Marvin Acklin, Ph.D. was arrested and charged in 1990 with a domestic violence assault on his wife, Denise Acklin, after he violently choked her. He pled guilty in First Circuit Court, paid a $25 fine, and this psychologist was sentenced to "therapy." In 1995, he asked his record be wiped clean for good behavior and the court agreed.
Since, Acklin has been in court many times testifying as an "expert" in everything from family custody cases to guardianship matters to murders, including those committed by Byran Uyesugi, as he’d been the psychologist who assessed him before he was sent back to work.
The background on the case: In November 1999, Byran Uyesugi, who was employed by Xerox Corp. for 15 years, entered the main office headquarters on Nimitz Highway at 8 a.m. and shot and killed seven innocent co-workers.
Prior to this, Uyesugi displayed violent tendencies while performing a service call at First Hawaiian Bank, resulting in criminal charges being filed against him. He had violently kicked in an elevator door at First Hawaiian and threatened the lives of his co-workers.
Uyesugi was sent to Castle Medical Center for five days, where he was tested by Acklin and another doctor, but he was released despite what several civil lawsuits filed against him since the murders consider poor judgement. "Despite strong evidence that Uyesugi was suffering from a serious mental illness, the defendants (Acklin) released him after only five days of observation and treatment … Acklin was negligent in that, among other things, no adequate disclosure of Uyesugi’s condition was made, nor was adequate warning given regarding the severity of Uyesugi’s mental illness and/or his foreseeable dangerousness to others…"
A lawyer representing many of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Acklin, set for trial in March 2005, says she is charging that Acklin made several assessments of Uyesugi outside of his professional scope of knowledge and capabilities. As a result, other doctors took him at his word, and did not dig further into Uyesugi’s mental illness, thereby possibly preventing Uyesugi from committing the murders. Acklin, of course, is disputing those claims against him.
Reach Malia Zimmerman, editor and president of Hawaii Reporter, via email at mailto:Malia@hawaiireporter.com
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