Jurors are expected to hear a doctor testify today it was a brain abnormality that turned Reinaldo Rivera into a violent psychopath, who investigators say raped and killed four women.
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Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Thomas Sachy discusses the human brain's frontal lobe in Reinaldo Rivera's trial.
Andrew Davis Tucker/Staff
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Neurologist Dr. David Hess, Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the Medical College of Georgia, gives his testimony in an evidence hearing before the start of the defense's case in the death penalty case of defendant Reinaldo Rivera in Richmond County Superior Court at the Municipal Building on Monday.
Andrew Davis Tucker/Staff
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Mr. Rivera, 40, is beginning his third week of trial in Richmond County Superior Court where his attorneys, Peter Johnson and Jacque Hawk, have conceded Mr. Rivera's guilt but seek a verdict of guilty but mentally ill.
Prosecutors seek an unqualified guilty verdict, and a death sentence if Mr. Rivera is convicted of murder in the September 2000 strangulation death of Army Sgt. Marni Glista. Investigators in the Augusta area say she was the last of four woman Mr. Rivera raped and killed, although they also contend he attacked and tried to kill a fifth.
"It's my opinion Mr. Rivera is a psychopath,' Dr. Thomas Sachy, a neuropsychiatrist now in private practice, testified Monday while the jury was absent.
Many doctors have testified in Georgia courts that defendants are psychopathic - devoid of morals, social values or empathy - but Dr. Sachy will be the first to give the expert opinion that the cause of psychopathic personality is the decreased activity in the brain's frontal lobes, a condition known as hypofrontality, normally caused by disease or injury.
"There's always a first time," Judge Albert M. Pickett responded Monday when District Attorney Danny Craig argued the theory is inadmissible because no Georgia court has accepted such testimony.
With a computer-generated graphic showing a three-dimension view of PET scan results, Dr. Sachy showed what Mr. Rivera's brain activity looked like compared with a "normal" brain.
While the latter showed what Dr. Sachy testified was high brain activity in the frontal lobes, Mr. Rivera's lacked the red color representing thought activity.
"He's almost cold up here," Dr. Sachy testified. "This is where morality is, humanity is," he said of the frontal lobe area.
Dr. Sachy also used the results of a MRI scan of Mr. Rivera's head to point to areas of brain-cell death that he believes is indicative of mental illness.
Either or even both brain conditions wouldn't render a person unable to function in society, Dr. Sachy testified. Indeed, psychopaths are able to hold down jobs, appear normal to others and even pass psychological testing, Dr. Sachy testified.
"(But) it's a mask of sanity," Dr. Sachy testified.
On rebuttal today or Wednesday, prosecutors will present Dr. David Hess, the chairman of the Medical College of Georgia's neurology department, who also examined Mr. Rivera but found no neurological abnormalities.
Dr. Hess testified Monday that the medical community does accept the connection between violent behavior and hypofrontality, but that it's a chicken-and-egg situation.
"We don't know which comes first. We just know there's an association," Dr. Hess testified.
At the conclusion of Monday's hearing, Judge Pickett ruled Dr. Sachy will be allowed to testify and it will be up to the jury to determine how much weight or credibility to give to any expert testimony.
When asked by the judge whether Mr. Rivera would also testify as a defense witness, his attorneys said Monday evening that the decision has not been made. They intend to confer with Dr. Sachy and a psychologist who examined Mr. Rivera today.
Even if the jury finds Mr. Rivera guilty but mentally ill, he will still face a second phase of trial during which the jury will hear additional evidence and decide punishment on the murder count - life in prison with or without the possibility of parole, or death.
Regardless of this verdict, Mr. Craig has said he will probably still try Mr. Rivera in Columbia County, where he is charged with murder in the death of Tabitha Bosdell, a 17-year-old who disappeared less than three months before Sgt. Glista, 21, was killed.
In Aiken County, Mr. Rivera is charged with murder and other charges in the rape-killings of Melissa Dingess and Tiffaney Wilson, both 17 when they disappeared in July and December of 1999.
As in Ms. Bosdell's case, Mr. Rivera's directions lead authorities to Mrs. Dingess' remains. Mrs. Wilson's body was found by hunters almost three weeks after she vanished shortly after having her infant daughter's picture taken with Santa.
Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226 or sandy.hodson@augustachronicle.com.
