Michael Gilbert

The Miami Herald
Famed Psychiatrist Gets Year for Bribe
By Don Van Natta Jr.
May 1, 1991

— Excerpt

Famed criminal psychiatrist Michael Gilbert stood up one last time in a Dade courtroom Tuesday and asked a judge to go easy on a mentally deficient defendant.

Only this time, the defendant was Dr. Gilbert.

“I regret terribly what I did, and I know what I did was an aberration,” said Gilbert, 75, who was convicted in March of bribing a Metro-Dade police officer to concoct a cocaine bust against a Miami lawyer.

His plea for leniency didn’t work. Dade Circuit Judge Leonard Glick sentenced Gilbert to 364 days in the Dade County Jail, 18 months of house arrest, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine.

The sentence drew gasps from Gilbert’s family and friends. They had asked for probation and no fine.

“He subverted the very criminal justice system he claimed to be a part of for many years,” Glick said. “I believe he viewed himself to be above the law.”

By paying a cop cash to frame a lawyer, Gilbert showed a “kind of arrogance that blemishes not only the doctor, but the police department,” the judge said…

Before his arrest on Aug. 28, Gilbert was considered one of America’s leading forensic psychiatrists. He spent 34 years in Miami courtrooms testifying about the minds and motives of almost 5,000 defendants…