Behavioral Sciences & the Law最新文献

The neuropsychiatric contribution to capital sentencing proceedings has grown substantially in recent decades as the consideration of neurological and psychiatric factors in criminal behavior has been increasingly accepted as relevant to the quest for justice. This review article will focus on the legal theories underlying neuropsychiatric input into capital sentencing decisions, as well as some of the investigative techniques and resulting data which may be offered by forensic neuropsychiatrists in this context. The death penalty is unique in its severity and irreversibility, as the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have noted repeatedly. “Death is different,” and the recognition of this has generated a set of court decisions and statutes pertinent specifically to capital proceedings, both procedural and substantive.

Civil litigation involving the forensic neuropsychiatric evaluation of a personal injury case requires an assessment of damages and causation. The expert witness is obliged to integrate data from three critical sources of information: the review of records; the results of neuropsychological testing; and the findings from the clinical examination. In civil litigation involving a personal injury claim, the expert witness can be expected to address causation and prognosis of any neuropsychiatric damages. We discuss the undertaking of a forensic neuropsychiatric evaluation, psychiatric disorders often encountered in personal injury litigation, provide case vignettes and describe a number of special types of forensic neuropsychiatric evaluations, for example, Workers' Compensation, VA Disability and Social Security Disability.

Epilepsy may be associated with automatisms that are classed as ‘insane ‘as they are deemed to have originated within the mind. ‘Sane automatism’ is said to occur from external factors, such as physical trauma, while ‘insane automatism’ is said to be innate to the individual experiencing them. To claim automatism within the context of a criminal matter requires a detailed evaluation of the behavior demonstrated and a questioning of the volitional and purposeful nature of this behavior. It is insufficient to rely upon past behavior in association with these seizures to justify the defense of automatism within a specific event. Epilepsy is often considered to be associated with an increase in violence. Proper epidemiological research, both in long-term, large population control studies and hospital-based studies, has suggested that epilepsy, per se, is not associated with an increase in violence when compared to the population at large and controlled for other familial and environmental factors.

Forensic practitioners must shoulder special responsibilities when evaluating over-stated pathology (e.g., malingering) as well as simulated adjustment. Such determinations may modify or even override other clinical findings. As a result, practitioners must be alert to their own misassumptions that may unintentionally bias their conclusions about response styles. Detection strategies for malingering—based on unlikely or markedly amplified presentations—are highlighted in this article. Given page constraints, assessment methods for feigning are succinctly presented with their applications to administrative, civil, and criminal referrals.

The verifiability of a suspect's alibi is often interpreted as a sign of innocence. Because the police resources are limited, verifiability could be used to dismiss suspects of minor offenses. We examined whether alibi verifiability actually indicates innocence for minor crimes. In Experiment 1, participants imagined they were guilty or innocent suspects of minor crimes and selected a response to convince the police of their innocence. Compared to innocent suspects, guilty suspects were more likely to select pseudo-verifiable responses (which seemed verifiable but were not) rather than non-verifiable responses. Experiment 2 revealed that pseudo-verifiable responses increased observers' perceptions of innocence (rather than guilt). Experiment 3 suggested that people infer the police will not verify alibis of minor crimes, which may lead people to invent pseudo-verifiable responses. These results indicate that apparent verifiability does not necessarily indicate innocence. The police should systematically test alternative hypotheses whenever they encounter apparent verifiable responses.

Significant advances in various disciplines of neurosciences, such as neurology, neuropsychiatry, neuroimaging, and neurogenetics, have caused an exciting field to emerge in the field of forensic neuropsychiatry called neurolaw. The resurgence of interest in this field has paralleled the renaissance of neuropsychiatry in the last few decades. This historical review of the practice of forensic neuropsychiatry provides an insight into the past with the hope that it will guide the future development of this field.

Grooming is a common tactic among perpetrators of child sexual abuse (CSA). It is important that grooming is addressed in court to explain the unintuitive ways a child may act when they have been victims of abuse. The present study draws upon 134 transcripts of CSA criminal trials to establish how attorneys talk about grooming in court. Only 1.8% of attorney's questions addressed grooming behaviors. The majority of these focusing on exposure to pornography (27%) or boundary pushing (19%). Invitations elicited the most productive reports of grooming from children. There was a statistically significant difference in the proportion with which defense and prosecuting attorney's raised grooming issues, with prosecutors raising grooming issues more often than defense attorneys. We suggest that attorneys consider devoting proportionally more time to addressing grooming in court, to help jurors demystify common myths surrounding CSA.

As neuroscience technologies develop, ethical and legal questions arise regarding their use and societal impact. Neuroethics and neurolaw are growing interdisciplinary fields that address these questions. This review article presents the research agenda of both areas, examines the use and admissibility of neuroscience in expert testimony and legal settings, and discusses ethical issues related to forensic neuropsychiatrists claiming expertise in neuroscience, formulating medical opinions based on neuroscience, and considering its relevance to criminal responsibility. Forensic neuropsychiatrists should be aware of emerging neuroscientific evidence, its utility and limits in rendering diagnoses and explaining behavior, and, before seeking such evidence for legal purposes, its availability and admissibility. When testifying in matters involving neuroscientific evidence, ensuring truthfulness and balance, having sufficient and validated knowledge (including openness with confirming and disconfirming evidence), understanding standards of practice, and drawing relevant and appropriate conclusions remain important.

Persons with neuropsychiatric disorders present specific and unique challenges for forensic experts and defense attorneys in the criminal justice system. This article reviews two potential criminal defenses: legal insanity and the various legal standards or tests of criminal responsibility that are used in jurisdictions throughout the United States (i.e., the M’Naghten standard and the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code), and the partial legal defense of diminished capacity (lacking the mental state necessary to be found guilty of a specific intent crime). The process of evaluating criminal responsibility or diminished capacity is also presented with a specific emphasis on common issues that arise in evaluating defendants with Intellectual Developmental Disorder (Intellectual Disability), Parasomnias, Seizure Disorders, and Neurocognitive Disorders.

The US Supreme Court has required that death penalty procedures narrow the class of persons eligible for a death sentence. Through the selection requirement, juries must use mitigating and aggravating evidence jointly to determine if a defendant is one of the worst of the worst, resulting in a sentence of life without parole or death. This study analyzed capital trial transcripts from the punishment phase to assess the type and amount of mitigating and aggravating evidence presented to jurors in cases resulting in life without parole and death. The main assumption of the research was that cases resulting in life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) would reveal patterns in the types of evidence presented and differing patterns in cases where the jury handed down a sentence of death. The study qualitatively examined the trial transcripts from the punishment phase of 18 capital murders (nine resulting in LWOP and nine in death). The extra-legal factors from each LWOP case were matched to a death case to eliminate sentencing discrepancies based on jurisdiction, race of defendant or victim, aggravator, age etc. The results found no consistent patterns of evidence presented in cases resulting life without parole and some relevant patterns in sentences resulting in death.