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The Soviet-era training of a Calgary Crown psychiatrist has made him prone to state bias, a defence lawyer argued Friday in asking that he not be declared an expert in a murder case.
But the Crown countered Dr. Yuri Metelitsa was a pioneer of mental health reform post-Perestroika before finally giving up the fight and moving from his homeland to Canada in the 1990s.
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“He up and left that system because he saw where it was heading and considering where we are in 2024, he was quite prophetic,” prosecutor Vince Pingitore said of the current state of Russia.
Defence lawyer Pawel Milczarek argued Metelitsa was trained in a system that used psychiatry as a political weapon and was geared towards weeding out people faking mental illness to escape the wrath of the state.
“The system of political abuse was carefully designed by the KGB,” Milczarek said, of the Soviet secret police.
Milczarek’s client, Solaimane Elbettah is charged with the July 4, 2022, first-degree murder of his Sundre co-worker, Joshua Burns.
The lawyer noted Metelitsa worked at the notorious Serbsky Institute although the Calgary psychiatrist said he didn’t know what was occurring behind a certain wing of the facility.
“He claimed to not know what was happening in that portion of the Serbsky, but he worked extensively with psychiatrists that were involved and they are listed on his resume,” Milczarek told Justice Glen Poelman.
Among those was his direct supervisor, Dr. I.N. Bobrova who is mentioned in Metelitsa’s resumé more than 20 times, he said.
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“She appears in the Viktor Nekipelov text as one of the psychiatrists responsible for his detention … in a psychiatric facility,” Milczarek said of the Soviet dissident who spent close to a decade in prison.
He said Metelitsa’s training in dealing extensively with malingering patients trying to be hospitalized instead of imprisoned “has rendered him partial to the state.”
But Pingitore, in arguing Metelitsa’s opinion should go before the court, said the doctor has been practicing in Canada for nearly three decades and if there were issues with his work they would have been raised by colleagues or administrators long ago.
Pingitore noted Dr. Lorne Roth, a highly respected America psychiatrist, led a team in 1989 that assessed Soviet-era changes in the psychiatric system.
“He has nothing but positive things to say about Dr. Metelitsa,” the prosecutor said.
“(Metelitsa) was one of the few reform psychiatrists.”
Pingitore noted Metelitsa admitted working with doctors involved in questionable practices at the Serbsky.
“Had he not acknowledged his affiliation with those individuals I would have concerns,” he said.
“He was not one of the psychiatrists that were involved in the abuses at the Serbsky Institute.”
Defence psychiatrist Dr. Cynthia Baxter said Elbettah was in the throes of a psychotic episode at the time of Burns’ murder due to schizophrenia, a diagnosis dismissed by Metelitsa.
Poelman said he may give a ruling by next Friday.
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