Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Stuart Shipko fails again as he tries to smear victim in murder case to get killer's conviction overturned in Ohio


How low will Dr. Stuart Shipko stoop as a forensic psychiatric expert to try to get his paying criminal clients off the hook from jail?

Psychiatrist Stuart Shipko
How about smearing the character of the victim in a murder case? That's what Dr. Shipko tried, but failed, to do in a murder case in Columbus, Ohio from December 29, 2001.

In June 2002, Kevin Alan Tolliver was convicted by a jury of his peers in the shooting murder of his live-in girlfriend, Claire Schneider, an Ohio State University senior in Spanish and international studies, inside the apartment the couple shared together in the Olentangy Village Apartment Complex in Columbus, Ohio.

On the night of December 29, 2001, Tolliver and Schneider went to a night club. Shortly after they returned to their apartment, a female neighbor overheard a male's voice screaming, "No, no. Don't don't. Oh please. Please." The woman called police, but they were unable to find the source of the disturbance and left the scene.

Thirty minutes later, Tolliver called his ex-wife, Natasha Tolliver, and insisted she bring their daughter to his apartment. When the ex-wife arrived at Tolliver's apartment, she saw blood smeared on the front door, her ex-husband dressed in a blood-stained robe, his hands and legs were soaked in blood, and there was blood on the living room wall and kitchen floor.


She immediately took her daughter back to the car, and when Tolliver followed her, he began crying hysterically, told her he was "really in trouble," and said he was going to kill himself. That's when the ex-wife called police.

Convicted murderer Kevin Alan Tolliver
When the police arrived back on scene, they found blood throughout the apartment and on Tolliver. They also found Schneider's body in the bathroom which appeared to have been re-positioned, the gun used in the killing in the bathroom sink, a bullet clip at the base of the sink, and a note inside an envelope with $3 stating, "She did not know gun was loaded. I love her. Could not find the phone."

Tolliver told the police Schneider shot herself by accident. Tolliver and Schneider were discussing a trip she was about to take in a week's time to the Dominican Republic after being accepted to the international studies program. They also discussed plans to get married and her concerns that she may have been pregnant, according to Tolliver.

Tolliver said Schneider was worried what her family would think. According to Tolliver, Schneider said, "What do you want me to..." when the gun suddenly went off. Tolliver claims that all he saw when he turned around was Schneider falling at his feet.

"She didn't mean it," Tolliver said. "She was in the middle of a sentence when she accidentally shot herself. I feel it's my fault, because she didn't know the gun was loaded."

Detectives found blood-stained leather gloves on the kitchen counter and other evidence, such as a bullet shell casing in the hallway outside the bathroom where the body was found.

Olentangy Village Apartment Complex in Columbus, Ohio
The Franklin County Deputy Coroner Dr. Keith Norton determined that Schneider died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the mouth from a gun held and fired outside her mouth from the lower left side. Dr. Norton indicated he has never seen a case involving a person committing suicide by holding a gun outside the mouth and fire into the mouth, suggesting the shooting looked very out of the ordinary for a suicide.

During the trial, the state also called a jailhouse informant housed in the same cell as Tolliver, Joseph Adams, who agreed to testify against Tolliver in exchange for a significantly reduced sentence in his own case.

The informant testified that Tolliver admitted that he shot Schneider in an argument about her trip to the Dominican Republic because Tolliver was afraid he would lose her and that Tolliver was planning on crying in front of the jury so that they would believe she somehow killed herself.

Tolliver's contention throughout the trial was that Schneider accidentally shot herself, but after being found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison, he changed his story during the appeals process, claiming that Schneider committed suicide due to a new theory that she must have suffered an adverse psychiatric reaction from Paxil withdrawal syndrome. This is where Dr. Shipko comes in.

At the time, Schneider was taking Paxil as therapy for her moderate depression and anxiety. Her last prescription for the anti-depressant was last filled for a 30-day prescription on Nov. 24, 2001, suggesting she was only 4 days off her medications, if even that.

Schneider's physician, Dr. Stanley McCloy, Jr., had already testified in court, for a patient being off her medications for four days, a person might only experience mild withdrawal symptoms at best because it takes a little bit of time for the drug-level in the blood to fall before even severe symptoms are apparent.

In contrast to Dr. McCloy's detailed expert testimony during the trial, Dr. Shipko offered a written letter on behalf of Tolliver during the second appeal for post-conviction relief in March of 2005 stating, "Based on the information available it seems that there is ample information to suggest that Paxil was the problem," only suggesting that the deceased possibly could have had a severe adverse from an abrupt Paxil withdrawal.

At that time, Dr. Shipko was cautious enough to add, "Usually I review all of the available records before I indicate whether or not I would willing to render an opinion."



This was all fine because the appellate court was not swayed by mere speculation alone from Dr. Shipko that Schneider had committed suicide without any tangible proof that Schneider had any inclinations toward committing suicide, so the appellate court denied Tolliver's motion for post-conviction relief in 2005.


After all, the defense never presented any medical expert opinion, analysis, or any credible proof linking Schneider's death to suicide triggered by "Paxil withdrawal syndrome" during or after the trial. They were merely operating on a purely speculative and unsubstantiated alternative hypothesis, based on what they anecdotally heard about a civil product liability case involving Paxil, but they never offered any tangible proof that the deceased was even inclined towards any suicidal tendencies.

But in Tolliver's latest motion for post-conviction relief in the same appellate court in October 2014, Dr. Shipko was paid to write another letter on behalf of the appellant on February 12, 2011, that went much further in his conclusions and assessments of what happened during the shooting—none of which he saw in person, offered any proof for, or testified to under oath. He just phoned in his wild speculations for the money.

In his third written communication with Tolliver's lawyers from 2011, Shipko said with much more certainty that "within a reasonable medical certainty, Paxil withdrawal significantly contributed to Claire Schneider engaging in an impulsive suicidal gesture that resulted in her death," despite the fact he knew nothing about the deceased, the appellant, or any of the facts of the case. Dr. Shipko simply was just too lazy to be bothered to meet anyone directly involved in the case to actually find out what happened.


Shipko never met the victim, Claire Schneider, or knew anything about her, but he attributed that she clearly had clear suicidal ideations due to the mere possibility that there was a potential four-day gap in Schneider foregoing her Paxil medication, thus smearing the victim's good name. He offered no proof whatsoever that Schneider had any suicidal tendencies, but merely assumed she committed suicide based on his personal beef with an anti-depressant medication on the market, Paxil.

Shipko didn't just stop there. He went on to further conclude as judge, jury, chief expert forensic witness, and know-it-all that everything about the case from all the experts involved was wrong, and that there was a grand conspiracy from the drug maker of Paxil in hiding information about risks of suicide for Paxil:

(1) [T]estimony from the informant concerning the motive for homicide is implausible in light of Ms. Schneider's diary, 
(2) The information from the coroner describes a gunshot wound consistent with a suicide, 
(3) Dr. McCloy's testimony was factually incorrect and, in fact, the opposite of what he said is true...Withdrawal is common with Paxil and severe withdrawal is common with Paxil is stopped abruptly, 
(4) The sort of impulsive suicide by Ms. Schneider was typical of Paxil withdrawal,
(5) The manufacturer of Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline, has been systematically hiding and manipulating their own clinical data to minimize information concerning the risks of suicide when starting and stopping the drug Paxil.

While Dr. Shipko was now saying Paxil withdrawal most definitely pushed Claire Schneider to commit suicide, "Dr. Shipko did not even mention suicide as a withdrawal symptom," according to the appellate court in his first letter on behalf of the appellant in 2005. Thus, he too changed his story.

Clearly, what pushed Dr. Shipko to now make such broad, sweeping declarative statements about the case, on behalf of his paying client Kevin Tolliver, was the money he was paid to make those statements, which were favorable to the appellant.
 
  
Dr. Shipko offered no proof. He merely speculated on placing all the blame of the shooting on the victim, who could not speak on her own behalf, which again shows a pattern of Dr. Shipko prostituting his integrity for personal gains as a gun for hire without any training or knowledge in forensic psychiatry.

Dr. Shipko is not a credible expert witness who will tell you the truth in an objective manner as is required by a physician, but instead, he is a mercenary for hire who will say whatever you want to hear, so long as you pay him well.


Needless to say, the appellate court was not in the very least swayed by mere conspiracy theories from a crackpot psychiatrist who was acting as a paid shill for the defense, so the three-judge appellate panel once again affirmed the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas decision to deny Kevin Tolliver post-conviction relief for the third time.

Whether or not Kevin Tolliver is innocent of the crime he was convicted of is up for debate, but what is not up for debate is that using someone as incompetent as Dr. Stuart Shipko on his case as an expert witness really hurt his cause because of inconsistencies in his statements and Shipko's constant attempts to over-reach the role a forensic psychiatrist is supposed to fulfill in court.

So Dr. Shipko lost all his credibility in yet another court case. We really haven't seen a case to date where Dr. Shipko was considered all that believable. This is a person whose credibility is very easily impeached.

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