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By Root 651 0

it was an intriguing possibility made all the more interesting because the offer appeared to be unconditional; we could hear the story she had to tell, and if we didn’t buy it, we could still move forward with the death penalty. However, as with many things with the defense, their position changed over time. Eventually a huge caveat was put on their proffer: if we decided to hear her story out, we had to take the death penalty off the table. We had to take it sight unseen, or else the deal was off. In the end, none of us were comfortable striking this ambiguous bargain with a woman who had a documented history of lying, so we let the whole thing go.

But after we learned about the therapists’ reports, suddenly these events from the months prior fell into place. Taken with Mason’s comments about drowning at Dr. G’s deposition, we could suddenly understand what they’d been up to. The way we figured it, Casey’s version of events—blaming George for the abuse and the drowning—probably started coming together around fall of 2010. At some point before Baez called Linda about the proffer, that new version, Casey 4.0, had been pitched to the therapists. Once it was clear that they could get backing from the therapists on it, they tried to serve it up to us. When we wouldn’t take the bait, they simply decided to use Dr. Danziger and Dr. Weitz as mouthpieces for Casey’s story.

After we got the reports, we arranged sit-downs with the two new eleventh-hour witnesses. Dr. Danziger came first. On the morning of his appointment, he arrived before the defense attorneys. I noticed that Dr. Danziger was uneasy that morning. He expressed his apprehension in an odd kind of way. “I am very uncomfortable being the vector for this information,” he said to me.

I was puzzled and went back to my office to look up the word vector. I wanted to be sure of which definition he meant. The one definition that seemed most applicable was “a vehicle to spread disease.”

When the defense attorneys got there, Dr. Danziger repeated his concern about being a vector. He added that he had difficulty being a mouthpiece for these “very, very serious allegations against someone in a situation where there is no other evidence he actually did anything.”

I had known Jeffrey Danziger for twenty years. I had led him in testimony, as well as cross-examined him. He had testified in favor of some of my cases and against others. He had testified in cases where I felt the defendant was feeding him a line, and I called it for what it was. In still others, he had reported the symptoms displayed by a defendant, while questioning their genuineness and suggesting further observation.

And when he thought a defendant was honestly displaying symptoms, he said that, too. On our first case together, involving the brutal rape and murder of a ten-year-old girl, he gave the opinion that the defendant was insane but volunteered he had little factual support for his opinion. While I disagreed with him, I admired his frankness. You don’t find that much in forensic psychiatry. When I did disagree with him, it was in cases where he believed there was genuine mental illness, and our disagreement went more to the legal significance of the illness than to its existence. Yet through all this disagreement, differing opinions, and professional respect, I have always known him to be an honest person—someone I respect immensely, even if I don’t always agree with him.

In all of those years though, I had never seen him demonstrate the slightest reluctance to testify in any case on any issue. That day as we waited to begin the deposition, his demeanor was truly startling. In my opinion, he saw himself that day, not as a physician giving a diagnosis but as a vehicle for the transmission of a lie and I think the thought sickened him. I think he choose the word vector with great care. In his mind he was spreading the virus of Casey’s lies. He knew that he was chosen because he would make the lie seem credible in a way she never could. In the end, I think he refused to allow himself to be used that way