Criminal Court
Thomas C. Goldman, MD has been working in the field of forensic psychiatry since 1973 and has examined and testified in hundreds of cases in local jurisdictions including D.C. Superior Court, U.S. District Courts, most Maryland County courts, and Virginia jurisdictions including Arlington and Fairfax. He has extensive experience testifying for both prosecution and defense attorneys.
- Criminal matters about which Dr. Goldman has expertise include:
- Competency to Stand Trial
- Competency to Assist Counsel
- Insanity defense (NGBRI, NCR)
- Diminished Capacity in Specific-Intent Crimes
- Role of Prescribed and Illegal Drugs on Criminal Behavior
- Competency to Waive Counsel
- Competency to Waive Insanity Defense
- Assessment of Dangerousness
- Pre-trial and Post-Trial Management
- Release from Treatment Following Criminal Commitment
Civil Litigation and Other Civil Law Matters
Dr. Goldman has 35 years of experience evaluating plaintiffs and defendants in areas including the following:
- Personal Injury
- Accidents and other physical trauma. Standards of care for mental health practitioners. Employer sexual harassment, other employer misconduct, domestic violence, emotional abuse and family conflict, toxic exposure including drug reactions. Psychological trauma due to discrimination including racial, sexual, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, religion; wrongful job termination; wrongful dismissal from an educational institution. P.T.S.D. and other psychiatric trauma syndromes as the result of criminal acts and/or negligence.
- Professional Misconduct of Attorneys
- Dr. Goldman has examined, on numerous occasions, attorneys charged with professional misconduct in the District of Columbia. He has experience testifying both for the accused attorney and for the Office of Bar Counsel in these matters.
- Special Expertise in Mental Health Standard of Care Issues
- Dr. Goldman is one of the very few psychoanalytically trained physicians in the Washington area who also practices forensic psychiatry. In addition, he has twenty years of experience in dealing, in a peer-review setting, with complaints of ethical misconduct brought against psychiatrists. He has taught courses in psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic technique in which boundary issues and transference/countertransference enactments are examined in detail. The same attention is given to these issues during individual supervision of psychotherapy students on their clinical cases. These experiences have made Dr. Goldman exceptionally well-qualified to examine the dynamics of the therapist-patient and physician-patient relationship and, in general, of the relationships between health providers and their patients, and to advise attorneys and testify about these matters.
- Civil Competency Issues
- Testamentary Capacity
- Competency to Sue, and to Hire and Dismiss Counsel
- Competency to Manage Own Finances
- Competency to Enter into a Contract
- Domestic Relations
- Court-Ordered Examinations of Adults in Marital, Family, and Child Custody Matters
- Termination or Modification of Parental Rights
- Employment Situations
- Fitness for Duty Examinations
- Americans with Disabilities Act and Reasonable Accommodations
Qualifications
Dr. Goldman received his undergraduate education at Cornell University. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1966. After finishing a medical internship at the University of Chicago Hospitals & Clinics, he completed a three-year Adult Psychiatry Residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Bronx Municipal Hospital Center.
He fulfilled his military obligation as Public Health Service officer and Clinical Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he was administrator of a research ward concentrating on bipolar and unipolar depressive illness. (1970-1972) He served as a consultant to the Division of Forensic Programs at St. Elizabeths Hospital (1973-1977) where he performed numerous independent forensic psychiatric examinations of criminal defendants and acquired considerable experience testifying for both defense and prosecution in the D.C. and Federal courts.
He was on the clinical faculty at Howard University College of Medicine (1972-1975) where he taught outpatient and consultation-liaison psychiatry to psychiatry and family practice residents. He taught outpatient psychiatry in the medical clinics of Georgetown University Medical Center, and he currently teaches a seminar in forensic psychiatry to third-year psychiatry residents at Georgetown. He has held active teaching and administrative positions in a number of educational institutions and programs, including the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Washington Psychoanalytic Instititute, and the Modern Perspectives of Psychotherapy Training Program of the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis.
- He has given presentations to attorneys in the following venues:
- Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia Courts
- Criminal Practice Institute sponsored by the D.C. Bar Public Defender
- Service of D.C.
- Course in Trial Advocacy Skills sponsored by the D.C. Bar and Georgetown
- University Law Center
- MWELA Conference
References are available upon request.