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207 W. Va. 747

536 S.E.2d 728

State v. Catlett

West Virginia Supreme Court

Decided July 20, 2000

West Virginia Supreme Court · decided 2000-07-20

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently October 2010

4 state decisions

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2000-07-20

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STARCHER, Justice,

¶1dissenting:

¶2(Filed July 20, 2000)

¶3The majority opinion holds — incorrectly, I believe — that a “curative” instruction adequately dealt with the fact that the state’s expert witness on the sole issue of the defendant’s “sanity” volunteered four times to the jury that there was other significant evidence that “he couldn’t talk about” — evidence that allegedly supported the expert’s conclusion that the defendant was not suffering from a brain disorder.

¶4(This same expert did not interview the defendant before his murder trial. But he did interview the same defendant before the same defendant’s earlier arson trial, a trial in which this expert’s opinion was not credited by the jury. In his earlier arson trial, not many months before his murder trial, this same defendant was found “not guilty by reason of insanity.”)

¶5In the instant ease, the expert’s repeated volunteering to the jury that there was other important and probative evidence that the *754Court had prohibited the jury from hearing suggests that the expert had yielded to a common temptation, and was engaging in impermissible witness advocacy.

¶6A verdict based on such testimony — about a defendant whom two trained medical professionals and a previous jury had found to have a serious brain disorder — is simply not sustainable.

¶7This may have been a terrible miscarriage of justice. A new trial should be awarded. Accordingly, I dissent.

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