Park Dietz

Who is Park Dietz?

Park Dietz, MD, PhD, MPH, is a forensic psychiatrist who has consulted or testified in many of the highest profile US criminal cases including Jeffrey Dahmer, The Unabomber, the Beltway sniper attacks, and Jared Lee Loughner. He came to national prominence in 1982 during his five days of testimony as the prosecution’s expert witness in the trial of John Hinckley, Jr., for his attempted assassination of President Reagan on March 30, 1981. Then an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dietz testified that at the time of the shooting, Hinckley knew what he was doing, knew it was wrong, and had the capacity to control his behavior thus was not legally insane.

Dietz is also a criminologist, and in 1987 he created the specialty of workplace violence prevention in founding Threat Assessment Group, Inc., which specializes in analyzing and managing threatening behavior and communications, stalking, risks arising from domestic violence, and other abnormal activity in corporations, colleges, and schools. As of 2013, more than 20,000 senior corporate managers have attended TAG training seminars.