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 those of 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. He heads a forensic consulting firm, Park Dietz & Associates.

Dietz was born on August 13, 1948, and raised in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Harrisburg. His mother, Marjorie Dietz, who had trained as a nurse and did hospital volunteer work including activities at a local mental institution. His father, Raymond Dietz, was a physician, as was Dietz's grandfather.

Dietz graduated from Camp Hill High School in 1966 and that same year enrolled at Cornell University to major in Psychology and Biology. He was a member of Cornell's Theta Delta Chi fraternity. In 1970 he graduated with an A.B. cum laude in Psychology, and was a Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1970, Dietz received a senatorial scholarship to study at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, transferring in 1972 to Johns Hopkins University. There, he was among a handful of students in the M.D.-Ph.D. Program in Behavioral Sciences funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the Grant Foundation of New York. From 1972-1975, while completing medical school and course requirements for a Ph.D. in Social Relations, Dietz also earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree.

Dietz worked with the school's noted public health professor Susan Baker on a study of drowning cases and their prevention and epidemiology, using the Haddon Matrix paradigm to categorize specific prevention measures for specific injuries. In 2012, Baker wrote that Dietz, "later applied the Matrix to the problem of rape, showing its value in formulating approaches to intentional injury ... and the Haddon Matrix probably played a role in his development of an entire industry addressed to workplace violence prevention."

After completing his residency in general psychiatry at Johns Hopkins in 1977 and fellowship in forensic psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978, Dietz began teaching at Harvard Medical School, where at age 29 he was the school's youngest assistant professor. While teaching at Harvard, Dietz also was the director of forensic psychiatry at Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

After four years at Harvard, Dietz became an associate professor at the University of Virginia in 1982, teaching law, behavioral medicine, and psychiatry at the UVA School of Law while also being the medical director at UVA's Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. He taught on the Charlottesville campus for six years, and was promoted to Professor of Law in the School of Law and Professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine.