A psychiatrist retained by prosecutors can testify about his evaluation of whether a person who killed five people at a Maryland newspaper was legally sane at the time of the attack, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Judge Laura Ripken ruled against a motion by defense attorneys representing Jarrod Ramos to suppress Dr. Gregory Saathoff's evaluation.
Attorneys argued that their client’s rights were violated when Saathoff looked into his cell to form observations and when he interviewed 35 personnel at the jail about him.
Ramos has pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible thanks to mental disease to the June 2018 killings at the Capital Gazette. The latter term is Maryland’s version of an insanity defense.
Saathoff looked into the window while on a tour of the prison where “numerous other people” had access, Ripken said in court. The doctor's viewing of the cell didn't constitute an enquiry , as defense attorneys argued, she said.
“The doctor merely walked by as others did regularly and looked into a window as others did on a daily basis,” Ripken said. “There was no entry into his cell, and he didn't search any items within the cell.”
Ripken also ruled that Saathoff's interviews with jail personnel didn't constitute interrogations that required Ramos' lawyers to be present.
“I find that nothing that occurred was designed to elicit from the defendant incriminating evidence, and zip that rose even on the brink of the functional equivalent of such an effort occurred,” Ripken said.
The judge also rejected arguments that Ramos' due process of law rights were violated.
Matthew Connell, one among Ramos’ lawyers, argued that prosecutors “pulled strings” during a high-profile case to rearrange the interviews with jail staff. Connell contended it had been “fundamentally unfair” for jail staff with whom Ramos must interact regularly to supply observations which will be used against his client.
More than 20 people testified over three days of pretrial hearings, including jail personnel, the detention center's warden and therefore the sheriff of Anne Arundel County.
David Russell, a prosecutor, contended defense attorneys were falsely arguing a “conspiracy theory.”
“There weren't political strings pulled,” Russell said. “We didn't attend the very best level of the govt with some nefarious plan. it had been just a matter of getting an expert interview witnesses.”
Ripken said it had been the defendant who put his psychological state in dispute by pleading not criminally responsible — and it had been within the rights of prosecutors to rent an expert. She also said jail personnel weren't instructed the way to obtain information or what information to get . Also, the doctor asked them about items that were within the psychological state and medical records that he already had received, Ripken said.
“I don't find that the defendant's due process of law rights were violated as a results of the interviews that the state's expert conducted within the course of his evaluation,” Ripken said.
Defense attorneys could still attempt to limit the scope of what Saathoff can testify about before jurors.
There are three different psychological state experts within the case.
Dr. Sameer Patel, a psychiatrist with the state Health Department, has conducted a psychological state evaluation of Ramos. The evaluation has not been made public, but Ripken said in court in October that Patel found Ramos to be legally sane.
Defense attorneys have retained their own psychological state expert, and that they are arguing Ramos shouldn't be held criminally responsible due to mental disease .
Ramos pleaded guilty in October to all or any 23 counts against him for killing John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, Rob Hiaasen and Rebecca Smith. He was arrested hiding under a desk within the newsroom.
The 40-year-old had a well-documented history of harassing the newspaper’s journalists. He filed a lawsuit against the paper in 2012, alleging he was defamed in a piece of writing about his conviction during a criminal harassment case in 2011. The defamation suit was dismissed as groundless, and Ramos railed against staff at the newspaper in profanity-laced tweets.
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