the jury may have been influenced by his false testimony and that thus a new trial would be necessary. He claimed that when he learned of his error a week later, he immediately took steps to correct it and admit the error.
In a documentary called Conversations With Killers, Dietz recalls his encounters with criminals.
Park Dietz also contributed to the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography as a commissioner recommended by the White House and appointed by the Attorney General of the United States. His personal statement in the Commission's report was widely circulated for years, and the report appendixed a study Dietz had published on detective magazines with bondage covers.
