Meier’s Brain Isn’t Damaged, 2 Doctors Testify

The defense strategy for Torran Lee Meier, accused of strangling his mother, was challenged Wednesday when two medical experts testified that the Canoga Park teen-ager has a “normal brain.”

That evaluation by two prosecution witnesses contradicted earlier testimony by a psychiatrist for the defense, Dr. Donald M. Trockman, who concluded that a brain-wave test showed physical damage to Meier’s brain. Such an abnormality could be expected to hinder the 17-year-old’s reasoning and judgment, the West Hollywood psychiatrist had testified.

Although the defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender James H. Barnes, has refused to comment on his legal strategy, the psychiatrist’s line of testimony made it apparent that Barnes hopes to convince the jury that Meier lacked the mental faculties to control his rage at a mother depicted as abusive.

To rebut Trockman’s findings, the prosecution commissioned a series of five neurological tests, one of which was similar to the test Trockman administered.

Dr. Henry Dodge, a Los Angeles neurological surgeon, and Dr. Thomas Heric, a Santa Monica neurologist, in evaluating the results of the tests Wednesday, both testified that they concluded that Meier’s brain showed no physical damage.

“This is a healthy, plump brain,” Heric said.

Even if the tests had shown abnormalities in the brain, Heric said, medical science is not yet able to draw reliable conclusions about behavior from those findings.

“We are not at that stage in 1986,” Heric said.

Besides administering the brain-wave test, Trockman interviewed the defendant before concluding that Meier was unable to control mounting stress.

The defense did not permit the two physicians, in the course of conducting their tests, to question Meier. The defendant has not testified in the trial.

Meier and two of his friends are accused of strangling Shirley A. Rizk, 34, in her Canoga Park home last October, of placing her body in a burning car and pushing it over a cliff in the Malibu mountains. The three are also accused of attempting to murder Meier’s 8-year-old half brother, Rory Rizk, in an effort to cover up the slaying.

Judge George Xanthos is presiding over the jury trial, which is in its sixth week in Van Nuys Superior Court.

The proceedings have produced testimony that Shirley Rizk verbally assaulted Meier and humiliated him in front of friends and neighbors. Testimony will resume today.

Meier’s two alleged accomplices, Richard A. Parker, 24, of Antelope Valley, and Matthew A. Jay, 18, of Woodland Hills, will be tried later.