Forensic Psychiatry

L. Andrew Huff, MD, MPH

Board Certified in Forensic Psychiatry

Forensic Psychiatry Expertise

Forensic psychiatry is the application of psychiatry in courts of law. It also refers to a branch of psychiatry that seeks diagnostic precision beyond what is ordinarily required in a clinical treatment setting.

I am board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in Forensic Psychiatry.

My areas of forensic expertise and experience include:

  • Competency to stand trial (called “sanity boards” by the military)

  • Diminished capacity

  • Criminal responsibility, also called the insanity defense

  • Psychiatric autopsy

  • Forensic psychiatric evaluations

  • Risk assessment for violence (including sexual violence)

  • Occupational psychiatry for fitness for duty

  • Evaluation of medical/mental health records for quality of care or for relevance to court proceedings

  • Counterintuitive victim behavior

  • Memory (formation, suggestibility, hardening and other factors affecting memory)

  • Sleep quality and behavioral effects

  • Alcohol use and competency to consent to sexual activity (including the phenomenon of alcoholic blackout)

  • False confessions

  • Effects of medication on behavior

  • General assistance of counsel in broad areas of trials

  • Sociopathy and personality disorders

  • Psychological formulations to explain human behavior, drive, and motivation

Forensic psychiatry requires substantiation and reasoning that withstands cross-examination. The forensic psychiatrist helps the jury understand the facts of a case by explaining human behavior in a way that is accessible and makes sense.

Expert Testimony Experience

My experience includes expert testimony involving:

  • Over 40 military trials (court-martial proceedings)

  • Military Boards of Inquiry

  • Americans with Disability Act (ADA) employer issues

  • Psychiatric malpractice

  • National Transportation Safety Board (for the FAA)

Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.

-- Charles Caleb Colton

Call, text, or email to discuss forensic psychiatry services.

202-683-7818 or psychiatry@landrewhuffmd.com