Park Dietz
Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology · Licensed: CA
Biography
Born August 13, 1948, in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, he holds a B.A. cum laude in psychology from Cornell University (1970, Phi Beta Kappa), and an M.D., Ph.D. (Social Relations/Behavioral Sciences), and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University, completed in the mid-1970s. He did his general psychiatry residency at Johns Hopkins (finished 1977) and a forensic psychiatry fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania (1978). He is board-certified in psychiatry and forensic psychiatry. Early in his career he was Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (circa 1978–1982), Director of Forensic Psychiatry at Bridgewater State Hospital (Massachusetts), and then Associate/Professor at the University of Virginia (1982–1988), holding joint appointments at UVA's School of Law and School of Medicine and serving as Medical Director of UVA's Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. He is currently Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and consults as a forensic psychiatrist to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit and the New York State Police Forensic Sciences Unit. Dietz founded Threat Assessment Group, Inc. in 1987 (workplace-violence prevention consulting) and Park Dietz & Associates, Inc. His firm reports having handled approximately 5,000 cases since 1996 and states its associated experts have conducted "more than 30,000 forensic mental health evaluations and 25,000 forensic autopsies" — those aggregate figures describe the firm's roster of experts, not Dietz individually. He is a past president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law and a board examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is one of the best-known forensic psychiatrists in the U.S. by virtue of testimony in high-profile criminal cases, including the trials of John Hinckley Jr. (1982, defense sanity issue), Jeffrey Dahmer (1992), Andrea Yates (2002 — her conviction was later overturned in part because of an error in Dietz's testimony), and consultations involving Ted Kaczynski, Betty Broderick, Jared Lee Loughner, William Bonin, Joel Rifkin, Richard Kuklinski, and Arthur Shawcross. Wikipedia credits him with over 100 professional publications on topics including sexual sadism, paraphilias, stalking, and workplace violence; his firm's own marketing claims "more than 3,000 professional publications" firm-wide (again describing the firm's associated experts collectively). He received the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law's Seymour Pollack Award in 2010 and was named among Security magazine's "Top 25 Most Influential People in the Security Industry" (2009).
Credentials & Certifications
- MD
- MPH
- PhD
Fee Schedule
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