POHLMEIER, 92, WAS RATIONAL, EXPERT SAYS.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

Ninety-two-year-old Alfred Pohlmeier was a reasonable man whose brain functions were slowed but not skewed by age when he killed his wife two years ago, a medical expert told a jury Wednesday.

The diagnosis by Dr. Carl Orff, a neuropsychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, contradicted expert testimony given a day earlier that Ventura County's oldest convicted murderer was mentally incapacitated in 1995 when he strangled his wife, Lidwina, in the bedroom of their Fillmore mobile home.

``He was a reasonably functional, self-sufficient 90-year-old gentleman,'' Orff testified during the sanity phase of Pohlmeier's trial. ``There was no significant dementia, no aberrant behavior, nothing to suggest serious psychosis.''

The doctors' statements have contrasted sharply with the emotional testimony of Pohlmeier's family, who characterized him as a devoted husband who snapped under the pressure of caring for his chronically ailing wife.

Deputy Public Defender Susan Olson said the most damaging evidence in the first stage of the trial - a taped confession in which Pohlmeier matter-of-factly describes the crime for police - supports the position that Pohlmeier had a physical disorder.

``The fact that there is very little remorse shows that he lost the sense of what society expects from him,'' Olson said. ``He could not understand the nature of his act.''

But Orff said Pohlmeier's attitude doesn't prove he is brain damaged.

``A stoic response does not imply any underlying pathology,'' he said. ``The content of what he said is more important than how he said it. And the content suggested that he knew what he did and he knew what he did was wrong.''