Park Dietz

Park Dietz born 1948 is a forensic psychiatrist who has consulted or testified in many of the highest profile US criminal cases including Joel Rifkin Arthur Shawcross Jeffrey Dahmer The Unabomber Richard Kuklinski the Beltway sniper attacks and Jared Lee Loughner He came to national prominence in 1982 during his five days of testimony as the prosecutions 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 behaviour thus was not legally insane Dietz is also a criminologist and in 1987 he created the speciality of workplace violence prevention in founding Threat Assessment Group Inc TAG which specialises in analysing and managing threatening behaviour and communications stalking risks arising from domestic violence and other abnormal activity in corporations colleges and schools As of 2013 more than 20000 senior corporate managers have attended TAG training seminars A separate company Park Dietz Associates PDA is a forensic consulting firm specialising in criminal behaviour analysis forensic psychiatry forensic psychology and other forensic sciences serving prosecutors criminal defense attorneys and attorneys representing defendants and plaintiffs in civil litigation PDAs national roster of experts includes physicians psychologists and retired FBI agents with wide expertise on the forensic aspects of fields as diverse as neurology social work and pathology Both TAG and PDA are headquartered in Southern California with PDA having a second office in Washington DC