3.Adriana Flores — Cross (Part 2)
90 linesCROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. HUBBARD:
RICK HUBBARD: Dr. Flores, are you a neuropsychologist?
ADRIANA FLORES: I am not.
RICK HUBBARD: You're not. But we just heard you give a critique of Dr. Kruse as to the traumatic brain injury. You know she did testing on that as well?
BOYD YOUNG: Objection, pitting.
THE COURT: No, no, he can ask her if she knows about those tests.
ADRIANA FLORES: I did not give a critique about any of the neuropsychological tests she did. That's outside my area of expertise. I did not even look at the data.
RICK HUBBARD: Well, you mentioned traumatic brain injury. You know that Dr. Kruse is a neuropsychologist and she tested to see if there are any effects or deficits from traumatic brain injury?
ADRIANA FLORES: Correct. And my understanding is that she didn't find any more cognitive deficits.
RICK HUBBARD: And did you review Dr. Tora Brawley's report on the same thing?
ADRIANA FLORES: I did not.
RICK HUBBARD: So you -- and you got involved in this case because you say your friend and colleague, Dr. Dorney, the day after she's testified and cross-examined by the State contacts you and says hey, there may be some testimony coming up about malingering?
ADRIANA FLORES: She had concerns that that may be stated when, in fact, the report did not say anything about malingering.
RICK HUBBARD: Dr. Dorney had Dr. Kruse's report for some time. And Dr. Kruse's report actually mentions possibility of malingering in here, language, right?
ADRIANA FLORES: I don't recall seeing the word. I don't recall her actually saying diagnostically she was finding he was malingering.
RICK HUBBARD: It is very clear she's talking about he does not present consistently with symptoms known -- of known psychiatric conditions. But even Dr. Frierson, who is the counterweight to Dr. Dorney, indicated that just reading this alone, he knew there was indications of malingering.
ADRIANA FLORES: Okay.
RICK HUBBARD: So Dr. Dorney, she's qualified as a psychiatrist, just like Dr. Frierson, right?
ADRIANA FLORES: Yes.
RICK HUBBARD: So if she had any real concerns, she could have knocked on your door and said hey, we've worked together before, I'd like you to review this, but she didn't before she testified, did she?
ADRIANA FLORES: I don't recall she did before she testified, that's correct.
RICK HUBBARD: You've told us that it didn't happen?
ADRIANA FLORES: Right. It happened after -- well, I know it happened after her testimony.
RICK HUBBARD: Has anybody from the Defense, any attorney or anybody working with them contacted you before Dr. Kruse testified?
RICK HUBBARD: So your whole purpose in coming into this case was your friend, who presented testimony, was cross-examined by the State, said hey, there may be some malingering. And then you took the bull by the horns and said let me look at the report?
ADRIANA FLORES: No, that's not actually how it went. She didn't say there may be some malingering. She said that she was concerned that the other side was going to say malingering when, in fact, that had not been really noted on the report. And all of a sudden, they were coming up with the word malingering. So there was an inconsistency in what she saw versus what -- and certainly what she saw, I believe, in Mr. Jones and she was concerned the testing, perhaps, being misinterpreted.
RICK HUBBARD: And did Dr. Dorney contact Dr. Frierson and say hey, what you've got in your report concerning the possibility of malingering is inaccurate?
ADRIANA FLORES: I don't believe she has yet.
RICK HUBBARD: Yet?
ADRIANA FLORES: I don't know if she will.
RICK HUBBARD: But the bottom line is she had Dr. Frierson's report before she issued her own?
ADRIANA FLORES: You said she had Dr. Frierson's. I don't know when she had the report.
RICK HUBBARD: Because you weren't involved in any of this?
ADRIANA FLORES: I was not.
RICK HUBBARD: You were brought in when Dr. Dorney came back and said hey, there's talk about malingering, I want you to look at Dr. Kruse's tests and her report?
ADRIANA FLORES: Correct. Because there had been no mention of malingering up until the trial.
RICK HUBBARD: And then you took Dr. Kruse's report and you said there's certain things missing, certain things I don't understand. So you asked for the raw data?
ADRIANA FLORES: Correct.
RICK HUBBARD: And then you took it on yourself to kind of rescore based on your interpretation of the raw data, correct?
ADRIANA FLORES: So let me say why I rescored. I rescored because Dr. Kruse had not provided the Defense with the entirety of the PAI report. And so for that reason, I went ahead and I just reentered the scores to see what parts she had cut and pasted and what the negative response should have been. It could have been -- for all I knew when I reentered it, it could have been that the negative response was elevated and she simply forgot to put it in there. But I wanted to see what the entire report that should have been submitted actually was. So that's where I began.
RICK HUBBARD: One thing that would have made it real easy is to pick up the phone and say hey, Dr. Kruse, I know I don't know you. I'm reviewing this for Dr. Dorney, maybe the Defense, can you explain what you did? And you didn't do that?
ADRIANA FLORES: I didn't do this because this is an ongoing case. After I saw it, I knew that I -- I will be contacting her. I have to ethically.
RICK HUBBARD: Well, yeah, you've filed an affidavit, basically, accusing her of unethical behavior and then you're going to contact her and say hey, what did you mean by this? And maybe she's got an explanation.
ADRIANA FLORES: If she has an explanation, then she has an explanation. For me, I just want to make sure that she understands that I had these concerns and that it wasn't just one or two, that it was multiple concerns about competence, about interpretational data, about not submitting evidence that should have been submitted.
RICK HUBBARD: All the more reason to contact her?
ADRIANA FLORES: And I will be contacting her.
RICK HUBBARD: And you had notes and handwritten notes that she had in her report and you didn't call her to say what does this mean? What did you mean when you wrote this down?
ADRIANA FLORES: No, I did not.
RICK HUBBARD: That's going to be important to give -- to understand her explanation of what she was doing. You can't read somebody -- you're a psychologist, but you can't read somebody's mind?
ADRIANA FLORES: Right. So if it was one or two questions, but as you can see from my affidavit, it isn't one or two questions. It's a lot of issues that there are. And there are -- the issues are fairly excessive and concerning. And this is not -- let me just put it to you this way. This is not a conversation that I'm looking forward to having at all.
RICK HUBBARD: I bet not.
ADRIANA FLORES: No, not with all the concerns I have.
RICK HUBBARD: Because you might have a colleague, who you've never before, somebody who's professional and say when I explain this, you're absolutely wrong. But you filed an affidavit challenging my credentials and my honesty. I bet that will be a hard conversation.
ADRIANA FLORES: And she can take it on. It's just I have to do -- I am here testifying because this is my area of expertise. As you said, she is a neuropsychologist. This is my area of expertise. These are the tests that I give on a routine basis. These are the tests that I train my post-docs and my -- well, my post-doctoral fellows on. On methods that are correct, on what you should and shouldn't do, certainly, on administering and scoring tests correctly. So these are the measures that I use. If I had administered neuropsychological testing and messed it up, I would be expecting the same call from Dr. Kruse.
RICK HUBBARD: The difference --
ADRIANA FLORES: But I don't do neuropsychological testing because that's not my area.
THE COURT: I don't want to pit witnesses. All right?
RICK HUBBARD: Yes, sir.
RICK HUBBARD: She's got additional training you don't have, but she's got your training. She does clinical work?
ADRIANA FLORES: She does clinical work. This is different. This is forensic. This is beyond clinical. This is forensic work.
RICK HUBBARD: And she was brought in by a forensic psychiatrist, who had full faith in her to do this very work?
ADRIANA FLORES: Correct.
RICK HUBBARD: And do you understand that she also teaches at our local university, much the same way that you do?
ADRIANA FLORES: And that's fine.
RICK HUBBARD: And so what you've done is you've come in here without talking to her at all, you've challenged everything that she put in her report --
ADRIANA FLORES: Not everything.
RICK HUBBARD: Just about everything, including her integrity?
ADRIANA FLORES: I did not touch the psychological piece. I am concerned about integrity, yes, I am.
RICK HUBBARD: And instead of contacting her, you filed an affidavit with the Defense and said please put me on the stand. And oh, by the way, when it's all said and done, then I'll talk to Dr. Kruse to see if I misunderstand something.
ADRIANA FLORES: I didn't say please put me on the stand. I said I have some concerns.
RICK HUBBARD: You've been in this world long enough to know this affidavit means they're going to put a subpoena in your hands, pay for your travel to come up here and put you on the stand.
ADRIANA FLORES: I figured it would be something that would likely come up in appeal.
RICK HUBBARD: So if it doesn't touch the case now, it will touch it later?
ADRIANA FLORES: It doesn't matter to me whether it touches it or not. My concern is with regards to -- with what Dr. Kruse did, yes, I do have some very serious concerns. Because as a psychologist, we have an oath to pursue no harm. And I believe that potential harm could be done in this case, especially because it is a death penalty case.
RICK HUBBARD: Harm could be done. It could also be done to the reputation of somebody who's done nothing wrong?
ADRIANA FLORES: It could.
RICK HUBBARD: Yeah. And that's just not your concern?
ADRIANA FLORES: I am more concerned about protecting the public than I am about protecting her reputation.
RICK HUBBARD: Nobody's ever done this to you before, have they?
ADRIANA FLORES: Not that I know of. No, certainly, nobody has contacted me.
RICK HUBBARD: And the actual -- even just filing an ethical violation on somebody, even if it's unfounded, that's something that stays on somebody's record?
ADRIANA FLORES: Now, let me explain how the process works because this does not necessarily go to filing. I have not contacted the Licensing Board. The ethical regulations for psychologist state that first, I must contact Dr. Kruse, inform her of my concerns. Depending on her response, if her response is not satisfactory, the next piece is then I would have to go and follow-up.
RICK HUBBARD: That's just it, it's whether it's satisfactory to you.
RICK HUBBARD: I'm done.
THE COURT: Mr. Young?
BOYD YOUNG: Nothing further, Your Honor.
THE COURT: You may step down, ma'am.
RICK HUBBARD: Your Honor, I ask that all those Court's Exhibits be a part of the sealed record as well. This is an area where Dr. Kruse wasn't present nor did she have an attorney and if somebody's going to file something on her, this is her career. So I'd ask that it be sealed, part of the sealing.
THE COURT: Mr. Young?