42 Facts About Michael Welner

Michael Mark Welner was born on September 24,1964 and is an American forensic psychiatrist and chairman of The Forensic Panel.

Michael Welner has served as forensic psychiatric examiner in national and international court proceedings.

Michael Welner has been featured in news coverage of forensic psychiatry issues, has authored publications for professional and public audiences, and has contributed to emerging legislation on mental health reform.

Michael Welner interviewed Hernandez for sixteen hours, studied confessions he had made many years earlier to a prayer group and to a fiancee, and more recent confessions he made to police interrogators and medical staff Michael Welner concluded that Hernandez confessed because he felt intense guilt and that the spontaneous, voluntary confessions Hernandez made decades earlier to a prayer group and his fiancee couldn't be attributed to a psychiatric condition.

Michael Welner testified for prosecutors at the original trial and then at the retrial, in which a jury unanimously rendered a guilty verdict to Hernandez in early 2017.

Michael Welner filed a detailed 206-page report on Mitchell's competency, highlighting information relevant to the case, and testified to his conclusions that Mitchell was competent.

Michael Welner's testimony drew particular attention to cognitive distortions as they differ from delusions, and culture-specific beliefs of fundamentalist LDS adherents.

Michael Welner was the principal mental health consultant to prosecutors of the NXIVM sect leader Keith Raniere, as well as the sect leader Lori Vallow.

Michael Welner began making unfounded accusations of harassment and product tampering against fellow repairmen.

Coworkers told Michael Welner, who interviewed family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and Uyesugi prior to trial, that as early as 1995, Uyesugi was openly speaking of carrying out a mass shooting at the workplace were he ever to be fired.

Michael Welner received a sentence of life without chance of parole.

Michael Welner has consulted to courts or examined perpetrators on mass shooting and attempted mass shooting cases, including Colorado's James Holmes, NBC gunman William Tager, corrections officer George Banks, who killed 13, Tavares Calloway, and bias-hatred mass shooters Richard Baumhammers and Ronald Taylor.

Michael Welner testified before the United States Congress and elsewhere with proposals to eliminate mass homicide as a phenomenon.

Michael Welner reviewed the Updyke history and appraise the boundaries of sports fanaticism vs mental illness, assess his mental state and criminal responsibility.

Michael Welner engaged mental health issues related to the culture of professional sports as the forensic psychiatry examiner in the manslaughter trial of former NBA star Jayson Williams, and the death investigation of wrestling champion Chris Benoit.

Michael Welner claimed legal insanity as a defense at trial for the murder of three of her children.

Michael Welner diagnosed Yates with psychotic depression, but concluded that she elected to kill her children because she was overwhelmed, timed with the departure of her mother-in-law that left her as sole caregiver of her five children.

Michael Welner discovered that Andrea Yates locked up the family dog, which was usually free to run around in the house, before drowning the children.

Michael Welner included this as one of 68 examples of Yates' appreciation of the wrong of killing her children at the time it happened.

Michael Welner has been the principal examiner in other insanity defense cases and cases, involving child killing within the family, including John Alan Rubio.

Michael Welner conducted a videotaped interview of Thibodeaux, in a case that featured considerable cooperation by prosecution and defense with his protocol.

Michael Welner issued a 53-page opinion addressing the causes and factors leading to the false confession.

When defense attorneys raised the prospect of a psychiatric defense, federal prosecutors retained Michael Welner to examine criminal responsibility claims, ranging from psychiatric diagnoses to the effects of methamphetamine.

The Department of Defense engaged Michael Welner to examine claims by Khadr that his confessions were coerced, or alternatively, that he was too immature to withstand interrogation.

Michael Welner reviewed the available interrogations and secured access to intelligence sources and Khadr's classified file.

Michael Welner interviewed guards, interrogators, medical personnel, Guantanamo camp commanders, intelligence data analysts, and then, Khadr himself.

Michael Welner's inquiry led him to repudiate defense claims that Khadr had been tortured.

Military prosecutors asked Michael Welner to assess Khadr's likelihood of recidivism into radical jihadism upon release, for presentation at a sentencing hearing.

Michael Welner based his assessment on clinical data, research on deradicalization programs, research on incarcerated Muslim youth, and statistics of recidivism of Guantanamo detainees.

At the sentencing proceeding, Michael Welner testified that Khadr was a high risk of recidivism into activities providing support for jihadist terrorism, although he did not expect him to be directly violent.

Factors contributing to Michael Welner's opinion included Khadr's continued strong enmeshment with his jihadist family and its legacy, the international and financial infrastructure available to him, his stature among other detainees, among other factors.

Michael Welner is the founder and chairman of The Forensic Panel, a forensic practice which incorporates a structured peer-review process into its consultations.

Michael Welner's research has led to the development of the Clinical Inventory of the Everyday Extreme and Outrageous, a 14-item inventory of non-criminal everyday evil reflecting a range of an actor's intent and effects on a victim.

Michael Welner was a contributor in a range of proposals within landmark mental health reform legislation that passed the United States Congress in 2016.

Michael Welner testified to lawmakers on multiple occasions prior to the bill's eventual passage.

Apart from advocating various ideas to expand crisis mental health services and to attract talent to treat the underserved, Michael Welner argued for the reform of commitment law, and reform of HIPAA, as a means to prevent both suicide and homicide outcomes.

Michael Welner was under consideration by the Trump Administration as Assistant Secretary of Mental Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, a position created to direct mental health and substance abuse policy in the United States.

In 1992 and 1993, Michael Welner was a media coordinator and spokesperson for the Ross Perot presidential election campaign in New York and the citizen action organization United We Stand America, in New York.

Michael Welner has otherwise been a regular contributor to CNN, Fox News, Larry King Live, Bill Bennett's Morning in America, and the Dr Oz Show, on issues relating to forensic psychiatry and forensic science.

Michael Welner's oldest sister, Sandra Michael Welner, was a Maryland-based gynecologist who fought through severe neurological disabilities suffered in a stroke became internationally renowned for her medical research and advocacy for the medical care of the disabled.

Michael Welner has maintained a clinical practice since 1992, specializing in patients who have difficulty responding to treatment, and has been Board Certified in Psychiatry, Forensic Psychiatry, Psychopharmacology and Disaster Medicine.

Michael Welner is married to Orli Welner, a corporate attorney.