Crown prosecutor Gabe Settimi said Dr. Julian Gojer was acting more like a witness for the defense than an impartial expert when the forensic psychiatrist opined that Bradley House is not criminally responsible for the murder of Niagara winemaker Paul Pender.
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House has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Pender, who was killed outside his Haldimand County cottage in February 2022.
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Pacing between his desk and the empty jury box inside the Cayuga courthouse on Thursday, Settimi repeatedly challenged Gojer’s restraint that the Hamilton man was in the grips of a psychosis caused by a mental disorder — likely schizophrenia — when he killed Pender.
The prosecutor said Gojer “looked into a diagnosis early on” and included in his report only those symptoms and evidence that “fit into your ultimate opinion.”
“You slanted your report,” Settimi told Gojer. “It’s an unbalanced report.”
Gojer pushed back against the Crown’s suggestion of impartiality, noting his report also included evidence that supported other theories.
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But not the conclusion reached by the Crown’s expert witness, Dr. Gary Chaimowitz, who is head of forensic psychiatry at St. Joseph’s Healthcare. After examining House, Chaimowitz found that his psychosis was caused by drug use and not a mental disorder.
Gojer said he did not include that possible diagnosis in his report since he did not agree with Chaimowitz and did not want to “confuse” the court.
Gojer pointed out that both he and Chaimowitz based their respective reports on the same medical evidence.
“It is the conclusions where we differ,” Gojer said.
In the immediate aftermath of the killing, House was recorded as saying he wanted to help and wanted to go home. Settimi suggested those statements prove House was aware of what he had done and was able to offer an “emotional response.”
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But Gojer was reluctant to give much weight to words uttered while House was otherwise “grunting and groaning” unintelligibly.
“I cannot draw conclusions about intent,” Gojer said.
Settimi questioned why the doctor’s report made no mention of a dream House reported having in the hospital in which he is alleged to have seen himself stabbed a man thought to be Pender.
In Indigenous culture, dreams can “provide insight” to the dreamer, Settimi said.
Gojer — who previously criticized Chaimowitz for insufficiently weighing House’s Indigenous heritage and personal history of “complex trauma” — said while dreams may have a “cultural basis,” they are not evidence, and to think otherwise is “very dangerous.”
“As a psychiatrist, I’m not going to rely on dreams to arrive at clinical opinions,” Gojer said. “Unless you can substantiate that this dream is exactly what happened, I think you’ll be on very shaky ground.”
Instead of blaming House’s actions on schizophrenia, the prosecutor contends House — who took cocaine, oxycodone and marijuana the day he killed Pender — had it right when he told police he had been on a “bad trip.”
“Sometimes normal people do horrible things,” especially after using drugs “that don’t agree with them,” Settimi said.
The trial was scheduled to conclude on Friday.
JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
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