Expert Who Predicted ​“Future Dangerousness” in Texas Death Cases Ruled Unreliable

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recent­ly held that the method­ol­o­gy used by Dr. Richard Coons to pre­dict the ​“future dan­ger­ous­ness” of cap­i­tal defen­dants was unre­li­able. Whether a con­vict­ed defen­dant would be a future dan­ger to soci­ety is a cru­cial ques­tion for juries in Texas in choos­ing between a life or death sen­tence. Dr. Coons has tes­ti­fied in over 150 death penal­ty tri­als across the state. He admit­ted in a recent hear­ing that he had devel­oped his own method­ol­o­gy for assess­ing future dan­ger­ous­ness, one in which he con­sid­ers the defendant’s con­science, atti­tudes toward vio­lence and crim­i­nal his­to­ry. ​“These fac­tors,” accord­ing to the court opin­ion, ​“sound like com­mon sense ones that the jury would con­sid­er on its own.” Capital defense experts con­sid­er this a sig­nif­i­cant rul­ing per­tain­ing to expert tes­ti­mo­ny in death penal­ty cas­es. Russ Hunt Jr., who rep­re­sent­ed the defen­dant in the case where this rul­ing was made, said, ​“If you are going to be an expert, you should have some sci­en­tif­ic basis of what you are tes­ti­fy­ing about.” Hunt con­tin­ued, “[Coons] basi­cal­ly just says, ​‘Trust me. I’m a doc­tor. I know it when I see it.’” Dr. Coons, a foren­sic psy­chi­a­trist, has recent­ly stopped tak­ing death penalty cases.

The Texas court nev­er­the­less upheld the defen­dan­t’s (Billy Wayne Coble) death sen­tence in the case lead­ing to this rul­ing. (S. Kreytak, ​“Longtime expert wit­ness unre­li­able, court says,” Austin American-Statesman, October 19, 2010). See Arbitrariness.