1 Boring Old Man

The Travis County Courtroom in Austin is a granite megalith built in 1931 in the Moderne style. Inside, it has that formerly white walled look of a building beyond its prime with lots of utilitarian adaptation as time has marched on. We got there early and had the courtroom to ourselves for a half hour.

There were computer screens everywhere and a large projection screen off to the left. As the courtroom filled, the computers and other technical devices multiplied like rabbits. That white table on the left with the wires was soon filled with computers for one of the two trial specialists that ran the media for the presentation [note the power wires taped to the floor].

It was nothing like a trial on television. There were two tables, but instead of a lawyer or two and the plaintiff and defendant,  there were a score of lawyers clustered among the two tables. Younger technical assistants moved from place to place throughout the trial. The lady across the aisle from me brought a dolly with notebooks that she arranged under the seat in front of her spanning a good six feet. Add to that that everyone was sporting a smart phone, so by the time the trial started it looked like Best-Buys on Black Friday – an odd site in that aging building. And during the trial, there was much milling about.

The judge made up in breath and  personality for his short stature. On entering, he quipped, "Who are all these people? Why do they keep coming?" with a broad grin. Later in the trial, when he was having one of his frequent conclaves with the lawyers,  they stepped behind the projection screen, he said, "Pay no attention to that man behind the screen," a reference to the professor scene in the Wizard of Oz movie. In spite of the levity and milling around, he kept a tight rein on the proceedings, and things moved smoothly. The morning was filled with the videotaped depositions from Dr. Alexander Miller, a member of the TMAP panel of experts for Schizophrenia and Dr. Steven Shon, then Director of the Texas Mental Health Department. I’ll spare you the details [my bias is too strong to make fair pronouncements], but I will say the Shon deposition seemed very damning to me. Dr. Shon made "one or two" trips a month for "two or three years" to other States pushing the TMAP program, paid for by Janssen. He contended that it was during his time off, "comp-time," but there were several documents of his work time sheets were he reported working for the State while gone on these frequent trips. He attempted to say that he saw the trips as outside his job but a few minutes later as part of his job. When inconsistencies were pointed out, he just sat there.

He said he was not picked for these trips because of his position, but because of his expertise "from before in California" – his previous job. Needless to say, he didn’t do Janssen any favors on this day. The afternoon began with a video deposition of the former regional director from Janssen who said simply that Shon was picked for these trips because of his position – diametrically contradicting Shon’s assertions. I took notes on the details, but they’re for another day, after the trial is over. It’s hard to imagine that anyone there would have any other opinion but that Dr. Shon was promoting Risperdal [for these and several other reasons] and was misusing his State position [again, it’s not possible to read that from me without taking my bias into account].

The only live witness today was a Director of a large Mental Health Clinic whose tenure spans TMAP and Shon’s Directorship [Shon was fired in 2006]. The main thrust of the questioning was about whether the TMAP algorithms were mandated. The gist of his testimony was that they were not mandated, but they were heavily suggested and continued use of the older drugs was met with sarcasm, "not moving into the twenty-first century" – stuff like that. This was a credible witness who also testified that he saw no advantage to Risperdal. Were I a juror, I would reckon him to be a strong expert and a principled guy. The cross-examining attorney tried to get him to normalize the abnormal to no avail. When they called him, I wondered why they called someone so distant from the main thread. After he testified, I saw why. He was a person of integrity who had looked askance at the TMAP program – convincingly expressed.

Those are just a few highlight of today’s fare. There were tons of documents and emails flashed on various screens deftly managed by the trial specialists sitting in front of us. The hardest worker was the court reporter, her fingers constantly bouncing across her machine.  As she typed, the  results scrolled on one of the media guys many screens in front of us –  whole words or phrases appearing instantaneously. Pretty impressive. Tomorrow, those words will be from the testimony of Allen Jones, the whistle blower. Should be fascinating.