Criminologist Park Dietz`s Declaration in Support of Gil Valle

Transcription

Case 1:12-cr-00847-PGG Document 181
Filed 06/17/13 Page 1 of 17
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
:
DECLARATION OF PARK DIETZ
v
:
12 Cr.. 847 (PGG)
GILBERTO VALLE
I,1t_
I
Park Dietz, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., declares under penalty of perjury, pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
1VL!1
1. I am a board certified psychiatrist specializing in forensic psychiatry and a
on my personal knowledge, training, and experience, as well as my psychiatric examination of
the defendant, my interviews of Mr. Valle's family, and my review of the pertinent scientific
literature and documents in the record, including the trial transcript of March 7, 2013.
2. I write this declaration for the limited purpose of advising the Court that aspects of the
government's rebuttal summation are not accurate. In particular, a number of assertions made by
the government in its rebuttal summation are in my opinion incorrect and spurious inasmuch as
they are not supported by, and often are contrary to, the body of psychiatric and scientific
knowledge regarding the nature of sexual fantasy, the prevalence of males being aroused by
sexually sadistic imagery, and the differences between the many men with such arousal patterns
Background and Qualifications
Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a Fellow of the
American Academy of Forensic Sciences. I was a member of the National Academy of Sciences
Committee on Trauma Research. I have served on the editorial boards
of theof the
Bulletin
American Academy
of Psychiatry and the Law,the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Behavioral
Sciences and the Law,
the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management,
and other
professional publications.
6. I have testified as an expert witness in forensic psychiatry on hundreds of occasions,
including testimony in criminal matters in federal courts throughout the U.S. and the trial courts
of nearly every state. A few of the better known cases in which I have been retained as an expert
by the government or the state are those involving John Hinckley (attempted assassination of
prosecutors and other law enforcement officials. Since 1982, I have served as a consultant in
various capacities--including lecturing, training, research collaboration, and case consultation
to the F.B.I. Academy’s Behavioral Science Unit, Behavior Analysis Units, and National Center
for the Analysis of Violent Crime, and I am a member of the New York State Police Forensic
Science Unit.
8. In the development of the American Psychiatric Association’s
Diagnostic and
Statistical Manualof Mental Disorders, Iserved on the Advisory Committee on the Paraphilias
in the preparation of
DSMJII-R, playing a significant role in drafting the description of sexual
4
arguments. In reviewing the Rebuttal Summation, I noticed that the prosecutor seemed to rely
heavily on appeals that the jury use its "common sense" or "common experience." (Defense
counsel informs me that those or similar words were used no less than 28 times.) There is little
that reliance on "common sense" or "common experience" can contribute to this subject area, as
this Court found in its decision granting the defense's request to permit me to testify as an
expert:
The Court concludes that Dr. Dietz's proposed testimony is both relevant under
Fed. R. Evid, 401, and likely to be helpful to the jury under Fed: R. Evid, 702.
Dr. Dietz will address a number of subjects that are highly relevant to this case,
including the likelihood of violent conduct by men who are sexually aroused by
sexually sadistic images; the coping mechanisms such men often develop,
including role play over the internet; and the psychological condition that Valle
allegedly suffers from, and how that condition has manifested itself in his actions.
All of these topics are beyond the ken of the average juror, and Dr. Dietz is well
situated by his education, training, research, and academic study and writings to
address these issues.
Research has demonstrated that many aspects of human sexual arousal, particularly
among those aroused by unconventional stimuli, are, in fact, counterintuitive and contrary to
common sense. Those aroused by unconventional stimuli, whether or not meeting diagnostic
11, The government argued that Mr. Valle's attraction to violent or sexually sadistic
images of women is not "normal" [Tr. 1596]. In fact, the prevalence of sexually arousing
fantasies concerning binding, domination, torturing, and forcing sex on women is so high in
every study that the inference that millions of American males experience sexual arousal from
thoughts, images, and stories of violence against women is inescapable. This is true whether one
looks at the prevalence of these images in pornography, the admitted fantasies and experiences
of college students, or the admitted fantasies and sexual practices of adults in the community.
12. The government also argued that Mr. Valle was "going to victimize a woman as soon
as he has the opportunity" [Tr. 1613]. In fact, the overwhelming majority of men with these
kinds of recurring, sexually sadistic thoughts never act on their fantasies in a criminal maimer.
Instead, they generally find ways of coping with their sexual thoughts and urges in other, noncriminal and non-violent ways, as did Mr. Valle. Their coping mechanisms include suppressing
h
what they find sexually appealing and thus have different tastes in pornography. One man finds
tattoos sexy, another finds them repulsive. One finds bondage and torture sexy, another finds
least in the United States, is the cluster of sexual preferences known in the sex industry and
among those who practice these behaviors with consenting partners as "BDSM" (sometimes
described as an acronym for "bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism" or "bondage,
domination, slave, master"). The range of activities these men prefer in pornography and in their
8
consenting sexual activities with partners includes, without limitation, humiliation (yelling,
insulting, or having the partner wear a dog collar or act as a footrest or table), insertion of fists,
arms, hands or foreign objects (e.g., dildos, catheters, knives, and guns) into vaginas,
administration of pain (e.g., hot wax, clothes pins, clamps, fire, electricity, spanking, caning,
whipping, branding, piercing), bondage (tying, handcuffs, ankle cuffs, chains, blindfolds, gags,
plastic wrap, mummification, dog cages, torture racks, etc.), nonlethal asphyxiation by manual or
ligature strangulation or by hanging or suffocation, sewing the vagina shut, drawing blood, and
more. The ways in which women are harmed and tortured in their fantasies and in pornographic
simulations are limited only by the imagination of the fantasizer and the pornographer, and
include countless techniques for producing pain and death, including amputation,
dismemberment, beheading, cannibalism, and vampirism. For those who have erotic fantasies
about such activities or who seek out such images for masturbation, the one motive they have in
common is that of becoming sexually aroused. While some of these men also have what might
be fairly described as a "deep-seated" hatred of women, most do not and have never harmed any
woman against her will.
15. Based on my examination of Mr. Valle and my review of the materials in this case, it
is my professional opinion that Mr. Valle has been sexually stimulated by images and thoughts
of other men abducting and binding females since he was a teenager, without ever attempting to
abduct or bind a female in any manner whatsoever. This pattern of arousal appears to have
originated with a scene in the movie, "The Mask," in which the character played by Cameron
Diaz is abducted and bound, and the stimuli that arouse Mr. Valle came to include more diverse
bondage when he discovered Internet bondage pornography in the latter part of high school and
came to include the poses of pornographic actresses in "Muki's Kitchen" when he discovered
Filed 06/17/13 Page 10 of 17
16. Despite government assertions that Mr. Valle was, in effect, on the verge of acting to
17. For example, the government argued in rebuttal that Mr. Valle's guilt could be
1599)
inferred because he was "engaging in detailed research"
(Tr. regarding the materials
needed to kidnap and eat someone, including research into the recipe for chloroform and
repeated searches for barbeque grills. But it would be more accurate to describe Mr. Valle's
sophomoric Internet searches as haphazard and repetitive, which is more consistent with
repetitive efforts to amuse and arouse himself while his wife slept with their child (a practice that
LII]
Filed 06/17/13 Page 11 of 17
18. The government’s assertion that "You can’t have a fantasy where you have unwilling
participants in the fantasy" (Tr. 1582) is baffling and untrue. The government could mean either
of two things by this assertion=-that men must seek the consent of women before fantasizing
about them or that men don’t fantasize doing things against the will of the characters in their
fantasies and both are wrong. Conventional male sexual fantasies are populated by whatever
appealing features a man has noticed among the women he has known, seen in public, seen in the
media, or concocted in his imagination. The use of imagined or photographic images of "real"
women in erotic fantasies is universal, whether or not the women have offered up their images
for such use. The models paid to pose for commercial pornography are real women, too, and the
fact that Mr. Valle built erotic fantasies around women he knew does not make him the least bit
Filed 06/17/13 Page 12 of 17
'and with anonymous strangers he met thereon, simply as a means of coping
darkfetishnet.com
with the fact that he was aroused by socially unacceptable images and fantasies. By creating and
playing the role of an online professional kidnapper, known as "girimeathunter," Mr. Valle
achieved acceptance from others, encouragement for his writings (some aspects of which were
designed to arouse others and generate approval, as they did not appeal to him), and, at times,
sexual stimulation. But, for Mr. Valle, the character was a role only, an exercise in sexual
imagination and collaborative creative writing.
20. The government repeatedly argued that Mr. Valle was ignoring his wife and child
(Tr. 1584, 1599, 1608, 1612), both to impugn his character and to suggest he was preparing to
commit a crime. Mr. Valle would agree that he was spending excessive time on the Internet
which is what he was referring to when he said his online activity was "bleeding into his real
life." The technology of the Internet has allowed large numbers of men and women to fall into
Filed 06/17/13 Page 13 of 17
internet conversations constituted fantasy role play, some of his conversations constituted "real"
efforts to kidnap women. I believe they were all of the same character. As indicated above, I
find none of the government's efforts to distinguish the acknowledged fantasy chats from the socalled "real" chats the least bit persuasive. The absence of any follow up or complaint when
"plans" went unfulfilled or conversations were interrupted, the absence of any of the gear or
facilities needed to carry Out such a plan, and the absence of any meeting or identification of his
collaborators is more compelling evidence that these were not plans than all of the arguments to
the contrary. If Mr. Valle ever had a fleeting thought of actually harming a woman, he certainly
did everything in his power to insure that he would be immediately identified as the offender if
he did so: he used a traceable IP address and a shared computer for all of his postings,
communications, and searches (including the search for Miss Ponticelli's home address), wrote
of vile imaginings to complete strangers who could not be vetted for trustworthiness and might
have been undercover law enforcement for all he knew, and even used an NYPD computer to
look up a few women. A stronger argument could be made that he did these things to guarantee
Filed 06/17/13 Page 14 of 17
unusual about men supplementing their memories of real women they find attractive with photos
of those same women. If the photo folders reveal anything about Mr. Valle's interest in bondage
and domination, it is that possession of the organized folders gave him a sense of possession and
control, This inference is based not on anything Mr. Valle told me, but on the behavior of men
with paraphilias who keep organized photo albums, maps, sketches, journals, notes, clippings, or
other memorabilia of sexually stimulating encounters and events.
VAJ
Filed 06/17/13 Page 15 of 17
24. The government argued that Mr. Valle is a "sick" man (Tr. 1613), but this is not
25. Participants in conversations. may have multiple intentions, such as teasing,
titillating, and arousing sexual desire; impressing each other; helping each other; influencing
each other; manipulating each other; planning future action; or simply passing the time.
Determining whether either participant intends the conversation to be an end in itself or a plan of
action is problematic, as this cannot be reliably determined from the conversation alone absent
information about the participants and the context of their communications. Instead, one must
look at other factors to learn whether they are planning future action. Today, the best we can do
to look at other factors is to determine (a) what steps a person has taken to prepare for or engage
in actions in. furtherance of a purported plan that do not have an innocuous explanation, such as
assembling, a kidnap and rape kit (e.g., chloroform in unbreakable bottles, rags, duct tape, rope, a
gag, and a blindfold or hood), a van or panel truck, an isolated or soundproof location, and so on;
(b) what previous crimes has the person committed that may be abortive attempts to commit the
contemplated crime (such as burglaries of dwellings occupied by women, attempted rapes, or
attempted abductions); (c) what risk factors for future violent crime does the person evidence;
and (d) what protective factors against future violent crime does the person evidence? There is
no evidence that Mr. Valle assembled a kidnap and rape kit, accessed a suitable vehicle, or
accessed an isolated or soundproof location. There is no evidence that Mr. Valle ever committed
any abortive attempts to commit an abduction, rape, torture, or homicide. I am informed that the
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Filed 06/17/13 Page 16 of 17
government did not present any expert testimony on the topic of risk factors or protective factors
at trial. As disclosed to the government in advance of trial, my evaluation indicated that Mr.
Valle's protective factors greatly outweigh his risk factors. Thus, in my opinion there is no
reliable evidence to suggest that his erotic conversations could reasonably be construed as
conspiratorial plans rather than conversations that were an end in themselves.
26. The government relied on several analogies in its rebuttal argument, involving a
hypothetical conversation about hijacking a plane (Tr. 1594), a hypothetical simulation of a bank
robbery (Tr, 1582), and a hypothetical poisoning-obsessed chef (Tr. 1584). I believe each of
these analogies is misleading. Unlike erotic conversations, erotic role-playing scenes, and erotic
fantasy, none of the government's examples has as its primary purpose teasing, titillating, or the
sexual arousal of the hypothetical participants. Impolite, crude, and sexist as it may be, many
men speak of things they'd like to do sexually with women they notice or know who would
never consent to the actions, knowing full well the woman is unavailable to them, and these
conversations are understood in context to be sexual fantasies and braggadocio. The same
cannot be said of conversations about hijacking a plane, of actors simulating a bank robbery, or
of chefs obsessed with poisoning. Another reason the hypotheticals are misleading is that in
each instance, the participants in the hypotheticals intentionally communicated their desires or
actions to third parties who would be foreseeably alarmed by the disclosure. It was not Mr.
Valle, however, but others who communicated what he believed were private communications to
third parties who were alarmed by statements he never imagined would be made known to them.
27. In summary, as an expert in forensic psychiatry who frequently assists the United
States government in the prosecution of sexually violent crimes, I believe a number of the
government's arguments in rebuttal summation were false, misleading, or simply unsupported.
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Filed 06/17/13 Page 17 of 17
I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing
is true and correct.
Dated: June 14, 2013
Newport Beach, California
PARK DIETZ, M.D., M.P.H., PH.D.
17

Criminologist Park Dietz`s Declaration in Support of Gil Valle

Transcription

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