DC Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz accepted expert testimony from a psychologist indicating a defendant’s alleged involvement in a shooting may have been imperfect self-defense triggered by a post-traumatic stress response, during a hearing on Feb. 3.
Khalid Claggett, 42, is charged with first-degree murder while armed, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, and unlawful possession of a firearm by a convict, for his alleged involvement in the fatal shooting of Isaac Aull Jr, 30, on the 1600 block of Franklin Street NE, on June 11, 2021.
All of Claggett’s charges have an aggravating circumstance of being committed during release for an unrelated matter during the incident.
The psychologist, called by defense attorney Howard McEachern, diagnosed Claggett with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 2024. According to the expert, the diagnosis may imply that Claggett’s alleged involvement in the shooting was due to his misinterpreting the danger of the situation, a symptom of PTSD.
According to Judge Kravitz, Claggett had previously been diagnosed with PTSD in jail in 2003, but that cannot be discussed during the trial.
The prosecutors attempted to determine if Claggett could have been faking or exaggerating his PTSD symptoms in his evaluation. They pointed out how PTSD pretenders will often be very open about their symptoms and paint themselves as the hero of the situation without expressing guilt.
The witness said Claggett was open about his symptoms but did not use overly technical language, which is also common among malingerers according to the prosecutors. The witness said Claggett was able to describe his symptoms without being prompted.
“He was reluctant but compliant when talking about trauma,” the witness said.
While the witness could not recall whether Claggett expressed guilt over the shooting, he noted that he did express guilt over a fire that occurred in his childhood while he was playing with a lighter.
“He also blamed himself when his siblings died in a fire,” the witness said. “He was an unsupervised child.”
The witness did not perform symptom validity tests on Claggett and formed the diagnosis after a two-hour evaluation. Prosecutors questioned this practice, to which the witness stated that “Every psychologist makes a diagnosis after two hours.”
“It’s a necessary feature of the human psyche that not everything is objective,” he said. “There is no blood test for PTSD.”
The prosecutors noted that a diagnosis in 2024 can not prove what, if any, symptoms an individual was experiencing at a given moment in 2021. The prosecutors said they will call forth another psychologist during trial to evaluate the witness’ diagnosis.
Judge Kravitz found that there were no relevancy arguments against the witness’ testimony because “imperfect self defense has nothing to do with the defendant’s ability to form a particular mental state.” He granted the defense’s request to have the expert testify in trial.
Parties are slated to reconvene Feb. 4.
