areas
  • Mental state at the time of the offense (insanity and diminished capacity)
  • Competence to stand trial
  • Violence risk assessment
  • Psychiatric disabilities
  • Psychological and emotional injuries
  • Testamentary capacity
  • Decisional capacities and competencies
  • Correctional psychiatry
  • Sentencing evaluations
  • Capital mitigation
  • Fitness for duty
  • Former Director, Division of Forensic Psychiatry, Bellevue Hospital, NYU School of Medicine
  • Former Chair, American Psychiatric Association Council on Psychiatry and Law
  • Consultant to MacArthur Foundation Network on Mental Health and the Law, 1989-96
  • Board Certified, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN)
  • Board Certified, Forensic Psychiatry, ABPN
  • Former Member of the ABPN Committee on Certification in Forensic Psychiatry
  • Work Group Advisor, APA Task Force on DSM-IV
  • Author of multiple peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and other publications
  • Developed the MacCAT-CA, a structured, validated assessment of competence to stand trial

Welcome

Steven K. Hoge, M.D., is a nationally recognized forensic psychiatrist who has served as an expert since 1986.   Dr. Hoge has extensive experience in criminal cases, and has been an expert witness regarding issues of competence to stand trial, criminal responsibility, sentencing, and capital murder mitigation.   His experience as a psychiatric expert includes pre-trial evaluations, trial testimony and consultations, and evaluations related to post-conviction litigation.  

In addition to criminal forensic consultations, Dr. Hoge is available to be retained as an expert in civil litigation.  Dr. Hoge has experience in a range of civil legal cases, including claims related to psychiatric disability, negligent infliction of emotional harm, post-traumatic stress disorder, testamentary capacity, and various competencies.  He has performed numerous Independent Medical Examinations (IMEs).  

Dr. Hoge has also served as an expert for the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the institutional care of psychiatric patients in jails and prisons.

Dr. Hoge has been retained by criminal defense attorneys, prosecutors, plaintiffs and defendants in civil litigation, the Special Litigation Branch of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. District Attorneys, state offices of mental health, national insurance companies, employers, and universities.

Dr. Hoge has had a distinguished career in academic medicine.  Trained in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, he was a special student at Harvard Law School studying medical-legal aspects of mental health practice.  Dr. Hoge has been on the faculties of the NYU School of Medicine as Director of the Program in Psychiatry and Law, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as Director of the Law and Psychiatry Institute, the University of Virginia Schools of Law and Medicine as Medical Director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, and the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine as Director of the Forensic Evaluation Clinic.  Dr. Hoge has received grant support from the MacArthur Foundation Network on Mental Health and the Law.  He is a co-developer of the widely used MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool: Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA), a standardized and validated measure of defendants’ capacities to participate in their defense and make relevant decisions.  He is also a co-developer of the Perceived Coercion Scale, a validated measure widely used in mental health services research.

In addition to his forensic consultation work, Dr. Hoge has an active practice in general adult psychiatry.