John Dicke, Psy. D, J.D.

John Dicke graduated with honors from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree, and later earned his juris doctorate from Ohio State University.

As a public defender in Ohio, Dicke handled criminal cases. After leaving the public sector, he opened his own private criminal law practice. Upon moving to Colorado, he served as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union where he supervised the Juvenile Rights and Prisoner Rights projects. He then returned to his roots as a public defender and finally opened a private practice in Denver focusing on criminal, juvenile, and personal injury litigation.

After tiring of law, he went back to college and attained his doctorate in psychology from the University of Denver. He opened a private practice specializing in the treatment of children, adolescents, and adults that focused around issues of trauma and abuse without the use of psychotropic medications.

Because of his success in treating children and adolescents, he and a colleague were given a private donation to start an institute that treated severely neglected and abused children and adolescents. As clinical director, co-founder, and vice president for the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Institute in Denver, Dicke developed an innovative and successful treatment program for sexually abused children using anatomically correct cues and therapeutic touch. The institute closed when it became embroiled in a dispute over the appropriateness of the treatment. Despite the remarkable efficacy of the treatment, critics and the Colorado State Board of Psychologist Examiners, for reasons of political correctness, not only ignored, but also attacked him with ferocity.

Currently, Dicke works in private practice as a lawyer focusing on criminal, post-conviction, and administrative cases.

Dicke has appeared as an expert witness in more than 60 trials, and on national television providing on-camera analysis of the Columbine High School tragedy and the John Hinckley petitions for release from the mental hospital. He was a consultant for “Geraldo Rivera Live,” and appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Dateline NBC,” “The Fox Report with Shepard Smith,” and also MSNBC and CBS. He was also featured in articles in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.

His first book, “Proof Evident,” is a realistic courtroom suspense in which a former judge is on trial, facing the death penalty, for killing the newly elected sheriff during a videotaped Rotary Club meeting. CIA mind control, political intrigue, and international racketeering loom large as lawyers fresh out of the public defender’s office try to save his life. It is a vivid look into the unconscious mind of a programmed killer. The book is based on Dicke’s combined experience as a trial lawyer handling several death penalty cases and as a forensic psychologist.

His latest two novels are Malicious Deceit and Fatal Dilemmas, both legal/psychological thrillers featuring the same protagonist lawyer, Jack Maine. Set in Denver, they are loaded with twists and turns in death penalty cases that seemingly cannot be won. Fatal Dilemmas is about a psychologist who is treating two patients who he comes to realize murdered his wife. Truly a killer dilemma! Malicious Deceit is about drug wars and political intrigue in very high places.

Dicke is an avid golfer and lives in the foothills of Colorado with his wife, Cari.