U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. has heard testimony since Nov. 15 on whether Brockman can assist in his defense against 39 federal counts, including tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering and evidence tampering. Brockman has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers maintain that he has progressive and incurable dementia that affects his ability to process and recall information, including that which his attorneys share with him.
Prosecutors contend that he is faking symptoms to avoid prosecution and that he has both the motivation and the capacity to do so. They say Brockman continued to lead Dayton, Ohio-based Reynolds and Reynolds until after he was indicted in October 2020 and was able to recall past events and speak about complex topics in two separate civil depositions in 2019.
Guilmette and Dr. Robert Denney, a neuropsychologist who has conducted competency examinations of criminal defendants for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and was an expert witness for prosecutors in this case, both testified that they gave a series of tests to Brockman to measure his cognitive abilities and whether he was engaging with the tasks, the latter of which could suggest exaggeration, according to testimony provided during the competency hearing.
Denney testified last week that Brockman failed multiple so-called validity tests that assess such effort and engagement, which he said indicates exaggeration and that the cognitive test data is not a true measure of Brockman’s genuine abilities. But Guilmette testified that he and Denney disagreed on their interpretation of the results.
During cross-examination, prosecutors challenged Guilmette’s analysis of Brockman’s validity test results and questioned him about why he did not factor in evidence from depositions and speeches Brockman gave in 2019 as part of his reports on competency.
Guilmette testified that those examples happened two years before he evaluated Brockman. Earlier, he testified under questioning by defense lawyers that Brockman was able to draw on deep, long-term knowledge of the topics during the depositions and “absolutely not” could deliver the same performance today.
