LIVE: The Menendez Bros Trial (Ep. 56) | CLASSIC TRIALS - Dr. Ann Burgess Pt. 2

welcome to Classic trials if you're new here my name is Alita I'm a lawyer licensed in California and DC and on this channel we make sense of the law one bite at a time in this series we observe and analyze the play-by-play of some of the biggest trials that have shaped the public consciousness of the American judicial system in this season we're working our way through the case of California V Eric and ly Menendez growing up in Princeton New Jersey and then Beverly Hills California these young men had everything they could ever want or so it seemed until one night on August 20th 1989 they approached Jose and kitty Menendez with newly purchased shotguns put on trial for murdering their own parents they claimed self-defense arguing they were terrorized in their own home by Abus of parents until they could take no more which argument is more convincing come join and see for yourself all right happy Tuesday I was about to say happy Monday because usually we do this on Monday we've been calling Menendez Mondays for that reason um I hope you guys are having a wonderful Tuesday whatever is left of it whether it's the start or the end or somewhere in between good morning good afternoon and good evening uh I hope you guys are having a wonderful week so far and if not I hope it gets better um I know a bunch of you were with us yesterday when we live streamed the hearing for uh for the Murdock case of crazy crazy crazy crazy hearing I mean it was like a total roll coaster from start to finish between the the the the the cell phones being uh in the Jury Room and people actually watching Court TV on Facebook or or YouTube or what have you um to Jersy saying yeah she actually the clerk of court actually influenced my my decision and then and then the judge ended up uh totally flaming uh Miss Becky hill before not granting him a new trial definitely going to be anticipating that appeal from the defense for sure I think that there are there are definitely some some appealable issues there from that that hearing uh from starting with the cell phone um but then also there's definitely an argument about the the legal standard um she chose the the a certain legal standard um coming out of the the South Carolina Supreme Court the argument by the defense is that that's not the proper standard to use and that it should have been actually a much easier standard for them to get a new trial so we'll see how that goes um I still have to put out a recap for that hearing I know folks wanted to to see a recap because not everybody has like eight hours to dedicate to to a hearing um so it that will be coming out it won it won't be today though but it's going to be it's going to be coming out for sure I just I want to make sure that I've got all my decks in a row I've got everything everything done properly for that um so rest assured that will be uh I would I I I don't want to promise but I want to say high likelihood that that comes up tomorrow um so anyway uh yeah that was that was wild so but today we are here for classic trials for uh California the state of California versus Eric and L Menendez which of course as uh you all know if you've been following along with us you you know by now this is like it was so weird in the beginning but you know at this point it's like it's become so it feels routine that there are two juries in this case there are actually two two trials going on at the same time uh overlapping with one another sometimes it's both jurries sometimes it's one and sometimes it's the other um so but it's been absolutely fascinating so far and I I definitely will say that at this point I have a very different perception of this case than I did going into it um which is one of the best things about being able to revisit these trials so and it's it's we are absolutely blessed by the fact that this trial was um uh was recorded by by the folks I guess at court TV they were they were around back then for it um so uh yes so last week we had the first portion of the testimony by Dr Anne Burgess we also had the last portion of the testimony by Dr an Tyler um who testified about like Early Child Development psychology and and how abuse can can impact that which was so fascinating I mean anytime we get into psychology stuff I love it and the thing about Dr Anne Bess is is I mean she is talking about how you can look at the various signs in a crime scene and they can tell you a bit about the crime it can tell you a bit about the mindset of the person or the people that perpetrated the crime um there and so she was talking a lot about um about whether it was an organized crime scene or disorganized crime scene factors that that would lead towards organ oranization factors that would lead towards disorganization uh one of those factors leaning towards organized uh an organized uh crime scene was the fact that they had picked up the shells for example um but other than that the vast majority of it she was saying is this is this is uh basically what she would conclude is is a disorganized crime scene and so the defense of course is is going to be pointing to that by uh to say if this is a disorganized crime scene you know how how could this possibly be the perfect crime right how could this you know the perfect crime that that Dr oil uh had had said that they called it to him right this is what he says that they said whether or not we believe that do do we believe Dr oil I don't believe really anything that he says at this point because he's been totally totally discredited and we haven't even heard from judalon Smith yet um so that's some spice to look forward to but uh but other than that um there's there's more to a lot of um what the what Dr Buress is getting at which is you know not only that you know this couldn't be the perfect crime but also that hi hello do you have something to say also or do you just want to cause you just want to cause chaos okay come here cause chaos over here um but you know being the other one of the other points here is that you know the um oh gosh I totally I got distracted by the cat it happens it happens a lot um you know the fact of of it being a disorganized crime is you know could have been premeditated that's really what the defense really wants to get at is is this not being a premeditated crime this was not even a heat heat of passion crime but this was something that happened in the moment and they were responding to their environment um and this is coming off off the heels of Dr and Tyler who was talking about basically describing when someone is under chronic abuse the the level of PTSD essentially that they that they have is is immense and so that can cause someone to have a much faster trigger than the average person um when there's something in their environment that they think is going to lead to something um abusive or violent or you know something that is going to endanger them um very fascinating stuff so what are we going to get into today we will be getting into the cross-exam examination and redirect and I think some recross it is not going to be the end of her testimony today but it is still going to be quite a bit of testimony so um I should probably stop babbling and get right into into the testimony shouldn't I um and let's see here oh also here's here's a question here link Journey after this trial concludes then if possible you should see if there's footage of the Scott Peterson trial would be fascinating to see if that trial in light of the LA Innocence Project absolutely agree I do think that that one did not have cameras in the courtroom though uh from what I recall someone can correct me please do correct me because if there are cameras in the courtroom for that one I I would absolutely love to to cover that one there's a there's a bunch of trials that folks have have requested to do after this um so uh but I mean I I would definitely take take that into consideration especially in light of the the the the attempts to get him to get his his verdict overturned um it would be it would be fascinating but but I do think that that one was not on camera so um like I said if anybody has information that contradicts that please let me know um let's see here um also I think there was another question yes Mary M uh question Alita how long did this trial take in days I don't I don't remember it definitely was a number of weeks though um that's for for sure so um but I'm sure there are folks in the chat that have watched this trial several times before um and have have uh have have really really dug into this case quite a bit so I'm sure someone in the chat will will be able to tell you um more more accurately how long it was but it it was definitely weeks uh for sure and also H flash pan 85 Scott Peterson trial was not filmed that's what I thought that's what I thought so yes that that one that one we will not be able to cover in a live stream series unfortunately um because going through the transcripts is just it's it's not it's not feasible so uh alrighty okay yeah I think that's I think that's it I think that's about it okay all right folks let's get into it shall we all right let's continue on with Dr Ann briess trial we have oh and as always General trigger warnings abuse is a thing that's probably going to be talked about quite a bit here if you if that's hard for you do what you need to do for your mental health this live stream is not worth it um and also as always um any kind of questions that you have I may not answer them right away but I will I I will monitor I'll save them and I'll answer them at some point that is that is relatively natural or convenient um and that's about it all right thank you have both defendants in court with all councel and both jury panels as well and to everybody good morning we're ready to resume with the trial we have the witness back on the witness stand would you state your name again for the record please an Walbert Burgess I'll remind you that you're still under oath yes and I still love her accent and you may proceed with your direct examination Dr Burgess um last Friday you had started to discuss uh this model if you will this neurobiological model uh to explain the fear responses of traumatized persons yes now before this the research that led to the construction of this particular model was there a substantial amount of research and literature on The observed Behavior with respect to fear of traumatized persons yes there was and was there in this research um common patterns of how sexually molested children abused children uh War veterans rape victims accident victims and other traumatized people dealt with fear yes there was and would you describe for the juries what that behavioral model was well the behavioral model did describe the various symptoms that included the the hyperarousal the being uh on guard the scanning of the environment and also what's called the startle reflex that that traumatized persons would have a a higher level of being startled there were also other symptoms that were described in the behavioral literature that looked at uh what we call anxious symptoms avoidant symptoms and um other kinds of symptoms and under this behavioral model was there um efforts to understand such things as um hypervigilance which I think involves scanning the environment for cues yes and the anxiety the sort of across the board anxiety of battered and Abused Women battered and abused children yes and when you talk about avoidance what what kinds of behaviors were demonstrating avoidance avoidance behaviors would be considered some of uh withdrawing from activities being depressed uh all the way to even some suicide ideation suicidal thoughts and those were common symptoms in this class of people yes they were identified in the literature now what was there also a behavioral uh model for the intrusive thoughts or what we've called flashbacks yes okay excuse yes there was and what were those things considered under the behavioral model under the behavioral model the type of treatment that was generally used was talking therapy Psychotherapy cognitive therapy uh there are a wide range of uh models considered under psychotherapy what was that that symptom though of recurrent thoughts or or full-blown flashbacks with very little queuing if you will very little common characteristics starting the process up what were they considered well they were considered uh what they were just consider recurring thoughts and they may also have been treated by a more behavioral type of model where they would try to extinguish the the thought um it's called thought stopping they would encourage the person to minute the thought came into the mind to put it out of the mind and those therapies um either the behavioral thought stopping or the talking therapy strike that what was the was the purpose of talking therapy to try to give Insight so the person would understand why they were reacting yes that's the purpose and in traditional therapy is there an expectation that if a person has insight as to why they're behaving they can then modify the behavior or the feelings yes that's the intent now were these talking therapies or behaviorist therapies effective with traumatized people to either stop the intrusive thoughts or to get rid of these hyper arousals scannings startles anxieties were they working well they were not working certainly in a population group of traumatized persons and based on that is that when you and others started looking for a biological explanation for why these things were not reachable through therapy yes now you told us um a little bit about this system these regions in the brain that control a person's reactions to fear inducing stimulus yes there are two charts up on the board um one is a schematic I guess and one is a cross-section of the brain is that right that's correct and can you uh utilize those charts to try to explain to the jurors how information processing in this area fear operates in the brain yes okay here getting a human biology lesson here if we take the this large what's called Sagal view of the human brain you can see that there are of like layers here and the one that we're most interested in in terms of a liic system is this section that is actually colored in you can see how it extends it's airly long area being area if we move over to to this this is now a simplified representation of the liming system which is is this now moved here and what becomes very important in terms of the fear response are three areas within all of these structures this is the hypothalamus this is the hippocampus and this is the Migo complex and this is very critical because this sits at the base of the brain which is Dr if you could move into the witness box or on the other side so thaty yes we have to remember we have jury in the audience as well okay okay the um the three brain regions that are most important in the lyic system is the this is the hippocampus this is the hypothalamus and the migid section which is very important for they contain a bundle of nerve cells these neurons this is very very important regarding the fear uh component now how is do we know through how fear information information like the truck coming down the street where that information goes in the brain it would this this is the base of the brain and this would be the um igid section which there's a lot of nerve cells there neurons and it would start at this particular point but then it activates as those neurons start sending out their messages it starts to activate throughout the lyic system okay if you can resume your seat when this information activates is that those physical responses and the release of hormones is that what the body does yes as it goes up to the rest of the brain it activates the U brain hor the stress hormones brain hormones now that happens in everybody yes and I believe you started to tell us on Friday that there are stages of this processing of fear response yes and what is the first stage called yes the first stage is the Preparatory stage now how what is the biological activity going on in the Preparatory stage that's when the first signal that there is danger in the environment comes in to the brain and this release of stress hormones is that part of this stage as well yes that would alert the organism to re to it must do something now you say it must do something yes why must the organism do something because the most Basic Instinct in any human is survival and that is the purpose of this alarm system is to protect the individual from harm in order to survive and that's why it has to do something when the truck's coming down the street yes okay now what is the second stage the second stage is what the person actually does that is the fight flight uh they take action person body is prepared to act and it either must act against the danger or it must Retreat it must try to flee the danger and that's the example you gave of either you jump back to the curb or you run across the street yes now what thinking is going on as we understand it what rational processing of options and Alternatives is going on between the truck is coming down the street and I jump back on the curve no thinking automatic response now has this component of the model the fact that there is no thinking been studied and examined and researched and written about yes and in what sit situations um has it been found that there is just an automatic response well in the situations where um certainly the appasia snail uh studies that well you're gonna have to I know oh anamarie is gonna want you to spell appasia snail a p l y s i a okay what is an appasia snail it's a sea snail sea snail sea snail thought why are we interested in snails it has very important in the base of the brain it has larger um nerves and so forth to study so from a a research standpoint it provides a nice um viewing of these nerves for the researchers okay and how does studying the snail tell us that there is no thinking but automatic instinctive survival activity going on well they they've done the they've studied the avoidant in other words the fleeing part of that and they have noticed that with um some stimulation of these nerve bodies that the memory the short-term memory will last up to an hour with more chronic or more prolonged if you will stimulation of these nerves there is actually been noted the uh the um genetic recoding and and the way it's described in the literature is it goes from the RNA changes to the DNA one being the transmission one being the translation okay but I think I was asking you actually something more basic than that okay okay and that is for example hypothetically let's say you're in an automobile and somebody cuts you off yes okay very close yes now are you cognitively thinking I better turn the steering wheel and I better hit the brake or do you just turn the steering wheel and hit the brake just automatically respond you don't think uh hopefully you have responded in a p in a way that avoids the danger now this has been noted in all sorts of traumatic situations has it not that people and animals just act yes okay the snail experiment the snail studies those actually proved that there was um automatic changes in the genetic structure as a result of trauma yes the research suggested that yes so it supports the biological notion that these activities are automatic and not let me ask you this what what is the difference in the function what is the main function for example of the cortical area or the cerebral cortex that bigger part that's on top of the lyic system right that's our thinking that's where cognitions or thoughts or the uh the whole way we organize our thinking is um based or housed and did these experiments on the snails indicate that in response to prolonged stress signals don't even get into that cognitive part well in snails we don't have any evidence that they CN but there were other experiments with other men with other animals yes that have shown yes well the importance of these lower uh level animals and and snails Etc is that we do share in our survival brain these structures so that is what becomes very important um in that in that type of research on the basic what's called Universal Instinct of survival you say we have a survival brain is humans still have a surval brain yes we actually have three levels to brains um this has been well um documented in the literature by Paul mlan who research describes what he calls a Triune brain in evolution the what brain Tri Triune t r i u n e Triune brain in evolution is that like three- level brain is that what that means yes and so even though we've evolved we still have that original survival brain yes like the snail that's correct okay now are there in fact um efforts made uh with people who have to work under traumatic conditions to uh take advantage of this notion of automatic response yes and would you describe uh what those efforts are who these these populations of people are okay well uh persons that work under high stress uh need to be prepared to be able to automatically respond and those would include such populations as soldiers going into combat it would be we see this and train in terms of nurses and the emergency uh Department to be able to automatically respond when a very stressful situ situation occurs in other words so that they don't fight or flee but do what they have to do yes so this is an effort to actually override what the automatic response would be to train them to do what's logically and reasonably necessary for their work yes you want them to be able to think clearly stay calm be able to attend to the task at hand and I take it that's not something that people who are in this fear response are able to do that is correct now what is it that the research shows happens to people who have been severely traumatized whether in one big event or repeatedly that makes them and their reaction different than the ordinary model what is important in traumatized populations is they begin to read the cues differently this is the what we call the the rewiring and they will read more danger into cues than necessarily A nonp traumatized population now you've talked about and and others have talked about hypervigilance before let me give you a hypothetical if you have a person let's for the sake of this hypothetical assume it's a battered wife okay who knows that on Friday nights when her husband comes home from the bar if they didn't have his favorite beer he's going to beat her up okay let's take that as a hypo and the husband comes home with the bar and says they didn't have Miller okay uh hypothetically she could start to experience a severe fear reaction because she has the special knowledge of what they didn't have Miller means yes now if she then becomes very fearful very frightened um she's not wrong is she to be fearful then no she has this knowledge of her husband okay so when we're talking about traumatized populations reading cues differently they're not necessarily being irrational to be afraid no case but what has been learned now about what the brain does with people who have been I guess overly frightened or repeatedly frightened yes okay what is it that we've learned is happening well what we've learned is that they stay in a very high uh arousal State they are very anxious uh very maybe very frightened they also have this ability to scan or constantly scanning the environment to see if there's danger and they also become quite can be very startled very easily um because of their reading of cues in the environment and the research then into the brain structure has shown what well the research has shown that as you increase and Prov especially chronic fear or continued uh fear that this is the explanation for the recoding uh the genetic recoding or the rewiring or whatever term uh they are now going to react quite differently and there is a neurobiological basis to what has been observed behaviorally they actually have different uh cells than they had before or different contents to those cells that keep them on this level of anxiety and arousal well the coding is different it's the message the message that is sent uh our neurons send us messages and that's what goes back and forth in the brain so it sends higher level of arousal messages yes and is there reason to believe that even the the general anxiety state is because they're constantly sending a message a fear message of some sort yes they may keep the person at this very high level of anxiety now was there something that was understood by the term trauma learning that this now also gives a biological um underpinning too yes um the the term trauma learning is a term that's been coined um actually by Dr Carol Harman in terms of this phenomenon because all of this activity is in the service of learning in the brain what is what what is the brain learning through this activity well um as the brain experiences it sends these messages so that is one of the bases for learning in other words learning how to deal with fearful situations yes from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense now is there also um an understanding of what happens to traumatize people who can neither fight nor flee yes and what the circumstances where that occurs well what happens when somebody is in such a situation they go into this third um phase which is really the numbing phase and they stay quite numb if you will to ongoing activity can you give us examples of populations or people who are in situations where they can neither fight nor flee oh yes children certainly are a a good example of populations because they don't have the equipment if you will to be able to fight or flee um persons that are trapped in a in some type of a uh like a hostage type of situation they can't get out uh concentration camp persons um uh even natural disasters I suppose you could have people that are are unable to get out of a hurricane or something like that let's focus for the moment on children children in what kinds of situations um have been what in strike all that the study of children in situations where they can't fight or flee okay yes um specifically what circumstances have you researched and studied I've studied children who have been abused who have either been directly abused or have also witnessed abusing situations violence within the home or examples such as that for the moment let's take as an example a child who is being sexually molested yes okay okay is is that generally speaking a traumatic um incident to a child yes yes it is and how does the fight flight mechanism work or fail to work for children in that kind of traumatic situation generally children are unable to extricate themselves or to get out of the situation and they um stay in it um both because for many reasons okay with respect to the body okay you've indicated there's this Preparatory stage these hormones get released now you're supposed to take action yes and you're talking about people who can't take action for whatever reason that's right so do the hormones just go away does some some little message go off and say oh we can't take action we'll all go home no what happens the mind uh the mind takes over for example in the flight part um one of the things that can happen is that the Mind literally puts itself into another topic and that's something that's called daydreaming or technical term is dissociation but they put their mind elsewhere so that they do not have to attend to what actually is occurring to them and that they do that during the the uh offensive acts themselves yes they do and does that make the stress hormones go away or are they still pumping no the stress hormones are still pumping now is there something that's been observed therefore with with people who get trapped in situations where they can't fight or flee um based on the fact that the stress hormones keep pumping well when those hormones keep pumping they are influencing certainly the brain structure so that is what's called the overriding component to the alarm system what do you mean by an overriding comp when the there is too much activity in the brain hormones and the person cannot extricate thems from the situation that is what generally moves the person into either the um dissociation the thinking of other things or the numbing is in the service of survival you said an overriding component is this also I think you've referred to it before as overwhelming yes overwhelming yes and in your neurobiological model is it therefore un at least believed that children who have been exposed to these situations who have these overwhelming um stress reaction and dissociate or numb uh does that leave them with these symptoms we've talked about this high anxiety High arousal do they do they remain in a state of overstimulation basically well they can't stay in a total state of overwhelm that's just not the way the body operates in any type of situations so there is what's called some coping a way of managing it or an actually an adaptation to the abuse why do they remain why doesn't it all just go away after each episode though and then they are back to square one like anybody else well there there the resetting phenomenon doesn't occur because it's there's still an abusive situation if you're talking about a ongoing type of of situation if it's a one time situation that might be quite different so the notion is that they're always kept at some high level of anxiety because of the ongoing nature of the abusive situation yes now we tend to think that people get used to bad things okay yes that if you're frightened a lot you should get used to that and be less frighten if you will do these models and this research support that theory or are they uh in fact the opposite well there can be the adaptation as I say they will learn through the trauma learning they're going to learn how to how to deal with it uh it's not going to be a healthy way we we say but they certainly um they learn to deal with it and again you have to look at each situation to see how they do adapt but if I understand what you're saying basically what what the research has shown is that people who have been traumatized frightened more easily than other people oh yes they do so they don't get used to it in that sense not in that sense no and the coping strategies that children come up with to deal with abuse uh such as sexual abuse or other abuse typically what are they well some of the coping mechanisms the the other important one is the fight aspect uh you will get children especially very young children who will protest in terms of hitting at the abuser or hitting at someone or crying crying is another uh verbal way if you will of fighting so that you will hear symptoms along that line with very young children um other symptoms again you would look for the age of the child to see where along the Continuum there would be symptoms are things are I mean when we talk about fighting we're all picturing like you know fisticuffs but you you're really talking about is is rejecting or efforts to reject the abuse or to yes we call it protest behaviors that if you take a careful history you often can find again especially in young children some manner in which they've tried to protest it and would run uh threats to run away or attempts to run away in an older child constitute protest Behavior yes definitely would hiding in the closet or trying to elude the um abuser constitute protest behaviors yes now I think that you said that we're this neurobiological model now accepts the notion that there is recoding of the brain on the basis of the EXP exposure to trauma yes with a child under say the age of three has the brain been fully coded I mean in its original or Baseline form yet no it has not so if you have a child under the age of three who is subject to traumatic episodes is the original coding of that child's brain different than it would have been hypothetically without the trauma yes so can you preset a child from a very early age to be hyper sensitive and hyperaroused to fear yes you can now turning back for a moment to how this whole system is activated during say an abusive episode on a child okay um this anxiety that this kind of behavior creates does how does this affect in the long term such a child well it's going to affect various aspects of its development because that's going to be carried into each developmental stage and what do you mean by that well as children develop uh there are tasks that must be mastered for them to be able to move on to the next task that's generally the way one looks at Child Development so when you have the anxiety that is also going to influence those phases is there some notion that a child coping with this kind of trauma and stress uh from an early age can't get out of the past somehow yes that's precisely one of the problems as their mind continually goes back to the abusive situation and how does that interfere with learning and that's going to interfere with learning because the mind keeps going back and doesn't push on to present and future uh good mental health generally looks at people who can stay present and future oriented now also I think you said that one of the coping strategies is this notion of dissociating yes or this notion of numbing are those the same things or are they different uh they're they're really different okay why don't you describe I think you described what dissociating is it means sending your mind somewhere yeah that's a more cognitive kind of function whereas the numbing is much more of a a physiological feeling affect type of uh phenomenon so in in a numbing coping response the child just doesn't feel things physically or does he not feel things emotionally also yeah they really are separated from the thought in other words they're cut off sometimes it's it's described as somebody's cut off from their feelings now let's assume you have a child who's in this kind of environment where they're being exposed to these traumas do they tend just to dissociate during trauma or does it become a habit if you will of mind yeah really can become a habit of mind and when you're um examining say the background of a child are you looking for evidence of this dissociating outside of the actual abuse incidence yes I am and what do you frequently find that you will find uh a number of reports stating that this is going on it won't be stated as dissociation but it will say the child is not necessarily concentrating in in school or seems to be daydreaming a lot or he's looking out the window or is not able to follow the activities in the classroom and that's what this looks like from the outside in a child dissociating yes this is what another person would generally observe now this other notion of numbing is um does the literature support the notion that abused children tend not to relate the incidents with a great deal of emotional a yes is that related to this notion of numbing yes and would you explain that well they are uh cut off from the feeling so that when they describe what has happened they're able to do it they're able to describe in a rather perfunctory way what has necessarily occurred and the what we say the aect the emotion does not necessarily match the statement and that would sometimes be in the initial stages of an evaluation now um and then ultimately perhaps the children get back in touch and are able to be emotional and well that's the purpose of of treatment okay let's talk about though this this notion went of of a child who's been through this history when they're in a new stressful situation would you tend to find them using these coping strategies dissociating and numbing yes like if they're testifying in a courtroom in a trial where their life is at stake would you tend to think they'd rely on Old defenses like dissociation and numbing yes objection sustain the answer Str is courtroom um the structure of a courtroom in the method of examining a witness is that something that produces um anxiety usually in the people on the witness stand of of course yes if those people have a history of being particularly sensitive to uh to stress and pressure could it re you know cause them to fall back on coping devices from the past yes it could now one point when you've talked about this brain recoding which is an actual change in the genetic structure yes the transmission of the message can the brain ever be recoded back to normal do we know well there are uh efforts now to begin to attend to this uh whether it gets back I'm not sure that we have uh that research but we do have efforts to uh influence through medication the uh brain chemistry but short of intervention through medication um the brain doesn't just automatically recode itself if the if the particular stressful situations stop for example no but if there's a reduction of the stressful situation that's a a major step forward that's what you always try to do in any situation is to eliminate the trauma so these people um may get better then yes and at some point could their um tendency for example to be highly anxious and hypervigilant diminish over time yes would that happen even without treatment or does it require It generally requires treatment you had said that these were the symptoms that couldn't even be treated with usual talk therapy yes now you said that there are uh some adaptions that abused people or traumatized people make so that they can survive in an ongoing way yes U if something changes if some new element or new crisis comes in do those adaptions work no they do not and then are these people likely to ex experience these really extreme fear reactions yes they are now going back to this notion of trauma learning okay how long does the impact of this last on a child's life can be long lasting okay what are some of the impacts that you can see in uh some of the behavioral or psychological impacts that you can see we notice uh many impacts in terms of the uh with you can get What's called the more internalizing type of reactions where there's withdrawal there may be depression there may be uh serious uh suicidal thinking then you can get what's called more of the uh externalizing symptoms where there is more of a um showing of the uh distress in a behavioral way uh so you can get schoolroom classroom kinds of uh symptoms acting up if you will in a classroom not being able to sit still uh things in which children's Behavior becomes uh a problem okay what effect does it have on the child's concept of self it is very negative to the child's concept of self it makes the child feel worthless helpless all of those types of negative feelings generally come into play now this notion of helplessness is this a notion that runs through uh examination of trauma traumatized people of various types yes it does there's a there's a term that's usually applied in battered women cases of learned helplessness does something similar occur to Children yes you can see a non-assertive uh they're not in any way able to defend themselves so you see a much more um passive presentation with children now apart from any this this sort of Personality projection does a child who's been in these situations repeatedly where they can't fight and they can't flee do they approach problem solving the same way as a child who's been able to influence what happens to them who has had some control no they don't okay can you explain the difference well the problem solving skills which are very important cognitive skills if you will and and certainly all relate to the way information comes in are May well be severely uh influenced in terms of they they just haven't learned them they've been focusing on other kinds of things so that they may perceive a situation ly uh they have not had the experience that other non-traumatized children have you understand that in the theoretical framework of I want to go back for a moment to the battered wife when when the question is posed why don't battered wives just walk out the door the theoretical answer is learned helplessness um are there more than just that reason as to why children don't just walk out the door well children yes there are more reasons why children don't uh they they may have no place to go they may have no uh safety uh aspect of they certainly may be small that they they can't and they also are very um connected with their parents um there are a lot of mitigating factors that a child still believes that the parent uh is the most important person and and they feel very much connected with the parent but is I wonder if if I mean I'm sure Leslie's going to ask a little bit more in a clarifying way of of like well what about when those when those children grow up right like what about when they get a little bit older is there still that dependence that's still that connection um so really quick though uh madori bwat I'm so sorry if I mispronounced your name thanks so much for the super chat um and I think this this you meant to uh to include with it um this comment hey Alita following your channel since Depp heard Kyle Written House trials I've been binge watching your Menendez coverage just caught up I'm not obsessed with the brother's story thanks yes thank you so much thank you for for for binging it uh with us and now you're you're all caught up fantastic so I hope you can you can join us each week um that's uh uh wonderful I'm I'm glad you've been enjoying it um and thank you so much for the Super Chat let me also get oh there are no questions yet okay so I thought maybe I had saved some questions but so far no um okay let's uh let's let's get back to the testimony this has been so fascinating this helplessness this helplessness learning if you will or this learning to be helpless um something that continues into adolescence and even young adulthood in abused children yes if it's not interrupted yes and for those children even if they're old enough theoretically to walk out the door does helplessness play a role yes and what role does it play it keeps them tied into the situation they don't see their options uh they they can't think of what else to do so we do see that Phenomenon with adolescence do most abused children run away or do most abused children stay there and take it based on the research in the literature objection sustain to well first ask is there based on there had been numerous Studies have they not have abused and molested children yes and particularly in the incest and home abuse setting okay yes to focus on domestic abuse rather than abuse by strangers yes and uh there's statistical studies done in this area as well are there not yes there are uh to assess the extent of various forms of child abuse in this country and in this state currently yes and um do abused and molest to Children tend to leave the home routinely no they don't now do people who have had this re experiencing and reexperiencing of uh of trauma have a sense you've talked about helplessness that also have a sense of isolation yes they do and what causes that the isolation very often is something that's imposed by the abuser uh to keep the child from persons that they may be able to talk to so that you do see a family in the case of a family situation where the children are kept away from Friends other family members now when you say kept away do you have to be totally locked off for you know permanently to have a sense of being isolated from other people no it can be from uh the way that it's stated in the family the rules of the family so to speak do children who have experienced trauma learning in the sense that they have been frightened by um an abuser in the family uh tend to be easier to control by way of rule setting yes I do is there a notion in behavioral literature that terror is an effective tool for discipline yes and I think you've already indicated that uh abused children particularly sexually molested children tend to be compliant in passive refr raise a question yes I mean I think you've indicated that sexually abused children for there to be long-term abuse tend to be passive and compliant yes is that because they like it no it is not do they like it no they do not now is one of the distinctions between uh when we come to these issues of isolation and helplessness and inability to to come up with alternatives for their situation one of the distinctions between children raised in such an environment and battered women that battered women at least have earlier life experiences that's correct in which they could have problem solved or had responsibility for themselves yes overall the answer will stand now I want to go back for a moment to the actual fear response okay yes the physical signs of this fear response are what increased heart rate blood pressure increase sweating um all of the autonomic nervous system symptoms there are more but those are the general ones that people feel when people describe things like tingling and their scalp you know people talk about their hair standing on end and chills running down their spine are there actual biological causes for that linkages yes and when a person who has this um you talked about the kindling or rekindling effect on Friday yes I do would you describe to us what that is well the kindling effect is where in a traumatized person they have uh a certain level of the fear so that when the new or a they perceive in their environment a new queue it it takes much less for that to flare up if you will so that it's a it it really is explains that higher level of um fear response than in non-traumatized persons and when these persons um are experiencing this trauma response do they get all the same physical signs and and symptoms that anybody else would in in the yes they do in the situation yes yes now is there research that indicates that that one of the side effects of this alteration in the neurobiological structure is a change in the serotonin levels that the body produces yes what is serotonin well serotonin is an important brain uh hormone that modulates and regulates and keeps at this uh even ke if you will the um the so that the neurons can transmit back and forth so it's a very important chemical part of the brain and is it believed that people who have under gone these um genetic changes uh due to exposure to trauma have a lower serotonin level than non-traumatized populations yes they have a lower level and is you talked about medical about medication as an intervention is this one of the areas where they're seeking now to medicate to raise the serotonin level oh yes they do that you actually can raise the serotonin level by prescribing certain medicines which medicines are um effective in doing that uh there are several um by trade name um proac is one Zoloft is one uh Wellbutrin is another I believe and are these then the kinds of medications that are now being prescribed for traumatized people to help overcome what this genetic remapping may have done yeah well it's done also for depression and suicidality as well as the uh the traumatized I mean there are other populations benefit from that oh I know I think we've all heard about Prozac but yes all right we have a juror needs a break so we'll take a recess and we'll resume in 15 minutes don't discuss the matter with anyone don't form all right so this is going to be we're going to skip over this part here where is hang on sorry cat got the time stamps here okay a hearing at the sidebar or outside the presence of the jury all right let's get the jury panels in examination by the prosecution of the witness don't worry the rainbow bars will leave Dr Burgess um good morning good morning the study in which you were involved for the FBI was a study which was aimed at trying to give form to crime um analysis is that correct in other words you're trying to give some sort of scientific construction to um crime solving techniques uh it was actually to describe the crime scene analysis process uh as enacted by law enforcement okay but it wasn't just crime scene that you were working on it was also in in helping um local law enforcement agencies in detection in other words suggestions for search warrants looking into the victims and how the victims related to the defendants and things like that okay that's that's the actual manual that was published yes okay and I have here a book um hold up is this in fact the manual that was published as a result of the study that you took part in yes it is okay for the record this is a book called crime classification manual a standard system for investigating and classifying violent crimes we should well it's not mine and I'm not going to offer it into there's no need at this point to do so okay now Dr Burgess in this trial you have testified not only to Crime Scene analysis but you've also testified to types of homicides correct yes I have and you indicated that there were approximately or is it precisely 32 types of homicides approximately okay and these types of homicides that the 32 the number that was come up with is that part of the study that is contained within this manual correct now I believe that the manual indicates that there are four basic types of homicides with each one containing subtypes is that correct that's correct the first would be called criminal Enterprise homicide which appears from the manual to be a homicide for some sort of material gain would that be correct that is correct the second kind of larger group of homicide would be a personal cause homicide which is a killing resulting from emotional conflict would that be correct well it's specific to the person uh when we say when it said personal cause there would be something specific to the person all right and and that and one person versus a group of people correct okay the next time is the the next kind of the four would be the sexual homicide correct that is correct and those are the kind of homicides that are traditionally associated with serial killers yes traditionally yes and the last type of the four major groups would be group cause homicide which is where um groups of people for non-financial reasons commit homicides to further or achieve their goals yes that's correct so in this particular case I believe that you classifi this particular crime as a personal cause homicide because you classified it as a domestic homicide yes as the preliminary uh classification from crime scene yes all right now when you talk about preliminary classification from crime scene there are several factors that go into an investigation aside from just looking at the crime scene correct as one gets into the investigation that's correct okay normally an investigator is first confronted with a crime scene which is why the investigator got called that's correct and then from crime scene other avenues of Investigation are pursued correct that is correct okay for instance uh finding out about possible suspects correct well that's the whole goal is to identify the suspects okay and but one of the ways to do that is to look at the victim correct yes that's true um and look at people who might have a motive to kill the victim yes all right so crime seeeing classification is just one part of Investigation yes it's the starting point it's a starting point aside from the investigator's experience and things like that correct yes okay now when you participated in this study and ultimately caused this book to be published point of it was to Aid investigators in solving crime yes okay and it was not to Aid criminals in committing better crimes no okay now um the the information which you've given to these two juries about these different classifications and crime scenes which are disorganized and organized is that information which you have ever um lectured on to groups of criminals to help them improve their skills what no okay not knowingly not knowing right okay so you have no way of knowing if the average criminal is familiar with the years of research that you did in order to come to these classifications no I don't not okay what is she getting at is she try is she trying to imply that Eric and Lyall like read her work before doing the deed and were like ooh let's set this up extra perfectly so that so that we can get away with this so that we can fool Dr briess and bring her on as an expert witness in our trial like I just the I'm where is she go like where is she go where is she going with this is this what's happening or or is there something that I'm not seeing that will that will become clear in like two seconds I don't know but these are my thoughts in the moment and in fact in this case you have no way of knowing if these particular defendants were familiar with the classifications and the other studies that you did as part of this study for the FBI well it wasn't published back in ' 89 this is a recent publication all right and well that's a good answer but literally she actually she went there she she went she went there she went there okay cool all right okay cool prior to that time was there any other public published form in which someone could get a hold of these classifications so as to better commit a crime not to my knowledge now um when someone talks about I just like okay so you know the the police might benefit may maybe would benefit from it but have you ever considered that maybe the perpetrators of crimes would be just as interested in reading your literature as you know police departments around the world like I'm sorry what is such a strange thing to like say about a Perfect Crime what in your mind is perfect about a Perfect Crime I have no idea speculation all right well she's answer the question similarly answer will stand is lack of detection or lack of apprehension a goal of many crimes yes does that make it perfect well I'm going to object to the question is being um compound lack of detection and lack of apprehension objection sustain the answer strict is lack of detection the goal of many crimes um again it may be I I it may be one of the things that you spoke of in in putting together the statistics or the analysis of what a disorganized crime scene was was a correlation between the disorganization and I think you said the speed of apprehension yes that's one factor could you explain to us how that works in other words you look at crime scenes and then you figure out how fast the person got caught and you decide that crime scene must have been disorganized no the original study that looked at these two factors had serial offenders in other words they had committed many many offenses and so we were able to enter into the computer a lot of variables related to that and one of the other factors was that they had been divided into organized and disorganized um offenders and then you look for correlation and one of the factors that did sift out was that with disorganization uh more likely than not you're going to get faster apprehension and in fact apprehension right at the crime scene that's interesting um also Niko kisy I bet Le is a pro at predicting where the weird plots of crappy movies are headed um yes um it's something that sometimes very often actually frustrates Mr Bites for a while he was amused Enough by it that he would take it as a challenge to try to predict something before I did um and every once in a while he does manage to do it but um but usually um I'm just talking over a TV TV show or a movie with my stream of Consciousness and blurting out where I think it's going to go and it tends to be right and then he gets mad um you know I mean it's all it's all it's all in good fun but uh yes I sometimes frustrate other people with that tendency all right because disorganization leaves Clues correct okay now you spoke about the study dealt with serial offenders is that correct that's correct are those people who were specialist in a particular crime like burglars or rapists or Killers no they had all been convicted for murder all right so the serial offenders that were part of the study were all murderers that is correct and had had they committed more than one murder yes they had uh most of them not the majority I think 30 out of the 43 37 had three or more so the remainder had less than three all right and are we talking about three people being killed at once or three people being killed in three separate incidences separate incidents all right now would you um agree that as one does an activity one becomes better at that activity normally it's a little vague do you understand my question uh yes that is one um uh hypothesis that could be offered yes okay and when you were looking at this group of 43 people I think you said 37 of which had done more than three or three or more yes they would have been classified as a serial killers okay and are those people who were um committed a crime got caught put in prison got out committed a crime got caught or they people who hadn't gotten caught between the three there were various patterns some had followed that pattern but some had never been caught until their final crime all right and would you agree that sometimes people do learn from their mistakes yes okay now when you were looking at disorganized crime scenes in relation to repeat offenders did you also do a study of disorganized crime scenes in relationship to firsttime murderers um well that would have been part of the data that would be available that would have been the six people who hadn't killed more than three some had killed TW two so I I I don't have the precise numbers of how many did under three majority did over three now I believe that you've testified in front of the both these juries that in your opinion the disorganization of the Mendes crime scene leads you to the conclusion that it was and I don't want to put words in your mouth so could you could you give me again what your testimony was I said it showed a lack of planning lack of organization okay now um is there a difference between lack of planning and poor planning well that wouldn't uh we talk about it being a lack of planning well we don't give it a adjective well lack of planning to me and I'm not a psychologist but lack of planning to me means you didn't plan yes okay whereas poor planning means you planned and you could have planned a lot but you didn't do it very well you can't see that in the crime scene okay so you can't make that distinction on on a value statement like poor or good or in between so that um for a firsttime killer there could be lots of planning but it was poorly executed because the person had never done it before I'm rephrase question okay uh when you talk about lack of planning which is one of the conclusions that you reached um did you also consider the novelty of the uh killing in other words that had never been done before no you're just looking at the crime scene and you're looking at it all of the clues and the possible presence of the uh persons right there that is what a disorganized crime scene means it doesn't get into other types of evaluation I believe you indicated that there are three types of crime scenes in terms of calling them organized versus disorganized there's the or disorganized the mixed and the organized yes that's correct and I believe you indicated that in this particular crime scene there were some features that were organized yes and I believe the two features that you indicated were the fact that the shotgun shells had been disposed of and that the weapon had been taken from the scene well those two things were not present at the crime scene I'm not sure that they didn't know where they were but they knew that um police investigating saw no shells and no weapon and you're aware of the fact that Not only was the actual no we talking about crime scene let me back up when we talk about crime scene are we talking about the room in which the crime occurs or in a residence are we talking about the whole house oh no right you the law enforcement has a wide discretion as to what they can include in crime scenes so even cars parked outside can be part of the total and certainly the whole house could be cons considered um important to the crime scene but there's usually What's called the death scene where the persons actually were killed and that may or may not be the same as crime scene all right when you use the term crime scene what do you mean where the bodies are found all right so you would confine it just to the room in this case then you would call the crime scene the room in which the bodies were found that's the actual crime scene but other parts of the house must be investigated as well as for the total picture to be evaluated okay so when you say that the weapons were removed from the crime scene or were not present at the crime scene we're talking about the whole house correct well they could yes they could not find the weapons in wherever they searched right now uh another factor which would show organization would be the fact that a weapon of opportunity was noted used isn't that correct well they couldn't really determine that at that particular point when we're just looking at coming into the crime scene initially um they would have no way of determining that at that particular point they just knew that the weapon was not present okay now what is a weapon of opportunity just so the jury knows right a weapon of opportunity is something some weapon that is secured from the actual area that could be for I can give you other examples Like a Knife if a knife is used uh rope uh if is present and used fireplace tool uh right um could have handgun or some type of gun all right so sometimes in crime scenes you find a set of steak knives and one of the steak knives is is missing yes and that would imply to the investigator that that was a weapon of opportunity meaning that the person who came upon the crime scene did not come prepared but rather used a knife for the for to commit the crime yeah no it doesn't mean that they did not come prepared it just means it it gives us another important aspect uh a knife could be used could be washed and put back um just giv you an example correct and in which case unless they tested all the knives for blood and found some they wouldn't know that just from looking at the crime scene correct correct okay um I believe you indicated that some of the disorganized portions of this particular crime scene I and I I think you gave six different examples six factors that you considered in the in evaluating whether it was disorganized or organized okay yes corre all right and I want to go over those with you now okay um I think one of the things you indicated that made it in your opinion disorganized was the location of the crime correct correct and that was um at inside of a home in a residential neighborhood yes okay and why was it that in this particular case you found that to be disorganized on the part of the perpetrators in terms of possible detection uh also you have to take in fact the type of weapon that it was a loud weapon it was a multiple weapon and it was a hot uh August day when possibly windows were open in fact windows were shot so that the likelihood of noise in this area and and detection was uh highly likely so that if one were to commit a shotgun killing of people one would want to do it in a in a place where one couldn't be heard is that correct that would be one consideration yes so some place like the desert would be a good place yes okay now um aren't there problems though associated with transporting victims in order to get them to a place of isolation for the perpetrator not in perpetrators we've studied well but if if the person gets caught during the transportation in other words if the police stop the car which sometimes happens when people are being kidnapped I'm well nature of the question perhaps should be a little more specific here in order to make a in order to make this particular crime look like a organized crime or a murder For Hire where should it have occurred in your opinion to make it more organized uh very often it can be done at an off Lo I'm thinking of some of the examples that are are cited um where there are few people around or it's done very quickly um it's done from an area like a a sniper type uh shooting um in um it can still be in a public place but the person is not necessarily detected because of the distance between the victim and the shooter all right for instance President Kennedy was shot in public that's correct by someone who evidently had a good aim that's correct not using a shotgun that's correct okay um but in terms of killing two two people in in order to get two people you would have to have a location where both of them were there at the same time correct yes and You' have to have a location where it would make sense that they would be in order to explain why they were there correct it would be non-suspicious for these people to be in this particular location that's yes that's because otherwise the crime scene would cause the investigators to become suspicious why are these people in the middle of the desert in Lancaster where no one would hear correct so one of the things you consider is the location of the crime and because this was in a home you found that to be disorganized well the location and the weapon those two are very important to look at together the choice of weapon is really what also adds to the possibility of of someone hearing and someone calling U police all right so this had been perhaps a knifing where there is minimal noise then the location of the crime would not be problematic in terms of disorganization that certainly would reduce the likelihood of detection yes okay um if one wanted to make um a double homicide look like an organized crime killing or or a murder for hire okay um would strangulation U be a method that would achieve that end strangulation is generally not used in criminal Enterprise um uh killings so I would not say the strangulation is generally usually weapon to your knowledge um is are shotguns used in um murders For Hire or well any weapon can be used in for murder For Hire it's not uh it's it's just that um I I'm going to say that they're not they certainly may be but again you have to look at the location and where they are and whether there's the opportunity for noise and people seeing people come and go things like that it would also depend on the perpetrator's idea of what an organized crime killing or a murder For Hire looks like maybe they watched BBC correct in other words different people would have different views of what an organized crime or a murder For Hire how it occurs correct well well there certainly are enough of those types of crimes that are committed that are in the public media so I mean it's it's not like it's a surprise well there do it but there's but there's also um a great deal of license taken by Hol would in describing murders for hired and organized crime killings as well which could contribute to one's idea of what they look like objection argumenta yeah I wasn't thinking of that oh sorry now um what you're saying about the choice um as being disorganized therefore lack of planning okay yes couldn't have been just poor planning in other words just not well thought out the point is on disorganization you look for immediately as fast as possible a suspect in the area I mean that's the teaching that is done you don't get into whether it was good or bad but the point is look for your suspect is Right within that area but if the suspect has a right to be in that area because the suspect lives in that home or that neighborhood then the presence of the suspect in the area would not be suspicious oh not necessarily so um that's the purpose of classifying crimes that domestic type of situations are unfortunately quite frequent yes but the fact that that someone is risking detection in their own home them being in their own home can be explained because they live there correct well it can be explained that way yes okay for instance if um if my husband comes in the house and kills me and is there when the police come versus a total stranger coming in the house and killing me and is there when the police come there might be a difference in terms of the perceptions of the police correct if if they have knowledge of both persons yes all right so a stranger being in your home is a lot more suspicious than someone who has a right to be in your home well not not for police they're supposed to keep a high index of Suspicion for everybody okay but being present at the scene of a crime especially when you live at the scene of the crime is not criminal correct oh it's not criminal no not at all now I believe you indicated that in conjunction with the location of the crime being disorganized that the choice of the weapon was in this particular case a poor choice correct or shows lack of planning all right um did you consider availability in this particular case did you consider availability of weapons in determining that this was in fact uh lack of planning well there were yes there were weapons in the house corre that would have been a weapon of opportunity if you want to identify that way all right and so a weapon of opportunity then is a weapon where someone perhaps makes the decis decision to kill after an event has occurred which triggers their desire to kill that's all speculation well no not necessarily they can take a weapon of opportunity as a way to avoid detection might be one we were just talking about the knife did you find any significance in the fact in this crime scene that the rifles were not used uh yes and what significance did you attach to that well they could have planned to use those weapons um if there was a plan Al that could have been their choice but if the plan was to make it look like an organized crime or a murder for higher killing then using the householders weapons would be inconsistent with that particular Theory wouldn't it objection argumented in lack of foundation uh no I wouldn't I wouldn't say that well it isn't wouldn't it be rather suspicious that an organized crime or a Hitman would arrive at a scene and then arm himself with a weapon he's unfamiliar with after he already got there I can't speculate on that I can just say that when one goes to a crime scene you look at the initial pattern and in this crime scene it was disorganized and generally speaking organized U criminal Enterprise does not show a disorganized crime scene all right but the the factors the disorganized a and the main things in this particular case was the noise made by the shotguns correct and I think the other main thing would be the number of shots fired correct okay are there and type of of weap uh type of ammunition okay now why is the type of ammunition important here because that doesn't show planning it would it is more logical that there would be all the same type of um ammunition all right so you're talking about the fact that both birdshot and Buckshot were used yes correct now you're saying then that they that there should have been planning that the mother would have died with the shot she already had before the bird shot is that what you're saying um Dr Burgess um the fact that there were two different types of ammunition could just as easily be explained by unexpected circumstances which occurred after the crime started correct no you wouldn't read that into the crime crime scene when you come in at initial observation you you don't have that first of all you have that's forensic material okay so when an investigator investigates he's not just looking at the crime scene he's going to look later at the forensic material which is developed after the crime scene is processed correct well you're always getting more information in to update if they haven't found a suspect the importance of disorganized with organized is to immediately alert the law enforcement to start looking for suspect in that immediate area okay and the purpose of the study was not to come in and aid criminal defendants in trial but rather to Aid law enforcement and apprehension correct that is correct okay now the fact that there were two types of ammunition used should have told law enforcement that this was either what not planned well or not planned at all and therefore they should look at a particular suspect well again you don't have that necessarily right at the time coming into the crime scene because that takes forensics to be able to identify that so the fact that there were two types of ammunition used was not immediately identifiable at the crime scene unless they were able to see necessarily uh wounds and so forth all right now you've looked at the crime scene photos in this particular case is that correct that is correct and you had the uh luxury of time in order to examine those photographs correct NE there words you had as much time as you wanted yes I did all right and from your looking at those crime scene photographs were you able to tell that there were two kinds of ammunition used just from looking at them well I also looked at forensics but I could not tell just from the uh photographs okay so in terms of an investigator arriving at the scene trying to conduct an investigation that it was not readily apparent that this was disorganized because of two types of ammunition used correct no but I quickly would add to that once they got forensics in correct all right now um but that's something that happens later and we're just talking about the crime scene itself correct so what just looking at the crime scene what an investigator should see two types of ammunition is not really a factor in this case well initially at the very first walk-in correct all right now um let's talk about the location well first of all when you were listing the six factors you listed injuries to the victim and the where the injuries were I think I was taking notes yes okay is that that's correct those are two separate things that's correct could you please distinguish them for me okay injuries to the body would be you just look at uh the number of shots so to speak or wounds and then you look at where those wounds are to see whether they're in one particular area or whether they have what was called a more random um focus to them all right so injuries to the victim would be the number of shots and the where the injuries were would be the location of the shots yes okay now believe you indicated that one of the things that was noteworthy to you in this crime scene were the number of shots correct and location to body all right but let's let's just talk right now about the number of shots fired now when you're talking about this particular aspect of disorganization is this the area that you would call Overkill well that's one yes that would be one factor okay now Overkill is where a person ERS um more than one fatal wound would that be correct yes um and there are cases for instance where people are stabbed 40 times in in the left chest area with a knife correct yes there are and those traditionally in law enforcement are associated with things like rage correct well that is what they say if it's all to one area of the body yes all right um or if the person is killed a number of ways for instance poisoned and strangled and beaten okay all of which would have ultimately been fatal to the victim right but that also you're bringing in that other things were done to the body and that that's another factor that one would look at was there any touching of the body uh before or after the shooting right now in this particular case as to Mr mandez he had one wound which which even to a a non- pathologist appears to be quite fatal which is the wound to the back of his head yes correct correct all right and the other wounds were to his extremities correct correct all right one one wound passed across his chest but only one pellet went in and lodged in his um upper right arm that's right there were individual pellet defects on the outside of his forearm on his right arm that's correct there were individual pellet defects in his left elbow yes and then there was a through and through wound right above his left knee which went from the inside to the outside yes okay so in terms of kill killing him the wound that was the killer was the head wound correct that's correct all right so to say that there was Overkill would not be precise in this instance would it no I would disagree with you the importance is that multiple shots were fired and they did enter into him now I believe you've indicated then that this is an in India of um lack of planning yes right when a novice commits a crime such as murder is there a certain amount of inexperience that will play into that person's Commission of the crime not looking at the crime scene necessarily right but in terms of their particular mental state all right going in to do something like a murder is is a highly emotional thing for everyone except maybe a Hitman I'm going to object to this as testimony by um right objection is what it's argumentative it's argumenta all right rephrase the question please you have extrapolated from this crime scene that there was poor excuse me lack of planning yes okay and you are basically then saying that in your opinion if you just look at the crime scene in this case these two defendants did not plan it there's lack of planning in that crime yes okay and and you're we're not talking about some other defendants we're talking about these two defendants that is correct all right so in making this opinion of yours are you limiting it just to what you would see when you went to the crime scene initially not not when you bring in the uh defendants no you take other factors into consideration okay and you are rendering an opinion that in this particular case with these particular defendants that their crime scene shows lack of planning yes I am and ultimately that would lead to the conclusion of lack of premeditation correct that that is correct all right now did did you in your analysis consider their inexperience in the in killing in determining how the crime sh scene could be interpreted not at the initial going in looking at the crime scene all right that's all I had in making the point that it was a disorganized crime scene okay but disorganization does not always mean lack of planning does it generally does but okay let me give you a hypothetical okay um let's say that I want to plan a wedding and and I decide that I'm going to get married on this date and I'm going to have a caterer and I'm going to have a photographer and I'm going to have a judge do the ceremony and I'm going to get the groom too that's usually a component of a wedding and I plan the wedding and I plan it and I plan it and the day comes of my wedding okay and the caterer shows up and the oven breaks and the food is a mess the judge arrives late and gives a very perun um unimpressive ceremony that could apply to anybody all right um and anybody at my wedding would think that this wedding wasn't really planned because if you look at the wedding is kind of a disaster right I'm gonna improper I I would not say that because you have a caterer who is there you have a judge who is there you have arranged for them to be there if you didn't arrange for a judge to be there then yeah that would be a non-planned wedding like you have all the pieces there whether or not those people did their job is different but you this is not a failure to plan in this situation and the failure to successfully enact the plan is not on the person who actually made the plan this is not a this is not a good this is not a good hypothetical in my opinion there are too many ways to to pick this apart AR do you see what I'm saying anybody who came to my wedding would say boy the food's awful the judge isn't really prepared he couldn't have talked to these two people before he made these remarks but that doesn't mean I didn't plan my wedding it just means it didn't come off the way I wanted objection argumentative okay does the fact that my wedding does not go well mean that I didn't plan it well one could say that there were certain factors that weren't checked and double checked and carefully outlined which is usually goes into a good plan that's not to say that uh extraneous factors can't occur okay because because the point is is at the end of this wedding the person does in fact get married and the person wanted to get married and planned to get married and thought about getting married and got married but anybody who went to the ceremony would think that there was there was lack of planning but choosing the weapon with together with the location however like those are those are very big choices that they would have they would have made previously especially the weapon especially the weapon because they would have considered that I would think if they were like okay we are planning to kill our parents with these weapons let's think of what the best weapon would be like you would you would think you would think that there would be some measure of thinking along those lines that's a really big big piece to improperly or or unsuccessfully plan I don't buy it objection argument Dr Burgess lack of planning is not the only explanation for a disorganized crime scene is it there can be other factors but generally it's the lack of planning um that that's one of the main features of disorganized crime scene what are the other factors that could contribute to a disorganized crime scene not in this case but generically well those are the main ones I can think of um emotionality we've already talked about that as an important factor uh can make a disorganized crime scene um not knowing um necessarily how to um but that gets into lack planning not not having studied and and and looked at how to do something okayed it for instance um not knowing how to work your shotgun would that be something that might contribute to a disorganized crime scene that was still planned that would go into lack of planning because why wouldn't you practice with it if you intended to use it if you intended to use it on someone why wouldn't you practice it it's like like the Caitlyn Armstrong trial how she went to to to shooting practice all the time you know like she she she practiced she did target practice quite often with the handgun that she bought and she ended up using to to kill uh Mo Wilson um I would think that that would go into a factor of lack of planning if you don't know how to use the very weapon that you plan to use to kill someone right not necessarily no I've never identified that well you could premeditate and want to do something and not be very good at planning out how to get from point A to point B correct well one would expect that one might practice I mean there are ways to get good at a particular task right and so certainly if someone went out and practiced using a shotgun that person would be better prepared than the person who didn't practice with the shotgun yeah and that would tell me that's a plan somebody that's really planning something but both of those people the one who practices and the one who didn't practice could have the same goal correct well that isn't what I would call a plan the person that hadn't really thought through everything and and identified it I would not call that as having a a plan versus the first example where they practiced it and thought about it [Music] and but but planning is not the only component of thinking something through and accomplishing something correct do you understand my question no okay let me give you a some people go to Las Vegas get married in a wedding chapel and some people have a year of Engagement where they plan every detail of the wedding some people plan to go to Vegas to get married not everyone but a lot of people that don't but to go back to this hypothetical correct right both people want to get married correct both couples want to get married right there's just more planning in the one where you have the matchbooks engraved and the little uh Place cards for everybody to sit down at the dinner versus getting married in Las Vegas at a chapel correct that's correct all right and there's no way of saying that either couple wants to get married less than the other correct that's correct all right so just because the planning is not good doesn't mean the intent isn't there correct but the outcome is very different in other words the planned one will have more of the to get back to your original one everything has a better chance of turning out the way you want it than the one that just goes to Las Vegas well but we don't know which marriage is going to last longer either I mean right true that's that's a sideways comment all right now um as to Mary Louise mandez I believe that the we've identified or the coroner identified 10 areas of gunshot wounds correct yes that's correct and um we now know um not from the crime scene but from the forensic work and the cornage report that there were two birdshot wounds to her her that's correct all right now I believe you you would indicate would you not that the fact that she has before the bird shot she has three wounds to her head area would you consider that to be Overkill well 10 wounds are Overkill but you're just saying to to one see one shot would have done it when you're using a shotgun that's the whole point you don't need to have in a carefully planned crime to have a massive amount of uh shotgun what if the victim is still moving around after being shot well that still speaks to lack of planning because one shot would do it that's be knowledge that on somebody that had planned something would have that knowledge but there are all kinds of factors that go into a homicide that cannot be planned for or predicted by the killer wouldn't you say that that's like the reaction of the victim for one thing well that's I mean that that can be an unknown yes all right and um so couldn't it just be a function of inexperienced inexperience on the part of the perpetrator that causes that number of wounds in addition to the reaction of the victim to being shot not in this case one shot would have done it this is a massive amount of shotgun shells into the two victims all right and so you're saying so that goes into the idea of of of planning if they had planned for it they they would have researched that and understood just how much you need to kill someone with a shotgun which is incredibly loud and they're doing it in in uh in a a very densely populated you know residential area I I I maybe shouldn't have said densely populated because Beverly Hills is less dense than say other parts of Los Angeles but still she seems to not understand this we're saying that in this particular case the fact that there were so many shots fired indicates to you a lack of planning that is correct okay and did you take into account the fact that Mrs mandez was crawling or sneaking in the room after she was shot I had no evidence of that did you well did you cor report all right did you consider the testimony of for instance ly Menendez and reaching your conclusions which you've related to these two juries yes I did all right and do you remember the portion of ly Mendes's testimony where he said that what prompted him to go reload was the fact that his mother was sneaking around the coffee table I remember that was in the testimony all right so uh Overkill implies that the person dies and then you just keep killing them right no not necessarily I mean Overkill means a large number of shells are expended into the victim when that's not necessary but not everyone dies from one shot correct people can die from one shot from from a shotgun yes people can die from one shot to a shotgun but not people don't always well it depends on where they are that's true and wouldn't it depend on the knowledge of The Killers as to the um effects of shotgun wounds in order for them to make the determination that two's enough three's too many no I still think it speaks to planning that that should have been known something that's carefully planned would have been in the knowledge base uh for committing this if it clear uh carefully made plan yeah because that's that's called research that's called research now one of the other factors of the six factors we've gone through four now is emotionality correct yes correct and emotionality is something that you look for to try to you look for emotionality in a crime scene to try to determine maybe who the perpetrator is correct well it helps in determining the classification yes okay for inance in if you have um a killing where it looks like there was a lot of emotion involved you would probably rule out a Hitman that is correct and if you had a killing where it was one shot to the brain with a small like a 38 caliber weapon and nothing else at the scene then you might think there's a lack of emotionality to that particular crime yes that's correct as leaving aside people like Hitmen or professional Killers um where people know each other and one person kills the other isn't there inherent in that situation some emotionality by virtue of the fact that there people have emotions yes okay so in any homicide in which there's a relationship between the Killer and the victim you would expect to see some degree of emotionality not necessarily again you have to look at each case individually but you can certainly have very organized um killings when persons know each other so on in general that might be a true statement that people have emotion but uh if you get into other kinds of feeling States they may have not they may not show that for instance a poisoning if you slowly poisoned your spouse over a period of time your crime scene would not reveal any kind of emotionality because you just have a dead person who's died of something internal but that would show as a good example of of clear planning where there's a lot of emotion to see someone uh in a way toward Ted over this length of time there's a lot of emotion in that particular um a lot of emotion you could identify but just from the crime scene you couldn't because all you would see is maybe someone lying dead in their bed and you wouldn't even know what it cost it there would be no emotionality present at the crime scene well that's true at the initial crime scene correct all right now I believe your testimony as to the lack of planning in this particular case has been confined thus far at least on Direct to the particular crime scene in this case yes the initial coming into to the crime scene correct all right and then questions that I've asked you are about things that are specific to this particular case and your opinion that these particular defendants did not plan yes lack of planning yes all right and that would then go outside of the crime scene to look at other factors correct well you can right as you get more information in right if a detective limits himself solely to the crime scene to solve crimes he may not solve all his crimes right no but he'll solve the disorganized ones very quickly that's the whole point well you are aware of the fact that the defendants in this case weren't arrested for seven months after the crime I am very aware of that yes and you may have some criticism of that particular fact with that no I'm just speaking to the crime scene and what's the clues and what's available at the crime scene what Clues at this crime scene what clues that this particular crime scene should have led to the defendants uh first of all the disorganization second of all that who called it in that uh this matches also the studies that say look not only for the person either right at the crime scene but who may also have called the um the 911 okay I don't mean to interrupt you but what I'm asking is just at the crime scene in other words you walk into the room where the Menda parents are and you look and you look and you see what you can see and you search the house okay and I'm just limiting it to that particular crime scene which you've term disorganized yes okay and part of your analysis of disorganization does not take into a fact into account that they called 911 because that's not crime scene that's other evidence but that really leads up to crime scene that you have to take into consideration from the moment the call comes in to alert police that something has happened but the fact that they called 911 is not one of the factors the six factors of disorganization correct it's oh at the crime scene okay okay so let's limit ourselves to this crime scene the detectives get called in the middle of the night they go and they see Mr and Mrs Mendez dead in their den yes okay what factor should have led the police to suspect these particular defendants okay location uh the type of weapon the amount of injury and the focus of the shots to the kind of the random aspect to the shootings have you ever testified for the prosecution that those types of things have you ever come into court and testified for a prosecutor in a murder case that those types of things lead to the conclusion that the these particular particular set of defendant did the crime okay let's take our recess we'll resume at 1:30 don't discuss the matter among yourselves other participants in uh let me get some some questions here really quickly first all right okay uh Tish I don't feel like Dr Amber Jess is a tricky witness or it at least doesn't look as if she's trying to be tricky at the prosecution seems to struggle with your thoughts legal but I think she's just a very strong witness she's a she's a very strong um expert witness she knows her stuff she's very good at explaining it in a way that is relatively simple and clear um and and so she's able to give clarification on what she's saying and give Nuance on what she's saying in a way that is understandable which makes her a difficult witness to cross-examine uh sheer oana now is the jury also present yes this is cross-examination in front of both juries uh madori bwat sorry for the late response you can call me mads okay um I don't have a particularly easy name and unrelated question I I understand that I know that experience um an unrelated question will you cover the Brian cober ID Idaho murders trial yes yes yes yes that I know that has a trial date for spring 2025 maybe summer 2025 and uh that also has a decent chance of getting pushed back again unfortunately at some point who knows hopefully not but we'll see um at any rate I do plan to cover that one for sure I know that a lot of people are interested in that one um Tish this must be a sign of the time right these theories uh aren't as new today so a lawyer today wouldn't waste time questioning whether it's even possible to categorize crimes this way well any good cross-examiner is still going to try to poke holes in whatever way they can they they obviously don't want to do so in a way that that makes them look crazy um because then the jury's going to question like what are you even doing here um but you know you can you can definitely still try to limit the scope of like what can possibly be conclusively concluded from all of this information um and actually probably at this point you know 30 years later the the prosecution would probably want to bring in their own expert witness who is uh very well-versed in this kind of stuff who would give a different perspective um you would probably have a a battle of of expert Witnesses um more likely today so either either to to come in and give a different perspective or to say this is all a hoax you know what I mean um so we we've seen that with Ballistics we've seen that with you know with all kinds of of different types of forensic um evidence uh just because wasn't the plan to get caught originally no they they never had a plan to get caught what they had testified to was that they were surprised that they didn't get caught within minutes they were surprised that they didn't hear any Sirens um within minutes of of all that happening due to the amount of noise that had that had happened during the whole incident um but they they never said that they had any plan to actually get caught um so yeah but anyway but thank you for being a member for 17 months and thank you for your questions and for always being a devil's advocate in the chat in this series uh I love it um okay let's continue on with the testimony trial including both defendant on Counsel and um we'll proceed with cross examination Witnesses on the witness Dr Burgess I believe right before lunch I was asking you a question which I'm going to rephrase have you ever testified for the prosecution that because a crime scene was organized in your opinion the defendant had premeditated I believe was the question was it not I don't know if it was precisely the question should I just have it reread it was asked answer all right well let's have have the question right back then if you have some doubt about it was I think we have the wrong quarter okay all right I'll permit the question then I'm going to object form the question since and I as apprach since we understand what the rules are with respect okay if you would like to approach the bench so we can discuss it the objection is sustained to the form of the question you may rephrase it if you choose Dr Burgess have you ever testified that an organized crime scene indicates planning on the part of the perpetrator no I have not now when these um categories of organized and disorganized were formulated and that was done by interviewing these 43 murderers yes okay and is that the sole basis of the categorization that is the study of these particular 43 people or were there other studies done now this was just one population that was studied to look at their um statistically how they fell into the organized disorganized but that generally is the one of the first classifications uh or separations if you will that a law enforcement makes going to the scene now when the data was being collected to Define things as being disorganized or organized were the perpetrators who were interviewed the 43 people asked about their mental state in regards to the disorganization or organization of the crime scene I'm not sure they were asked about their mental state per se okay were they asked about whether or not they had planned the crime that information was obtained yeah yes and was there any correlation between um planning the crime and the disorganization or organization ultimately of the crime scene yes okay and what were the findings the findings were that the more organized the more planning went into it because obviously they were able to be undetected and they got away with the crime and were able to commit more crimes was the experience level of the criminals taken into account in determining this the planning and the ultimate resulting crime scene oh there were some that were juveniles as well as some that were in their 30s and 40s so the age or practice or whatever was uh not found to be a major factor I there's a wide span if you will of age um as well as number of crimes I believe you indicated that there are three possibilities for a crime scene disorganized organized and mixed and you have testified that there were factors about this particular crime scene which were organized correct that's correct why isn't this a mixed crime scene uh it could well when you you don't have to give it that type of category first of all it was post crime activity uh rather than pre and coming onto the scene remember there are three phases that you look at the before the during and the after and they try to um break that down into those categories okay why isn't this particular crime scene in the mandes case a mixed crime scene because there just too many factors that point to disorganization and the main factors then are the noise of the weapon and the and the wounds the choice of the weapon the location uh that that and the noise level injuries and location of wounds yes one of the other factors that you consider um in evaluating a crime scene is where the injuries are located on the victims correct that's correct and we spoke about that uh this morning but I wanted to ask you um isn't it true that in certain kinds of cases there will be um injuries to the sexual organs of the victims that's correct and that indicates what generally it may indicate a sexual ual motive for the killing all right such as somebody having been abused as a child no no it's it's uh what they do to the victim it usually means that there is some sexual act or some with the with the victim not with not the reverse okay and so have you ever seen a case where there was um an abuse victim who struck back and then injured the victim in the genitals or in sex organs where there is no killing no where there is killing where there's a killing I can't think of one how many hours have you spent working on this case ma'am I've spent to up to the trial I've spent I think 83 hours and what is your rate of compensation please of course understand the usual rate is $100 an hour okay is are you getting the usual rate yes all right and then after the trial began uh you've put in more hours correct yes that is correct and as a matter of fact you've sat through uh testimony in this courtroom yes I have how many other hours have you put in that you know of uh probably put in another five six seven hours okay so approximately 90 hours correct yes little yes around 90 one of the other things that you indicated would which would make this a disor a disorganized crime scene would be the lack of staging is that correct that's correct all right why is okay first of all what is staging staging is where there is an attempt to make the crime look like another crime now if there were an attempt in this case to make it look like a professional murder what would you have expected to see in terms of staging terms of staging the weapon would have been different single shot um use of a handgun um that would have certainly eliminated any of the a lot of the blood and the uh multiple wounds uh gloves gloves being used well do you have any okay gloves being used in order to avoid fingerprints correct all right but if Fingerprints of the defendants had been found in this house they would have been explicable correct well yes but gloves could be used in terms of the um loading the shells they would not necessarily have had to uh shells would be with fingerprints Fair all right so an alternative to picking up the shells and getting rid of the weapon would have been to actually uh use gloves correct I mean that's one suggestion one offer yes so if one were planning out a way of making a domestic homicide look like an organized crime hit one should only have used one one wound uh one shot correct yes a different kind of weapon yes and what was the what were the other things the wearing the gloves um also could have made it look like a burglary remove some items okay but what I'm talking about is not a burglary I'm talking about an a a professional hit so those are the things that that should have been done is that correct well if you're trying to Stage it as that I thought that was a question it's a stage it as a right planned organized domestic killing and in well no I'm talking about uh really quick diania jao they were not wearing gloves what she's answering is is what could they have done to make this look like an organized if they if they were trying to make this look like an organized crime what would you have looked looked out for what kind of factors one of those as she said was you know if they had been wearing gloves because then then that eliminates fingerprints on the weapon on the shells and all that kind of stuff um so that's that's why that's why that was brought up if you wanted to make an inhouse killing look like the mafia or or a hitman had done it what kind of staging would have been necessary to convey that to a sophisticated FBI trained um investigator well the main thing would be choice of weapon as we've already said which would be one or two bullets to each person and those would be the two thing the choice of the weapon and the number of um injuries yeah use of gloves and and use of gloves now in this particular instance um okay strike that please in addition to classifying crime scenes as organized and disorganized you've also classified types of homicide and I believe I asked you about that this morning yes there are four major types and then there are subp Parts correct correct now you've said in your direct testimony that this is a domestic homicide correct preliminary observation yes all right um preliminary observation could you also reach the conclusion that this was a domestic homicide which had features of inheritance or Insurance related death no okay and why not why not because the the um crime scene was as it was presented it really matches for the most part all of the variables in the um domestic spontaneous domestic killing but aren't isn't there the possibility of crossover between the two types of killings well you not necessarily um you don't NE you don't see that on initial crime scene all right well um I have this book here and I take it are you familiar with the types of homicides which are written about in the book that's got your name on the cover yes all right and are you familiar with the section that deals with insurance inheritance related death yes okay my Approach please your honor I mean she wrote the book of course she's familiar with it yes I'm gonna show it to her to see if she's familiar with this passage she is all right then I just read it anything and we still have yet to more right counil both things as far as Mark that request is denied at this point as far as reading it what do you propose to read um crime scene indicators frequently noted in insurance and inheritance death question [Laughter] yes this book seems to indicate that in the first paragraph under crime scene indicators frequently noted in an insurance inheritance type of death usually the body is not concealed but is left in the open or somewhere that Discovery is probable yes that that occur in them in this case yes okay the nature of the crime scene or where it falls in the Continuum between organized and disorganized will depend on the amount of planning and capacity of the offender yes okay so those are two things about a um crime scene involving an insurance or inheritance death which are not in consistent with the crime scene in the Mendes case are they no that go no may have a moment please it indicates as well that an example of one extreme of this Continuum is the very spontaneous offense committed by a youthful impulsive and or less intelligent subject and the crime scene would contain more physical evidence and then in parenthesis it said fingerprints Footprints Etc now in the menas case there were no fingerprints that were that were that link the defendants to committing this particular offense is that correct that's correct in fact there were fingerprints found in the house of the defendants but they were not anything incriminating right were you given the all the police reports in this case to your knowledge yes I was were you given police reports which contained fingerprints comparisons no I don't believe those comparisons to what no fingerprints from the house which were compared with the defendants were you you given that information no okay if there were fingerprints in the house that um were the defendants that wouldn't be incriminating would it overall as a crime scene analyst wouldn't you agree that if one's fingerprints are found in one's home that that's not per se incriminating well I'm not sure I wouldn't say it's not incriminating you certainly are going to expect to find fingerprints in the home all right but as long as the fingerprints are not found on um shotgun shells or a gun or some other item associated with The Killing fingerprints on the walls or the tables or wherever would not be incriminating correct not in a domestic killing that's correct okay and if the domestic killing um was also with with if the domestic killing was also an insurance inheritance related death then the same rules would apply correct yes but you're going much further down the line to get at motivation when you're reading there that you have to have a lot more information than what we had at initial crime crime scene but but that's I'm just reading the book I mean that's what you that's what this book says is that a question isn't this isn't that what this book says I mean are you familiar with this particular chapter objection on this four questions inow re ask the question please okay I'm going to continue to read this crime scene would contain more physical evidence fingerprints Footprints Etc the weapon would be one of opportunity Acquired and left at the scene okay that didn't happen in this particular case that's correct okay the crime scene would be chaotic with evidence of sudden violence to the victim a blitz style attack that does that that's just the same as domestic that's correct all right so there's no distinction then there's no way for you to say that the blitz style attack would necessarily be exclusive to domestic homicides yeah that's why we say you have to have a lot more information to get it into those categories yes the information would not be crime scene information would it that's correct that you so in an insurance or inheritance related kind of killing you need to go outside of the crime scene to determine motivation yes all right the other extreme of the crime scene involving insurance or inheritance is one committed by a calculating proficient offender who has mapped out all aspects of the crime ahead of time this methodical approach is represented by an orderly crime scene in which there is minimal physical evidence present now in the Menendez crime scene what physical evidence was present which led to the defendants as the perpetrators well the physical evidence was the massive amount of there's a lot of blood so that the propensity for that being on clothes shoes Etc was High um the physical evidence was the shotguns the shells the injuries um I think that's it all right but the but the blood can be washed off correct well it eventually yes and shells can be removed and thrown away yes and this goes on to say that in the more extreme of the crime scene involving insurance and inheritance the weapon is one of choice brought to and removed from the scene by the offender now in this particular case it was quite clear that the weapon was removed from the crime scene well there's no weapon found that's correct right and there is evidence to suggest that it was not a killing of opportunity for someone who just came into the house grabbed a knife and stabbed but rather there was evidence to suggest that the weapon had been brought to and removed from the crime scene yes but at that time you wouldn't know whether the weapon actually had been there that you have to find out when you retrieve the weapon police would not know whether a weapon had been present and taken away all right until they uh really quick here let me get some questions here um sorry about that minor delay okay Emily Aon question do you think think that the prosecution is TR just is trying to just to sorry do you think that the prosecution is trying just to confuse the jury with this cross because I feel like I was understanding her fine on Direct but not so much on Cross definitely trying to Mighty the water definitely trying to Mighty the water uh Debbie F on cck I have a question it applies to this in the hearing yesterday when attorneys need to research IE reading an expert's book how do they find the time [Music] um uh I'm being a trial attorney means working some very very long hours you just you just do it you find you find you find Stolen Moments here and there maybe um or it's over a weekend or something like that it's it's you end up putting in a lot of hours culis culis excuse me question did this expert testimony do anything to change your mind about how reasonable their actions were on the night of the unliving well this her testimony to me has been speaking mostly to whether or not this was a premeditated killing or whether this was something that happened kind of spur spur of the moment I think this is to me this this is pretty clear that they did not in fact um that they did not in fact plan it ahead of time that this was more of a spur of the- moment kind of thing so that sort of helps to eliminate one of those questions um in this case now whether or not they had a sincere and reasonable belief that their lives were in danger is maybe something more that uh Dr Tyler's um testimony sort of speaks to because what her testimony was all about is basically how um someone who grew up in in chronic trauma and chronic traumatic circumstances is going to have some different kind of reactions actually no Dr briess also talked about that um she talked about about that too how how chronic trauma um will give someone a sort of a a a a higher sensitivity to to hyper arousal or hyper vigilance and that they they will have a a faster startle reflex um so yeah I mean this this is very important uh testimony for the for the defense for sure for me I don't know if it changes my mind about the reasonableness of their actions but it helps sort of shore up some questions that I think I had and also mads bazoo thank you so much for becoming a YouTube member welcome to bite Club I hope to see you on Friday for our casual members only live stream where we just we hang out it's super casual I chat with the chat sometimes talk about law sometimes not um so anyway so hope to hope to see you there and thank you so much for supporting the Channel all right any other questions not that I I see all righty let's continue on then they talked to the defendants later that night and found out that the parents owned rifles and not shotguns right well they might want to talk to some other people too I mean you don't just limit your interviews with um persons immediately in the area yes but if it's a domestic homicide that occurs inside of the house um the people who live inside of the house would be the ones who would know the habit and custom and possessions of the victims correct that's true generally yes now I believe in talking about emotionality as one of the factors determining an organized versus disorganized crime scene um you indicated that the number of shots would indicate emotionality is that correct yes right um do you think that you can determine emotion that you can break down emotionality into distinguishing between fear and anger not necessarily no and fear and anger would manifest themselves the same way in a crime scene is that correct not necessarily but they could I'm not sure they could um you can have features of each all right so are you saying that if you go to a crime scene you can determine by looking at the crime scene whether the person who committed the crime was in fear or was angry no they're going to be elements of both because that's generally what's in a fear reaction can can be in fear reaction when people who know each other kill each other is there an element of emotionality generally in that relationship asked and answered overall yes all right so the fact that there is emotionality does not mean that the cl that the crime wasn't planned not in and of itself if one is going to go in and do a murder for the first time and there's a great deal of uncertainty about how it's going to proceed wouldn't that cause fear or emotionality in the best laid plan no I wouldn't say that so you would say that if someone had planned out a murder if you don't know how it's going to end up if you if you if if there are a lot of factors that that would would impact how it would end up then that means that you have not planned that that incident you have not planned that murder and they thought theyd planned it well that when they actually went in to commit the murder they would not suffer from any kind of emotional reaction to what they were doing what I would say is high emotionality means low rationale and low thinking that's generally the rule that one applies to that F that Indy if you will found at a crime scene but wouldn't you say that in cases where the murderer the murderer knows the victim that there's going to be some degree of emotionality carried out in the crime no I think I've said that that doesn't have to be a factor certainly can be a factor but it doesn't have to be no it doesn't have to be but it often is even argument yes please ask a question rather than arguing with a witness all right now and looking at the injuries and the location of the injuries um didn't we already cover this what was it about the location of the injuries that made you feel this was disorganized was it just the mere number or was the location important as well both location in terms of it being more of a random rather than a focused one site of the body get show much more thought and planning and U organization now I believe you indicated um some of the things that made you believe this was a domestic homicide was that there was no forced entry do you remember your testimony I um would forc entry be necessary of doors were unlocked in the house no so not necessarily I suppose you could break them down well for instance in a burglary case if the people who own the home that's burgled fail to lock their doors the fact that there was no forced entry doesn't mean that the person didn't come in without permission right uh no but certainly I've seen cases where even with unlocked doors the the window or the somehow it's broken to make it look that way that's a staging feature okay so if you were doing a murder that you wanted it to look like a burglary then you would intentionally break something to make it look like there was a Breakin well I've seen that in cases that's one example okay if you were doing a murder and you wanted it to look like an organized crime hit or a professional hit would you necessarily want to have signs of force entry again that would depend on how it was planned organized uh crimes are planned in a very careful way I you'd have to look at what was inside their thinking to to do that you can't just make a blanket yes no on that well when an organized uh crime figure or a hit man commits um a residential Breakin in order to accomplish the hit one thing that's that's a good thing not to do is to alert your victim by break banking noise breaking into their house correct to this as speculation argum so the fact that there's no forced entering this house did you consider that the doors were often left unlocked well we're looking at the preliminary at this crime SC you wouldn't necessarily know that you'd need more information you'd have to do some interviewing to find out whether doors were normally left open however this is a home that has Gates and and a fairly um for booting type of uh residence it's not one that looks wide open releas from the crime scenes all right so but if after you determined by speaking to the other residents of the house that doors were often left unlocked the gates were often left open and in fact on this night the gate had been left open open you could eliminate a sign of forced entry as being a factor correct yes there was no force entry that's true right but you could but you could eliminate that fact as a factor in in evaluating the crime scene because it it doesn't make any difference if the doors were unlocked I on sustained repas the question once you determined that the house is often left unlocked does it still matter in your analysis that there was no sign of forse Entry it still requires a lot of planning for for someone if you're talking about someone to know which doors are going to be open and how to get in and having a floor plan and all of that and where people are that that requires a fair amount of planning and and knowledge if you will of the situation or luck on the part of the perpetrator by just well opening the door right organized uh criminals aren't going to have a lot of luck I mean they're going to make sure that things work the way they want them to work now you've had the benefit of several years of studying the Criminal Mind wouldn't you say I mean you've been studying criminology and criminals for since 1980 yes okay do you have any evidence to suggest that either of these defendants had the level of knowledge that you had about how crimes are committed well I certainly don't think they have the level that that I've had um but they are bright okay young men you indicated as well that the bodies had not been touched and that was one of the factors that you considered in classifying this as disorganized yes okay how do you know the bodies weren't touched the bodies were in the POS well from Corner's report but also it was on police report that it did not look uh as though the bodies they were in the position that they were when they were killed or possibly falling I me there was not it was not quite clear whether the uh but it there was no indication that they had been moved touched cleaned up um covered any of those kinds of features but if in fact the moving or the touching had been minimal there's no way you could tell that from looking at the crime scene is there um generally that is something that is a major observation and that did not seem to be an observation that I saw anybody making any of the materials well for instance if someone's hands were open at the time of their demise and someone goes and Crosses their hands in front of them for instance there's no way that you as a um criminologist could tell that right I guess I couldn't tell that but I would rely on Experts coroners people like that but that kind of movement wouldn't have any physical findings there would no be no way to subst state that kind of movement would there outside the maybe counil you're aru overall understand question uh yes I from the from the information I had there was no way to that anyone had determined that they had been moved and there was no way to determine if they hadn't been moved at all was there over true okay so the fact that the bodies weren't touched is really not a factor in your analysis oh no it is a factor in my analysis I mean that the overwhelming evidence is that they weren't that they essentially were found as they died so that the death scene and the crime scene were one and that's a very important piece of information now another thing that you indicated made this a domestic homicide is that there was no evidence of theft you remember your testimony in that regard yes that would also be true in a professional hit as well that there would be no evidence that corre not necessarily that might have been a staging well if a professional Hitman did the murder he might desire to make it look like a burglary or a robbery correct correct right but if it was just a hit with no other purpose in other words if I wanted to make it look like my idea of an organized crime hit would theft necessarily be part of that okay okay do you understand my question that is that no the lack of evidence of theft could just as easily lead you to believe that it was an execution style killing as it was a domestic homicide overall is that a question now yes is that correct I mean it could appear to be that when yeah read it back right it could appear to be I'm not I'm sure there are examples like that but whether that's usual I'm not prepared to say that well when the police or the Press talk about an execution style slame you're familiar with that phraseology I take it yes and in that the there is the assumption that this was not a a financially motivated in terms of a robbery or burglary but rather was the focus of the crime was to kill is isn't that correct yes okay now then if this were an organized crime scene you would have expected the use of a smaller caliber weapon right yes you would have expected it to occur outside of the home generally and you would have expected one shot to the head and that's it yes okay what happens when there's a shot to the head in the person doesn't die when you are an organized planning type of criminal well if it's well planned that's not going to happen that they are pretty expert in their Commission of the offense because they'll have done their resarch I believe you've also testified about the organic and biological origins or modifications of the brain as it relates to fear yes is that correct yes okay now when you talk about about trauma the kind of trauma which causes your genetic restructuring what kind of trauma are you talking about are you talking about being afraid to cross-examine are you talking about getting hit over the head what are you talking about um talking about a situation that overwhelms a person's usual capacity to cope and when you're talking about the biological response to that are you talking about that response that you get sometimes where it feels like you get a squirt of adrenaline and you get very excited because a car is about to drive into you or you just saw someone's purse being stolen is that what you're talking about well that's one of that's an example that most people can identify with uh because that's exactly what people feel yes that that was the the stress hormones being released to prepare you to do something is it the stress hormones which cause this ultimate biological response and this biological restructuring well that's in the Contin fear in the continued uh situation it's you don't have that necessarily if you're in the example you use in your car and it's a one-time uh situation you will feel the effects of the stress hormones for a Tim limited period unless you get into the accident all right and then every time if every time I get into my car I have an accident then I'm going to have this continued um buildup of the stress hormones and the eventual genetic recoding well you can get some people people can't even get back in their car after a certain you get the the avoidant pattern sets in that the accident was so um frightening that they will not get even drive again for a while okay what yeah I I can I I can testify to that um when when I was in law school I uh ended up totaling my car on the way home from from work one summer um and based on the experience of of crashing the car uh the next time that I drove and I had like a wall of brake lights in front of me and I had to suddenly Break um I definitely started hyperventilating in the car and uh luckily it was like shortlived and whatnot but it definitely sent me back to that moment of of slamming on the brakes and the brakes not not stopping the car soon enough um so uh yeah yeah you can definitely relive that what what kind of trauma is necessary in order to trigger the genetic recoding okay well if you're talking with children and again you have to look at the age because that's very important and the development of the child that continued exposure to highly fearful situations over prolonged time period uh has a capacity to certainly raise that person's ability to co read codes for um danger okay when you're talking about highly fearful situations what kind of situations are you talking about those can be situations in which the child is repeatedly frightened scared um held in certain positions uh not made to feel secure uh not uh some of the early um years in terms of the bonding and the holding and all of that can be enough to um frighten a child for a lack of security lack lack of safety and that just failure to be held is something that could trigger this sort of biological restructuring it's the activities that go along with it generally someone that's going to do that may also be hitting the child there may be physical abuse um some of those what I was originally talking about is more psychological aspect but you can get the hitting you can certainly get sexual abuse starting early with children um those are some of the examples is the kind of fear that one experiences in watching a scary movie sufficient to cause this kind of biological restructuring well that's at a later age um we were talking about young children but certainly children who constantly are exposed to frightening U movies generally are able to say that they either try to avoid it not want to see it and actually take themselves out of the situation but what about the children who seek out Friday the 13th and these sequels and the sequel after that and the sequel after that aren't they exposed to fear fearful situations they not may not be interpreting it as fearful all right so would it be fair to say that um the level of trauma necessary to cause this response varies from Individual to individual generally it does have that what's called an idiosyncratic aspect but there are certainly situations which are considered to be um traumatizing by most PE most professionals that there and that's why definitions if you will have been written on what is child abuse what is child Mal treatment with his child sexual abuse now when you're talking about trauma sufficient to cause this change are you lumping together all kinds of child abuse are you talking only about physical uh sexual what kind of child abuse are you speaking of when you you when you use the term child abuse well child abuse you have to then narrow down to the specific act that you're talking about um I've just listed some another type of uh frightening experience for children is to witness overwhelming experiences and there's a a body of literature that actually documents the amount of trauma that that children have just witnessing a parent um in a in a domestic violence scene or seeing a parent suicide or or actually witnessing a a killing is one experience like that sufficient to cause this genetic recoding certainly one experience is enough to trigger symptoms we certainly see very a wide range of symptoms in children who have even experienced one traumatic event but is it enough to cause genetic recoding which would cause you to have this biological reaction yeah well generally It is believed that it takes continued repeated exposure to a traumatizing event and is there any way to evaluate how much repeated exposure is needed to cause this biological change well you usually see it in the symptoms of the per of the child or the whoever you're looking at and that will give you a pretty good indicator of how seriously impacted and traumatized the person is the nature of the symptomatology is there any tests that you can give to an individual to see if they've undergone this um genetic or biological restructuring as a result of repeated exposure to trauma uh not per se we talked about that Friday not per se on the genetic recoding um but certainly there are studies that speak to the lowered um biochemical reaction and that's been a there's been a fair amount of research on that because that's where some of the uh treatment methods have come into into play okay but as far as a blood test or a brain scan or something like that is there any is there any physical way to determine whether or not someone has actually undergone these changes these genetic restructuring not on the genetic restructuring that's been noted in the um animal research I spoke about I believe you spoke about studies on snails is that correct yes that's one of one of the studies yes is there a difference between the brain of a snail and a human being well see this is in the brain stem these and this is in the survival brain in The Reptilian Brain and that is why researchers are able to make the suggestion because it does share a similar function as in as in the human brain but does the human brain have features that the snail brain does not oh yes it has higher level cortical functioning a human being can reason yes oh it has the cortical fun function sure yes and a snail cannot we don't think the snail can okay well well fairly certain snails don't reason correct yes okay so what you're saying then is that the studies on the snails show that when they're exposed to trauma that there are biological changes which occur in their brain stem well when it's stimulated when that is actually the fear response is stimulated that's what it shows and then they have tried to uh they see what's called the avoidant pattern if the snail moves away from you know moves back in its shell or whatever that certainly is an avoidant pattern and that seems to last for about an hour that's what the short-term memory um they then look at what chronic stimulation of this fear Center does and shows that it that's where they get into the um RNA and the DNA the transmission and the translation Factor the messages that go back and forth in the neurons when they're so they're scaring the snails is that basically what they're doing they're stimulating the fear okay and and when they stimulate the fear in these snails how do they do that well they they um use some type of an electrode that would and the snail goes back in its little shell okay so they shock it with an electr and they scare it with the electrode is that correct yes it's it's stimulating the yes okay now um so then would it be fair to say that human beings are exactly like snails in that regard no I'm not making I'm saying that the research on animals is very very important to understand the structure in the milon in humans brains and the fear response because fear response is such a basic and Universal response in both the animal world as well as in the human world so that at that point that's where uh and the learning piece is very very important of how people learn and the avoidant learning now the uh research that's gone on in this uh biological recoding began in what about 1985 or 6 I think you've indicated uh yes it seems It's about the mid 80s all right and that research is not concluded is that correct oh there's um well no more and more studies get funded I mean there's been an initial um outlay of federal money and there's no way to conduct the same kind of studies on humans that you can on a snail because it's unethical to do so right well yes you're not supposed to poke human beings with electrodes and see what their chemical responses are correct that's correct likewise you're not supposed to dissect their brains to see if there's been any kind of recoding correct correct all right but they are doing studies on people that have major problems it's not but they and they use different type of techniques they use these um Imaging techniques and so forth so there are ways to replicate um for researchers what the brain activity and that that's important now in this particular case there is no test that you can give to these particular defendants to determine whether or not they have undergone genetic recoding as a response to fear that's correct at this point in time okay we have a moment please your honor now I believe you've indicated that the animal response to fear is fight or flight yes what determines the choice well it's automatic and the most automatic response is to flee is to get away from the threatening Source okay and when you talk about the most automatic response are we talking about snails or humans well we're talking about a wide range a wide range snails uh animals rodents mammals all right so the the preference in this biological response is to flee the adverse stimulus if they can that's correct okay they can now have there been any studies correlating the frequency of suspected genetic recoding in child abuse victims and by child abuse I mean generic child abuse yeah not not to my knowledge and when you talk about this uh hypervigilance is hypervigilance a descriptive term for the watchfulness um that occurs in people who have been subject to repeat trauma yes all right and that's not a bi biological term that's a psychological term but it has a biological component we now know the research tends to suggest it has a biological component is there any way to test to see if someone is hypervigilant I I mean can in other words is it ethical for a researcher to recreate a situation in a sub a subject to see if they can make that subject hypervigilant or well they do try to do that on some of the studies they will take two groups and they compare the two groups and they will show them uh especially visual kinds of things uh and they will take um skin tests the galve meter test and they'll take pulse and they'll take blood pressure and they'll try to take samples if you will of the body's response while they are say projecting onto a screen some frightening images so in that respect they have there has been a fair amount of of research but but that research is not on people who who are actually ongoing some sort of abuse but it's on isn't it usually done on college students well but it's done on traumatized populations they're doing it with uh veterans who have been exposed to combat um they're you know they they're doing it on some rape victims uh there are other now populations that it is being tested on and they'll compare it to a normative group that has not had that particular type of trauma now if a person is hypervigilant and constantly scanning their environment for for clues or cues that they're going to be abused are they doing that 24 hours a day or only in the situations in which the trauma has occurred in the past um first of all is not necessarily a conscious type of phenomenon in other words the person goes about their usual business uh whatever the Daily Business is so it's not like it's uppermost in their mind uh they have adapted it's just that as something comes up in the environment they may get this sudden overwhelming feeling of anxiety and have not necessarily any idea why and it it may be due to a lot of things but they it's not like they're walking around in a very suspicious way or in a very paranoid way that's not that at all but wouldn't it be fair to say that what triggers what triggers a response is a repetition of Prior stimulus it comes in through the sensory system it comes in back basically through that um brain level in which what is seen the sight smell touch taste and feel our basic five senses is the way that all experience is registered so when something gets activated and that is doesn't necessarily have any words that's why they don't necessarily know it's just all of a sudden they have this reaction and the reaction has there's no correlation between the reaction and a prior stimulus well it's the prior stimulus that has cued the men right and so that for instance if I have been bitten by dogs my whole life and I've been bitten 20 times by 20 different dogs and little dogs big dogs any kind of dog when I see a dog I'm going to react and want to get away from the dog or avoid the dog correct that's one yes that's probably one Behavior P it wouldn't take 20 dogs to get someone there maybe like one or two bites could probably get someone there okay am I going to react the same way to a cat if you've had no negative experience with cats again you don't know whether because it's an animal we wouldn't be able to to totally uh see what your cues are it is an animal and whether you'd make that Association okay if would I have the same reaction to a rock no okay so that the hypervigilance and the cues and everything are specific to the trauma the person has suffered in order to become hypervigilant characteristics of the trauma that's correct now you've analogized um this kind of fear response to battered wife syndrome correct yes all right and one of the examples you used is the woman who's at home and her husband goes to the bar and he comes home and says they were out of Miller I think that was your example or was it it was given to you as an example yes it was okay what what is it to that battered woman about there's no miller at the bar that is the cue to her well that's the word association that she hears something that I'm sorry that she hears something she hears the word Miller all right and the reason Miller has some meaning to her is because on other occasions when her husband's come home from the bar and said they had no miller she's been beaten yes that I think is the way the example is given okay so the example in the battered wife syndrome is a is a a woman or a significant other who has been beaten over a period of time correct and the battered wife syndrome exclusively well not exclusively but always deals at least with one component which is being beaten well there's usually more that's involved in a battered wife it isn't just being beaten I mean because well she's being psychologically abused as well sure yes right but the I'm wondering if Pam is about to ask but there's no evidence that Eric and Lyall were beaten is there mattered woman fears for her life because she has been beaten before yes okay and she begins to learn in which situations she will be beaten correct I'm not sure she she certainly can be queued in well didn't you yes all right well learn well you indicated that this this um response to trauma is a way of the of the body and the person learning correct the trauma learning yes okay so what happens with the battered wife is she could be sitting with a friend and her husband comes in and says there's no miller at the bar and her friend may look at that and say so what correct correct but to the woman who's been battered before after having been advised that there's no miller at the bar this is a very significant event correct because she's been beaten before and she fears for her life yeah may be mitigated by the fact she's got a friend there but she certainly will get anxious okay more likely than not become anxious what I what I mean by the friend is is an outside Observer looking at this particular situation would say well what's so significant about it's Miller time yes okay whereas we know that in the past with this woman every time she's been told there's no miller at the bar she has been beaten yes okay is this like pavo's dog well that's a conditioned response and that's exactly what you are describing yes right it's a little bit more comp complicated than that but um that would be one way of of looking at it all right so and Pavlov lived in the last century right I he lived a long time ago yes okay so basically what it is is that every time my husband says there's no miller at the bar I get beaten and tonight he comes home and says there's no miller at the bar and I think I'm gonna get beaten right right I'm not sure she says I'm gonna get beaten but she certainly is going to have the the anxiety and the fear that something bad is going to happen and that's the kind of cue that you've talked about in terms of triggering this biological response yes correct correct all right so that where an outsider would look in and see that that there's no clue there at all that the beating is going to happen someone with prior experience is going to look at this and say I'm about to get beaten correct yes all right what happens when the husband comes home from the bar and he brings his wife a box of chocolates okay is that the kind of thing that's going to trigger the fear response well see that's the kind of thing that's going to get this unpredictability which is usually a feature that you find in these situations and the person and that even can make the person the the wife or whomever more anxious because sometimes he comes home and talks about Miller and she gets beaten another time he comes home and he brings her a box of candy and everything is okay so he is in a way probably trying to keep her off guard but if he brings her the box of candy she knows she's not going to get beaten if that's been her experience if if she knows it well it would depend on whether she hasn't gotten beaten because of the chocolates the candy well but she's not getting beaten because there's no miller at the at the bar she's getting beaten for other reasons correct little yeah she's getting a little in the weeds in this imaginary hypothetical she's not getting beaten because there's no miller at the bar she's getting beaten because her husband is frustrated upset unhappy all those other things right oh she's getting beaten because of his right because of his Dynamics that's correct if the husband comes home and he goes to bed and she's never been beaten after that particular situation that would not be a clue to her in other words if she he comes home and goes to bed then she's not clued in that she's about to be beaten correct that with that example that's right okay so would it be fair to say that in order to get this biological fight ORF flight response the Q needs to be something that that is a that's repetitive well the Q is going to don't forget Q in to a previous situation so there can be fragments if you will in the queue it doesn't have to be a blatant overt kind of statement like Miller uh there could be other factors I mean it could be the smell of beer he comes home and he smells like Millers yeah I me that that could be enough too and so then he goes to bed and she may not still be that un sure that he's not going to wake up and and beat her but but in order to have that response she would have had to know that in Prior occasions when he came home smelling like beer she got beaten yeah okay now people who are who have this shortened response time this biological response time to fear are they like that with everybody in the world in other words if this woman has been beaten every time her husband comes home from the bar and says there's no miller okay and she sees um a movie for instance where someone says there was no miller is she going to have the same fear response because of what she sees in the movie no we have what was called fear specific situations and those that are fear General um but you're giving examples where it is really fear specific that there is a definite person that is going to injure her given a certain set of circumstances now when you say fear specific and fear General is there a difference in the biological recoding that goes on because of whether it's generalized or specific fear no what I mean by the fear General is say that somebody has been traumatized and there's a certain odor um they can be in another situation smell that and that will trigger in the fear response I could totally that whoever it has nothing to do with the person it's just that it gets activated if you will by the in a more General sense and that's different from what we've been talking about which is very specific that person you said is continually beating the wife why is it that flight is the preferred method of avoiding this trauma to fight do you know no it's just that t to be the preferred it isn't the only situation a lot of people can be trained uh not to flee and in fact that's what generally is done in situations where people are required to fight um there usually is some pre um preparation for being able to fight I mean like in the car situation people are going to try to avoid an accident they're not going to try to speed up so they have speed up so they have one right okay yeah now I'm going to give you a hypothetical if two people are raised in the same environment but are raised very differently um they're treated very differently their experiences are very different would you expect to see the same biological recoding in each of them there's a certain amount of of fear level that is idiosyncratic if you will in other words unique to that particular person but and it may look different but it is experienced as fear to those two individuals so that's very hard to say just because one person two people are treated differently uh the manner in which they're treated can have the same outcome if you will I.E to accelerate the fear response really quick uh there is a question here that I want to answer uh mads bazo says legales can the brother's sentence not be reduced considering their Good Conduct while being incarcerated I have read that they have been extremely good during their time in prison cannot because they were sentenced to life without parole so uh that means no no chance of shortening that sentence unless they win some sort of an appeal um of that sentence so yeah is one of the important things in this fear response the repetition of the stress in other words if I'm traumatized at the age of eight and then not ret traumatized is that different from being traumatized throughout my life well there what's called intermittent trauma yes chronic but intermittent um and then there is just absolutely chronic that's with a pretty Relentless kind of an abusive situation all right and would you expect the biology of those two separate people to be different now there words the one who's traumatized at age eight with no repetition versus the one who's traumatized all their life no no I wouldn't necessarily you wouldn't expect it to be different no because of you have to look at what is being activated in the situation you still have to look at each individual to see what those life experiences have been but wouldn't it be fair to say that all people are different and their response to trauma is always going to be oh yes yes your honor may we take our afternoon break now I think I can shorten my cross-examination if I have a few minutes all right in court and all other participants as well you may continue your cross-examination Dr bures I want to return briefly to the classifications that you've testified to already I believe you indicated in both your direct and cross-examination that this was in your view a domestic homicide correct yes okay and if you you have a domestic homicide that is for purposes of insurance or inheritance that's possible correct in other words it's possible to have a domestic homicide which is also a homicide committed for insurance or inherent there are cases like that yes okay so uh in addition in the domestic homicide I believe that there are two subcategories the spontaneous domestic homicide and the stage domestic homicide yes is that correct and the stage domestic homicide indicates that this is a stage domestic homicide is planned and may be due to the same stresses as in an unstaged domestic homicide is that correct that is correct and the major differences between these two homicides is in their crime scenes that is correct okay would another difference be in the degree of planning between the staged and the spontaneous well that is one of the discriminating factors one of the crime scene indicators noted in the stage domestic homicide is that the crime scene of the well-planned domestic murder reflects a more control organized crime the weapon fingerprints and other evidentiary items often are removed in this particular case the weapons and and the um items containing incriminating fingerprints were in fact removed from the scene that is true okay the body is usually not concealed in this particular case the bodies were not concealed is that correct well on on the stage domestic you have to be they can be uh staged to look like another crime so bodies can be altered but in this particular book of what you were an editor it says the body is usually not concealed is that one of the crime scene indicators of the stage domestic homicide but it also can be altered I mean may be an open view but it also can be altered I think there are some examples in that ex case that gives that it goes on to say the crime scene often involves the victims Andor offenders residents but location of crime scenes outside the home also are possible so a planned domestic homicide often involves the victim's residence is that correct that is true staging is frequently noted in the plan murder it's um often made to look accidental other deaths may appear due to secondary criminal activities such as robbery or rape correct that's correct um in addition another staging um another way to Stage it would to me try to make it look like a hit that is a professional killing is that in there no I'm asking you if that would be another I didn't think it was would that be secondary criminal activity though well it's not one of the defining characteristics for domestic killing all right so would it be your testimony then that it's only when you're trying to make it look like a robbery and not like a professional hit yeah that's that's generally for that category they can try to make it like it was a rape that's when they will alter clothing on the victim or something like that well why wouldn't it be possible for a stage domestic homicide for the perpetrator to try to make it look like a hit especially if one's parent was involved in an industry in which there were some underworld characters I think that calls specul okay so are you saying then that it's not possible in a stage domestic homicide for the perpetrator to try to make it look like a professional killing objection call spe it's uh anything is possible but more likely than not it will not be staged in that way that's I can't think of any cases that have ever come in like that all right but it's not out of the realm of the possible is it I would say anything is possible of course but highly unlikely so it would be highly unlikely for a perpetrator in a stage domestic homicide to try to make it look like it was a professional hit that's what I'm saying yes in addition it says that search warrant suggestions for the investigator would be to search for evidence to corroborate a motive that's correct so in addition to the crime scene indicators um the investigator needs to look outside the crime scene for motivations on the part of the perpetrators that is correct now returning to the uh biological parts of fear I believe you indicated that people in in a fear response cannot override that response is that is that what you said no no no in a fear response the fear overrides the usual coping it doesn't mean that they don't do something but it it overwhelms the person and that's what triggers all of those stress hormones once a person is overwhelmed by the stress hormones is the person able to control his or her conduct well they do behave I mean again that car situation of course people do respond to try to avoid hitting a car okay are the people able to respond rationally once the fear hormones are triggered well rationale and fear it depends on the intensity and depends on the example I guess we'd have to really look at specific examples in that situation I was we just look at the car um I guess there are situations when people absolutely lose uh all rational thought and there is an accident that is one possibility but there are also times when people remember that there are certain things they can do to avoid an accident and do them in the midst of Their Fear well right I mean you hope that that's why people are trained in situations to be able to respond very quickly automatically I think that's the important thing is that automatically if something comes to you you will behave in that way to avoid the danger now the fear response which you've testified about that causes this um genetic recoding is that a response to a life-threatening situation well certainly life-threatening situation is a fear so all right but in order to in order to cause the genetic recoding does doesn't the um trauma have to be fairly severe the recoding is dependent upon the C The Chronic nature the prolonged nature of it and kept at such high sustaining levels that the brain chemistry is constantly being uh activated okay now you talked about um people overriding their Fair responses people who are train for instance police officers correct yes would they be a good example of people who are trained to override Their Fear responses when they are placed in situations that scare them I yes all right so there it is possible then to override this fear response well people are always trained the problem is given the situation you're only trained not necessarily in the situation so you still have that human component when faced with that situation so when you talk well what about if they took High School acting classes is is that is that the kind of thing that can make someone override their emotions in the moment talk about the response of um fight or flight being automatic are you saying that a person can't control that response because it's so automatic or that they can at least with training learn to control that response well training tends to make things automatic so that you behave in a very s you try to keep control of the anxiety so that you do the things that you can train to do uh I mean police are one example but certainly combat is another where you have to train people to be able to go into a life-threatening situation I believe you talked in your um analogies about people who were victims in concentration camps yes okay and um and I believe you probably were speaking about adult victims in concentration camps are we talking about everybody adults all right and given the opportunity to leave con contion camps the adults left the concentration camps when they were released yes when they were given the ability to leave they left yeah because the Nazis were all gone like the the captors were physically not there they were replaced by people who were there to liberate them what a weird question yes okay now um I believe you indicated that most abused children don't leave they don't leave their abusive situation yes that's the findings yes they stay in the situation H how do you know that how how do you know that most abused children don't leave the data says because uh that's a little two ways one that's what the research shows but it's very difficult for a child to just run away and get it be able to be secure and safe and so forth so they generally tend to stay in the abusing situation and they tend to learn to adapt to the abuse okay have you ever done any studies or read any studies about children who are runaways adolescents and above who are runaways yes that was a funded study that I did with my colleagues and what were your findings about the incidence of child abuse in the home of children who are runaways I believe our findings were uh close to 50% if not more certainly had one or more types of child abuse in their backgrounds that they were able to to report and when in our discussion when we're talking about child abuse are you talking about sexual psychological physical or all three all three okay so at least 50% of the children who run away were subject to some sort of child abuse of whatever kind at home of that particular study that's correct all right which means that that is a small percentage of the children who are actually abused so like put that number in your brain now you indicated that most children Don't Run Away has there been some study done between The Runaways and The non- Runaways well for examp well the um again you have to look at the age uh you have to have a certain age where a child is able to run away it's highly unlikely you know under a certain age that children are going to run away also what are the resources of the parents are are the parents able to go out and and recollect those children there's there's a number of factors involved in those situations all right let's say over the age of 12 then okay have there been studies done comparing children in the home who are subject to abuse and runaways well what probably was the most uh interesting finding of and in doing the runaway study that we did and they were all on adolescence is not we we asked the question why did they run away we should have asked the question why did they return because we found a real um some children or some adolesents had actually returned more than 20 30 40 times back to the abusing situation and so that really refocused our study to see why would adolescence return to the home when when it's very clear how much abuse had been going on all right but was there any study done between children in the home who didn't run away and those who did run away who were over the age of 12 you mean with a control group well if they hadn't run away what would we be comparing them to children in the home who stay who are also being abused yes there were children in the home that didn't run away of these families are you talking about a family where one runs away and the other doesn't correct okay what about situations where you just have a control group of children who stay in an abusive relation situation and never leave and children who run away right generally what you find and what the studies indicate that you get a different type of symptom presentation in other words the running away is really an action uh motivated type type of symptom that's very different than the child that stays in the home and very often what you see in symptoms there are is the more depression the withdrawal uh perhaps even suicide attempts because they're unable to activate themselves to get out of the situation do you know what percentage of children are subject to child abuse of all kinds percentage or numbers percent uh numbers are quite okay what are the numbers numbers the numbers are I believe the and again it depends on which study you're looking at but I think it's now 1.5 million children of have in the United States have some type of abuse Factor if you will and that's reported understand that is reported and um of those 1.5 million do you know which percentage of them stay in the home and Which percentage run away see then you'd have to look at the Adolescent level that generally tends to be when children do leave the home and I have I don't know what those statistics are we certainly have statistics on runaways but you can't be sure that just because they run away that they've also been abused of the 1.5 million children who are suspected of having been victimized by child abuse how many children are there in that group are we talking about 20 million children are we talking about 50 million children it's the legal definition of child so it would be a legal definition and again it would be by state so you have to look at what the state reporting laws are and they do vary some are 18 and other some are 16 and other under some are 14 and under it's a little hard to give you a precise answer on that so the 1.5 million children are abused are nationwide is that correct that is my understanding of one report yes and you can't tell me what percentage of children in this country presently then would be victims of child abuse they're all children right but how by definition right but you can't tell me how many children there are in the country therefore you can't say what 1.5 million is of that that group yeah I don't know how many children there are in the country you mean to give you a percentage now yeah so you don't know the percentage of children who are subject to child Abus is that correct well I know how many are reported and that's a to me that's a very large number well but you know what percentage of children is reported okay so when you say that half of all uh excuse me when you say that most children stay home how do you know that that's what the research shows okay and what research would be on abused children and one of the questions would be have you ever run away and so that would be coded in and then there'd be a percentage I think Pam is confused as to what Dr Buress testified earlier about most children stay home what she was saying is most abused children stay home only a small percentage of abused children run away from home and usually those that do run away end up coming back um Pam seems to be thinking that most kids in general don't run away from home which is probably actually true but that's not what Dr Bess actually said but it's not as if somebody went to every house and found out if the children were abused and then found out if they left correct yeah that's not the way research is done the research is done only on the self-reported abuse right or it's done by survey there certainly are telephone surveys that um get into that type of data now um I believe you indicated that dis dissociation is a sign of abuse no no no I don't I didn't say that all right what did you say then about dissociation dissociation is a normal phenomenon in people what happens it it just means putting your mind somewhere else and that goes on all of us do it every day so that in an of itself is Is Not Unusual what seems to happen with abused children is during the abuse they put their mind away more and more so it becomes a a really a habit for them and can get them into great difficulty when they're supposed to be say in school studying or uh listening to their parent or doing something that their mind just automatically slips into this dissociative State and it can actually even intensify but not all all people who engage in that behavior have been abused as children no no not at all it's a normal phenomenon now you've you've talked about parallels between the battered wife syndrome and um things that happen to Children correct yes okay because is battered wife syndrome a form of post-traumatic stress disorder uh it I'm not sure it's listed as that in the dsm3 r in fact it's not I don't think it is right okay now battered wife syndrome then is something that deals with physical abuse and its effect on the mental processes of the abused person the abused here She is again about physical abuse it's like she doesn't believe that mental and emotional abuse is a thing right okay so it's physical and psychological it also can have sexual components correct but there the battered wife syndrome is not limited in other words it doesn't deal just with psychological abuse there is a physical component to it that's correct and in a and then when you have the physical component you have the psychological component because we're thinking creatures correct correct there may be some people that Define it also just as psychological um abuse is there any research that indicates that the same sort of traumatization occurs with merely psychological abuse as occurs in the battered wife syndrome well you mean another population that that gets py could you repeat the question okay let's say we're dealing hypothetically with a situation of psychological maltreatment okay of adult of a of an adult adolescent okay all right an adolescent maturing into adulthood psychological maltreatment is there any kind of cause and effect between the psychological maltreatment and things such as hypervigilance as there is with the battered wife syndrome which has this Genesis in physical interaction between the parties and this hypervigilance in the other stages I'm going to object to form the question assuming not going be over over world since it does uh assume certain facts and you haven't asked the witness to ratify that you should break it down okay all right what are the components of baded wife syndrome uh the components would be psychological abuse in other words humiliation degradation uh things that are said implied to The woman there often is a physical component where the woman is hit punched shoved uh in other words an intentional act to injure her is made and then there's a third possible component of sexual abuse the um woman may be sex forced into a sexual situation intentionally so battered wife syndrome occurs in a woman who's been psychologically abused without any physical abuse I believe you could have that yes okay you could have that does that is that the way that battered wife syndrome is used U more often than not it's going to be identified as having the physical component the physical and or the sexual component now presently there is no definable child abuse syndrome question is that correct overall there are repeat that again there's no child abuse syndrome yeah well when we talk about child abuse we're talking about generic child abuse which can can contain psychological physical and sexual correct correct all right is there any kind of syndrome that deals specifically with child abuse well The Battered child syndrome was introduced in the literature back in the 60s I believe that's a very well-known um writings out of uh Denver okay the batter child syndrome is a physical diagnosis when a physician examines a child and sees things like Spiral fractures or other kinds of injuries which are inconsistent with childhood injuries correct that's correct so the batter child syndrome deals with physical findings but what if they were never taken to the doctor no doctor no diagnosis oh they're not battered right according to Pam correct originally that's the way it was defined correct okay but it's rare that you just have physical findings all right but in terms of what we give a name to the name is given to a series of physical injuries like uh broken arm syndrome or something else correct argument over correct your question pardon me did you finish your question I don't know I'll I'll start again ask your question so The Battered child syndrome is not the same as the battered wife syndrome is that correct oh no I mean they're two separate population groups and age groups well but in addition The Battered child syndrome is a name that was coined for medical doctors examining children who've been physically battered isn't that correct yes all right now the battered wife syndrome deals with psychological effects of battering doesn't it but it also has a physical component that's correct but in terms of the two names they're not synonymous are they because of people so are you aware of any kind of name that is given to psychological abuse in its child which results in some sort of trauma well the psychological maltreatment area there's quite a bit of literature on that and studies on that so that would be one example it's called psychological maltreatment been books written on it but as far now if you're analogizing to the battered wife syndrome one of the components of the battered wife syndrome is physical abuse isn't that correct this is the answer yes because battered means hit doesn't it yes all right so the battered wife syndrome deals with women who have been beaten yes and the psychological effects of that beating upon their perceptions correct yes okay is there anything in the literature which s suggests that the battered wife syndrome is only limited to psychological maltreatment do you understand my question yes okay is there I'm thinking um there is in the literature a fair amount of discussion about the psychological implications in the battered wife or battered person battered woman syndrome correct but my my question is when there is psychological abuse and no physical abuse do you expect to see the same thing such as hypervigilance and other kinds of activities on the part of the injured spouse yes all right so is it your testimony then that without physical components a person can still suffer the same sorts of trauma as the battered wife suffers when she's physically beaten by her husband I'm not going to say exact ly the same because you obviously have introduced a new phenomenon where there's going to be physical injury but certainly from a psychological standpoint you're going to have symptoms and you may well have threats very often part of the psychological maltreatment are the threats that something terrible is going to happen that they're going to be killed or um other people children are going to be killed or whatever so that's a very very um P from a psychological stpoint a very frightening fearful phenomenon for a person to endure but when the battered wife responds to the statement from her husband there was no miller at the bar what she's responding to is the prospect that she's going to be beaten correct that's one interpretation yes now in this particular case this case here the Mendez case there is no way for you to test these particular defendants to see if in fact they have had genetic recoding correct there so your testimony about the um the way the brain functions in this in this genetic recoding is not specific to these two defendants is that correct that's correct okay so you're just explaining something that could happen that's correct and you're not saying that it did happen with these two defendants that's correct okay now in the case of the battered wife her Q is the statement from her husband that he is going to do something to her correct we not going to object to the form of the question she talking about just that one hypothetical yes would you rephrase the question please clarify all right when we're talking about the battered wife hypothetical that you that was discussed in your direct examination yes the cue to the wife is the fact that he's comes home and says there was no miller at the bar well that's just one CU there can be other kinds of cues she might even hear the car pulling up you know and that might U we we can't you can't just make it one specific queue that certainly isn't a powerful queue but it isn't the only CU because because on other occasions when her husband's come home and said there's no miller at the bar he's pulled up in his car and she's heard that sound so she Associates the sound of him coming home with the bar from the bar with a potential for beating yeah those are the associations correct okay now if she has never had her life threatened before her husband coming home from the bar is not going to have any significance to her correct correct she's never been beaten she's never been threatened she's never been anything just a husband coming home from the bar no she's not going to be frightened all right and if he's never come through the door with a weapon after going to the bar then her life has never been threatened before is that correct and hypothetical that nothing has ever happened between these two persons correct correct oh okay now if in fact she suffered psychological abuse at his hands in the past but has never been in a life-threatening situation do you know whether or not she's going to have this fear response when her husband comes through the door and says there's no miller at the bar well you have to tell me whether she's been threat you're saying she's never been threatened she's never been threatened and she's never been beaten but she has been she's been told that she's a terrible person she's been told she's a lousy housekeeper she's been told she's worthless but she's never had her life threatened she's still going to be anxious because she knows he's going to come in he's going to start all of that again and that certainly isn't anything that makes people U feel calm and relaxed correct but in terms of triggering this flight or fight response where her life has not been threatened before but she's been subject to this kind of abuse is is her fight or flight response going to be triggered by a repetition of psychological abuse again given very simple facts like that probably not but I would say that she certainly has altered um receptors in in in terms of how he treats her and all of that it'd be hard to imagine that he hasn't frightened her in some way if he's constantly degrading her if I have been subject to um let's say psychological maltreatment during the course of my life and it always occurs in private discussions with my parents with with my father and he comes in the room and he he berates me and talk talks to me and I'm subject to psychological maltreatment okay okay yes then him coming into the room and closing the door would be a signal to me that I might get chewed out again or or treated poorly again correct that's correct and if I'm subject to psychological Mal treatment when I'm out um doing a sporting event okay the fact that I might perform poorly at a sporting event would be a trigger to me that I'm going to get chewed out again okay okay yeah if my abuser closes a door to a room to watch a television show is that going to trigger the response in me that those other two events have triggered it certainly can sure by association absolutely why because the don't forget the fear reaction is not at a cognitive level it isn't thinking that it's just it's the door shuts and it's remembering that something frightening may happen but if nothing frightening has ever happened before when the door shut that particular cue would not trigger the response but I thought you said that's when he would come in and say um you know negative things to you about your performance etc etc so that that is again going to raise one's anxiety and there always is the fear of maybe something more is going to be said and maybe the next time it's going to be a little bit worse so I wouldn't necessarily say that you wouldn't get a fear reaction if my father closes a door and goes into a room with my mother to watch a television show and that particular cue has never preceded physical or life-threatening acts in the past is that cue going to trigger my fear response I'm going to object if that as an improper hypothetical day hang on guys really quick I just like what do you what are you what are you doing you you have you have things you want to say things you want to show you want to perform do a little dance for everybody so funny so funny uh okay um and also there's a question as to how much time we've got about 30ish minutes uh left in this testimony a q is something that signals that a that something bad's going to happen in this discussion that we've been having correct correct and the reason that the person knows something bad's going to happen is because something bad happened before when that QE was present in that particular scene yes okay so if a queue is given that is not related to any prior trauma then it's not a cue is it but you can have I mean don't forget conversation is very much a part of the Quee it doesn't only have to be what is a sensory experience I mean what they what what is discussed can be very much of a a queuing in Factor all right but if if a QE is given in which I've never been in a lifethreatening situation before never been threatened with death before is that cue sufficient to trigger this biological response I think I've said one example can one queueing in can trigger it if it's severe enough but in the battered wife case what cues her is that when he comes home and says there's no Miller at the bar on prior occasions she has been in a life-threatening situation OB this has been asked answered in sustained on first ground I have nothing further any redirect for a cue as we've been referring to behaviors by abusers to trigger a frightening response does it have to be identical to something that's happened before no do Q are cues necessarily repetitions of previous cues no are there situations where a new crisis has arisen where the abused child has special knowledge of the modus operand the personalities the values the interests the intentions of their abuser and the brand new set of behaviors can trigger the highest level Panic response sustain yeah both of those I was waiting for it is there a concept called special knowledge that affects how abused children read the signs from their abusers yes and do special knowledge dependent on the repetition of old cues it may or may not be and when it isn't what do how does special knowledge in interact with these fear responses because there are new cues that are are elicit in now if there has been a crisis situation something that has never happened before in an abusive family could a child be experiencing these automatic fear responses based on an entire pattern of new conversations new Behaviors new cues yes is hypervigilance the scanning of the environment for hints cu or clues of danger a conscious rational thing or automatic automatic is there literature to suggest that the battered wife syndrome is actually a misnomer that a woman need not be battered to experience all of the symptoms of of other wives in abusive situations yes is there literature that psychological abuse alone particularly when coupled with extreme jealousy with limiting a woman's actions with isolation can also create tremendous fearfulness yes are there situations where with respect to what's called battered wives where there are constant threats to kill even though there's never been a hand laid on the wife yes and do those women experience fearfulness just as the women who are hit experience it yes I do is the same true among children yes it is does a child have to be physically abused to be fearful or hypervigilant or both no is sexual abuse scary to Children yes it is why there can be several reasons why first of all it uh over it um confuses the child uh there is the if it's a factor where somebody is known it it um determines what is safe and unsafe the the whole factor of premature introduction of the child into activity far beyond its years uh there are many things that children become very fearful of do children and even adults become fearful when they sense they have absolutely no control over what's done to their bodies yes have there been is there uh studies or information in the literature that show that sexually molested children equate the molestation with death yes there is and how was that information [Music] developed do children who are subject to Chronic sexual abuse then are they frequently in fear of death yes they are and Is frequent fears of death by little children one of those things that creates this hyp sensitivity and easy AR Ral to fear it's relevant yes it is is there literature to suggests that in general children are more vulnerable to psychological abuse and to terrorization than adult women yes they are in the realm of psychological abuse are you familiar with those types of Acts that are characterized as terrorizing yes and do you agree for example with the labeling system that Dr Tyler was using in this court as to types of Acts that are terrorizing yes I do for terrorizing acts to produce Terror in a child does there have to be physical contact no there doesn't does repeated exposure to terrorizing acts uh create uh this heightened arousal system to fear yes it does in really quick let me get this uh question here AB short clips if the lawyer is objected on leading at a certain point does it even matter they got out their point the jurors heard it and sustaining doesn't take away anyone's memory sometimes that's the Strategic reason why someone will will go ahead and ask a leading question anyway because it's the the answer that they get doesn't really matter they're just trying to put a bug in the ear of the jurors abusive situations where there have been repetitive or repeated either implied or explicit threats to kill if if a certain event happens okay and then the event happens can that trigger this extreme fear response even though it's an entirely new situation yes I can in a situation where a child has been sexually molested in his room over a course of 12 years and where over the course of the last five years sexual molestation has become a punishment and where the Molester is angry and acting punitive towards the child and orders that child to his room is that the kind of cue that might make the child scared are the mere words what you would look at to decide whether or not um a CU triggering fear has occurred or do you have to know the whole context you have to know the whole context are there situations where go to your room can be a threat of death yes there are are there situations where go go to your room is a threat of rape yes there are are there situations where go to your room means you can now paint and color and play with your dolls yes under certain circumstances can complete silence even be ACU that something dangerous is about to happen yes it can I could see that when you're dealing with an abuser who has a pattern where he or she has a pattern unpredictability in the past okay um does that tend to produce even more hypervigilant victims yes that's a very important factor turning then very briefly to the crime scene um area have you ever testified for the prosecution Dr buris and criminal proceedings overall yes I have have you ever been asked to testify specifically on whether a particular crime scene was an organized crime scene no I have not would you if you were asked to overall yes I would you have no bias against testifying one way or the other do you no I don't now you said that in this particular case um the choice of weapon is a strong indication to you of no planning is that correct that is correct and that's based both on your initial crime scene evaluation and also on some other information you learned about uh the case yes and specifically why is it that this choice of weapon is such a strong indicator to you of lack of planning because of the information that I had regarding a few days uh prior to the the uh the situation that there was that I learned about that um I learned about okay and does that information have to do with the fact that in the state of California people can actually buy handguns if they're willing to wait two weeks that is correct now you're familiar with the fact that there are other states where people cannot buy handguns at all that is correct now you said that this was a high-risk crime scene in you've talked about the fact that it was by using two shotguns with multiple rounds in a enclosed space you're going to create a lot of evidence that could attach itself to the shooter and serve to uh Aid his capture is that correct that's true um is there also the element that in a small scene shooting off all these rounds with a shotgun he's creating evidence on his hand absolutely and if it was an organized or planned um crime would there be something that you'd expect the the planner to do to protect his hands from that kind of evidence yes I would and what would you expect him to do I expect him to wear gloves and if he were wearing gloves would he have any reason to worry about picking up shell casings because the fingerprints no he wouldn't now you said in uh if you're going to look at a particular domestic homicide scene um we strike that if you're going to conduct an investig ation that begins with a domestic homicide scene to determine whether there's an insurance or inheritance component you'd have to look outside the scene for motive evidence yes you would did you examine every single interview that the prosecution conducted in this case yes I did and did you read um all of the testimony that's been presented in this draw yes I have and do you see any data whatsoever that suggests any pre shooting motive for money or inheritance objection improper opinionate so there's a there was a question earlier from Co perisic why does the line exists between what an expert is allowed to app on and what is something the jury has to consider without expert opinion um it's going to depend partly on um the area of expertise that the person is giving but also it's going to depend on what are the ultimate questions that the jury is going to have to answer in order to find the defendant guilty or or not guilty so if it's if it's like an ultimate legal conclusion that you're essentially asking the witness you're not allowed to to to do that because they they they it's an improper use of their their Authority that question is for the jury to to decide so this last question God I toally I I I'm blinking on what what the question was but I I do remember thinking um that the the question that was asked is ultimately what the jury has to has to answer in order to to um get to a a a guilty or not- guilty verdict um and so that is going to be an improper opinion uh Debbie the objection was that that the question was asking for an improper expert opinion in order in other words words either outside the scope of their expertise or asking an ultimate question for the jury to answer like a a legal an ultimate legal question would you look to um statements if you were conducting an investigation to find out if there was inheritance or Insurance motive would you first try to determine whether or not the um the suspect had information concerning the like lihood of their inheritance inheriting or getting Insurance yes I would would you also look for any kind of pre crime information concerning whether or not the person had any particular interest or motive to obtain money yes I would now you said that um there are that there is some common knowledge about how organized crime conducts um its executions yes okay and and what is what is the common method by which organized criminals uh conduct their hits if you will well they generally uh plan it very carefully they uh have a lot of information available and their choice of weapon is going to be the type that leaves a minimal amount of uh injury that the hit if you will is a direct Target and that they have eliminated as many uh barriers if you will to accomplish their task would organize crime in your opinion based on your analysis of crimes committed by such persons uh use two shotguns in a Beverly Hills family room on a Sunday night you were asked by Mrs B so that was another objection for an improper opinion and that the the reason for that is because there's it's it's asking her to actually speculate of like would you know what would would organized crime mobs you know use a shotgun in Bley Hills and blah blah blah like there there's really there's there's no you know if the question was would you expect to see that you know maybe she would be able to answer that but would they actually do that is too far beyond the scope of of what she can actually reliably say so she can't because she doesn't she doesn't know for a fact right she's not like oh you know I run with the mob every single day of the week and I know for a fact that they would that they would never that they would never do that like no no she can't she can't say that even with all the best data and all the best analysis you can't say because what's to stop them from you know doing that the next day because they're like all right guys we know that no one would suspect us um that's yeah anyway zanic if uh persons could try to Stage a crime to make it look like an organized crime hit you were asked for your opinion on that subject remember that yes in your opinion would person staging an organized crime hit used two shotguns in Beverly Hills in someone's home objection um improper opinion T sustain the answer strien does organized crime has it been widely publicized that organized crime uses shotguns indoors for their hits no there you go do that's something do they tend to use a small caliber weapon to the back of the head yes I do usually a 22 caliber weapon is that correct I believe so yes and the reason why she can answer that is because what's been the question was it it have you seen it widely publicized is this something that is generally known you know like is is there you can root that in something that she has studied that she has researched something along those lines do they take Extraordinary Measures to avoid leaving Prince yes they do Extraordinary Measures to avoid having blood or or tissue or things like that get on them that's correct yes and do they try to Stage it to make it look like somebody other than organized crime yes they off they may or may not uh they really don't have to okay are you familiar with cases where organized crime made it look like a burglary a robbery or another form of crime I'm sure there are some cases they really do now you were asked about what happens if law enforcement in looking at what seems to you to be a domestic VI U shooting case um a eliminates the option that there was a need for forced entry because the other residents of the home tell them the doors are always kept open remember that yes now it's your opinion is it not when you see a domestic violence scene that the most likely suspects are a the ones who call in and B the ones who are related that is true so is a good law enforcement practice to rely on what those people tell you about whether the doors are locked or unlocked in making your crime scene an analysis um based on your survey of organized crime cases are they likely to leave shell casings in a car and then call the police to the scene where the car is located no are they likely to tell the police that they smelled smoke and saw a thick yellow Haze when they weren't supposed to be present at the time of the shooting no excuse me consultation excuse me a further consult Mr Bert would you write more legibly so we don't have this uh Tish but isn't Pam better at avoiding leading questions yeah but but Leslie get quite young say with episodes of sexual m station okay yes can their brother relating to that person his much more recent experiences of violent sexual Mo molestation uh trigger some replay or traumatic or fear inducing feelings in that person whose molestation was farther in the past one second sorry I have to take out one earbud is this a phenomena that occurs that that hearing about another person's similar traumatization can get you to relive your own yes in fact in the studies of Vietnam War veterans for example have they determined that they can reex re-experience combat Vivid combat scenes based on a car engine sound a smell trash in other words a sensory system gets activated and that's generally what what occurs I see smell or even taste something that reminds them of that experience and can they also hear something someone else is telling a story a song that may be played over the radio in N virtually anything yes I have nothing further on any recross all right we're back with Pam Dr Burgess can psychological abuse cause hatred in a child towards his or her abuser be honest overall in situations involving uh family members the child I think I've already said is very torn in their loyalty and they may have u a specific feeling of anger about what the ACT is but in general this is one of the things that holds them into the uh situation is the other part which is the um love and the of the parent can psychological abuse cause hate can psychological abuse from the parent cause hatred in the grown child that is the adult child um again anything is possible but you'd have to know more about the situation I people hate their parents right not everybody loves their parents people can hate their parents yes okay and one of the things that can cause a person to hate their parents as having been subjected to child abuse correct that may be one thing and one of the motives in a domestic homicide can be hatred for the parent for all kinds of reasons isn't that true and a homicide yes not all domestic homicides are spontaneous correct no now I believe you were asked about the choice of weapon in this case on uh redirect as being a poor choice because it was a shotgun is that correct that is correct okay if one wants to make a crime look like an organized crime hit that person who's trying to make it look that way is bound by their perception of what an organized crime hit would look like aren't they well if they've looked into it or read on it I mean they have more information as to how it's done if they well if they've seen what if they've just seen movies and their perception of an organized crime hit comes from The Godfather I'm going to object why don't you rephrase the question rather than give examples such as that all right one's perceptions of what an organized crime killing are like are based upon one's life experiences correct yes wherever they get their information correct okay and your experience of organized crime killings is based upon your years of research in this area correct plus others it isn't just the research but I I certainly have an understanding of that type of crime yes okay and you you have at times specialized in Formula formulating classifications of crime correct okay so your knowledge of what constitutes an organized crime killing is not necessarily the general knowledge within this country correct probably one would hope that you have a more specific knowledge after all the years that you've done researching correct that's correct okay now if one were to choose a small caliber weapon but was unable to get that weapon because of a 14 or 15-day waiting period but one still wanted to accomplish one's task one would then move to another weapon correct not necessarily not necessarily that's where I disagree that I think that if one wanted to actually commit this uh organized crime they would wait the two weeks yeah and they would use that weapon they'd use an appropriate weapon yep what if in two weeks the opportunity to commit the crime was not as good as committing it at the earlier time wouldn't that be a factor to consider in planning this all right you'll have to rephrase this question since it is in the for oh dang it my earbud died okay hopefully this one's charged up enough hang on just one second we're almost done with this testimony too okay are we set up properly okay yes okay of or should be in the form of a hypothetical question ra tell hypothetically if one were about to return to college and one were going to be leaving the state all right wouldn't it be better to accomplish the crime when one was still in the same local as the victim sustain well objection sustained to the form of the question question has raised okay so is your criticism of this particular crime in the way it was done is that rather than waiting for an opportunity to get the small caliber weapon that a large that a shot use is that correct it's not a criticism it's just pointing out what is organized and what is disorganized and if one wants to do an organized crime one would plan and take the time to carry it out in a way that is it's going to be effective but there are there are are there not other factors in one wanting to commit a crime aside from the availability of a weapon isn't that correct overall there are other factors in committing to Crime aside from just the choice of weapon that's such an important factor but there's also opportunity correct well that is true there's opportunity all right and if opportunity conflicts with getting the proper choice of weapons then opportunity is a factor to be considered correct but it's not a big factor in a domestic situation where the F people are all right within the same residence all right but if people are about to leave the residence and move to different locals that would change the opportunity wouldn't it objection no Foundation overall it would um it might only change it temporarily but there is nothing that says that there's an immediacy to this situation what do you mean in a plan in a plan one would would U factor that in that's the idea of a plan well leaving I mean ly could just say I'll I'll come back one weekend or maybe he decides to extend his stay in Beverly Hills for a couple weeks you know what I mean like there it's not like it's impossible for him to come back to Beverly Hills town for a period of several months would create a lack of opportunity to commit a domestic homicide correct I'm going to that it's argument and assumes fact not in sustained as to the form of the question it is argumentative leaving town to move to another state would that in fact create a lack of opportunity in a domestic homicide over no do you do you remember my question yes okay um you're saying that if if that is with within a twoe time period um I'm still going to say that to plan something a plan means that it is able to be carried off the way it's intended and a time that's not a plan if it's uh something that's just hurridly done or something like that that's not a plan it's not organized well so what is your definition of what a plan is then a plan is taking into all the factors such as weapon Place location U method and most importantly to leave as few Clues as possible I mean that's a plan now this checklist that you've just given about weapon Place location method and leaving few Clues is that a checklist that you can buy at the big five when you pick up your shotgun what AR is sustained it's argumentative yeah Dr Burgess this particular your definition of a plan it's not necessarily everyone's definition of a plan isn't that correct AR overall I don't know I haven't checked it out with everyone but that's generally the way a plan is defined good you are interested in the classification of crimes correct yes the organized and disorganized correct and there is no evidence in this case that these particular defendants knew about the kinds of checklists that you've just talked about correct in other words they there's no evidence that they knew in advance that in order to be successful they would have to follow the FBI checklist of what constitutes a planned crime what kind of a question is that correct well I'm not saying that that that that's the FBI checklist I I that's not been published as a checklist what I am saying is that if you want to get into what is planned and what isn't plan then there are certain criteria you have to apply and being able to wait two weeks that would in fact constitute a plan but if you didn't want to wait two weeks it wouldn't mean you weren't planning would it depends what you're planning if you're planning to kill your parents because you want to kill your parents that is the plan to kill your parents if that's the plan then you'd wait the two weeks and have everything right the right weapon the right location the right everything and unless you did it correctly then you weren't planning at all is that your testimony well then it wouldn't it would be a lack of planning that's the point and I believe you rejected the idea that poor planning can be the same as lack of planning is that correct well we just tend to call it lack of planning rather than putting an adjective okay but lack of planning means no or little planning correct I'm GNA object this this is all been asked and yeah all right it's been gone over once before but I'll permit limited further examination just because someone does plans out something poorly doesn't mean they didn't plan it right overall right a plan generally means something that's going to turn out the way that it's intended okay but if it doesn't turn out the way it's intended that doesn't mean it wasn't planned it just means it wasn't planned well correct ask answer rephrase the question okay what you're saying then is if someone plans something and does a bad job of planning it and executing it but that means it wasn't planned that shows a lack of planning because it's not going to turn out the way that that plan should be now in discussing the fear that goes into this biological uh recoding yes if the person's lying about being afraid then none of these biological things occur is that correct over well I think that the point of the biological model is that you have the physiological response and that is something that you can't deny but if you if you aren't in fear you don't have the physiological response that you've described in your testimony correct yeah if you're not in fear correct okay so if you're lying about being in fear then you would not have this biological response is that correct well that's one way of stating it well is there another way of stating it well I just said that you have to take into consideration the symptoms and the whole body response and the whole history there are a lot of factors that you have to take into consideration uh people generally don't go around saying I'm in fear and that's not necessarily what happened I mean this is such an automatic response people don't go around saying they're in fear when they're not is that what you just is that what you in the examples we've been giving he what about people who are charged with crimes and want to avoid conviction do they have a motive to to claim emotions that they don't have yeah thank you have nothing for anything else okay at Dr Burgess the 40 samas serial killers and all the other perpetrators that the FBI interviewed over the years their actions their planning was the basis was it not for this attempting to classify crime scenes as organized disorganized yes they didn't read the book they wrote the book basically and what you're trying to do is knowing how homicides are you try to match new homicide scenes to the given body of what a plan scene looks like and what an unplan scene looks like that's right and really all you're saying is this scene doesn't look like there was any planning that's correct if it did it would have had these organizational components correct yes and are there basically uh three basic indicia of an organized or planned homicide scene yes and you want to tell us what they are in an organized scene you're going to have clear thinking low emotion and the plan is carried out with the minimal amount of injury um and clues and obviously no detection and the right weapon for the location yes and the right weapon for the location and that's what you did not find here is that correct that's correct nothing further right 1989 the number of murders in the United States was estimated at 21,500 do you remember that statistic research yes I do and for purposes of these classifications you talked with 43 Killers is that correct that's for the sexual homicide that were there were three or more yes okay and it's based on these 43 people that you came up with this system of disorganized Oran no no this is the way that you see thank you no the way the study the way the FBI would go to a crime scene is they would classify it into this organized disorganized what the study was about what this 43 Killers was about is to see how that applied how by putting them into those classifications what other things um what was statistically significant and that's really um the value of that one particular study what the crime classification is is an elaboration if you will on many many more uh crimes not just homicide but arson and rape and sexual assault and the very best of their thinking and the way they classify crimes is what is contained in that book but your testimony under examination dealt with the fact that disorganized versus organized murder scenes was based on studies done with 43 murderers correct that was the one study that's correct thank you if I may also REM has that one study been greatly expanded over the 10 years since it was first conducted to include the examination of many many more crime scenes oh yes it represents hundreds and hundreds of crime scenes and have those classifications held up to be valid when applied to thousands upon thousands of other crime yes that was just the basic research right that was the first basic research in 1980 yes do you have to sample every single uh event in order to get a statistically sound basis for rendering opin no is it all scientific research based on sampling yes any else no right um in regards to the gold jury um the next um evidence will be offered um only involving um the defendant Eric Menendez which means you won't have to be here tomorrow morning it's likely that that that evidence will go on into tomorrow afternoon it might consume all of tomorrow afternoon it might not I don't know that for a fact um again um okay so that's all that's all we need for our purposes uh in other words uh the next bit of testimony from Dr Bess is going to be just in front of Eric mendez's jury so this was in front of both of them so far now it's just in front of Eric's interesting I wonder what we're going to get into in the next episode then um yeah this was fascinating uh I'm I very very interesting cross-examination it definitely seemed like prosecution was trying trying to to land some points trying to confuse some points but she was a really Stellar expert witness it held up quite well on cross-examination uh she explains things very well very simply so that basically anybody can understand unless you're pambo anage I guess but um but anyway but but yeah I mean it was it was very it was a very strong testimony so far so we'll see what happens in uh in episode 57 then um of the series but thank you so much to everybody for joining uh and watching with us whether you're watching on replay or live whether you are engaging in the chat or in the comments or you're just lurking I appreciate every single one of you uh for being here um if you guys could before you head out please do like the stream it does help us with the YouTube algorithm Gods um oh I I should do this like the stream ah there we go um and uh and yeah so so we we will we'll we'll have more next Monday should be regularly scheduled um on Monday and uh yeah we'll go on with that um folks that are new to bite club or folks that are returning to bite Club Friday we've got another casual members only live stream so be sure to uh look out for that it's going to be 10 a.m. East Coast time as usual and in between I'm gonna I'm gonna be putting out a recap from yesterday's murdog hearing um so that we can kind of C recap that whole thing it was like four hours of no more than four hours of testimony it was like six hours I think uh of of that entire hearing not including the break in between so um so yeah uh keep an eye out for that members will also have a uh a a a first look at that before the general public at least for uh a couple uh couple hours um anyway so yeah that should be out tomorrow yeah should be out tomorrow um anyway uh and also last but not least of course thank you to the mods for helping to make sure that dialogue uh is Spirited but productive um and that everybody is respecting one another I know that this community doesn't need much much modding they always tell me it's like the easiest chat to mod because people are so friendly and kind um even when disagreeing so I really appreciate all of that um and yeah that's about it so thank you guys thank you so much and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday whatever is left of it and a wonderful rest of your week and otherwise see you