Forensic Psychology Overview
Forensic Psychology
Module 1: What is Forensic?
Adversarial Process: Characterizes the judicial system as a process of formalized debate among competing parties.
Involves resolving issues in a legal debate format.
Includes civil litigation such as custody battles which do not result in jail time and are not criminal issues.
Involves disputes that must be resolved through lawyers and judges.
What is Forensic Psychology?
Definition: Refers to the professional practice of psychologists working across various sub-disciplines of psychology, applying specialized knowledge of psychology to assist in legal matters.
These may include legal, contractual, and administrative issues.
Encompasses actions performed in a court of law.
What Do Forensic Psychologists Do?
Research: Conducting studies relevant to systems and policies, civil, forensic, and correctional contexts.
Focus on experimental research in non-clinical settings.
Example Areas:
Eyewitness testimony (cognitive perspective).
Jury decision-making (social perspective).
Applied Work:
Experimental evidence testifying.
Individual evaluations (clinical focus).
Serving as content experts in criminal or civil cases (non-clinical).
Consultation services related to trials and other legal issues.
Assessment and treatment services for individuals involved in legal contexts.
Diversity of Forensic Psychology Roles
Discipline Definition: Forensic psychology is not strictly a separate discipline like social, clinical, developmental, or cognitive psychology, but acts as a sub-discipline applicable to almost any psychological field.
Important Role Distinctions
Legal Context:
Criminal vs. Civil Disputes: Different legal issues and standards exist based on whether one faces criminal sanctions or is being sued.
Examples:
Insanity case vs. personal injury case.
Psychological Context:
Clinical psychology focuses on mental health issues in legal disputes, whereas experimental psychology targets broader applications of psychology to law, emphasizing social and cognitive domains.
Different educational backgrounds and training.
Scientist-Practitioner Divide:
Practitioner: Applied work primarily for courts; rarely involved in research or publishing.
Scientist: Researchers whose findings relate to legal disputes, with occasional courtroom involvement.
Types of Psychological Witnesses
Fact Witnesses: Those who treated or evaluated individuals and may be requested to testify. Not technically considered expert witnesses.
“Content” or “Teaching” Experts: Testify about specialized areas of research beyond common juror knowledge.
Forensic Mental Health Examiners: Evaluate individuals and testify regarding their findings.
Forensic Clinical Psychology
Definition: The scientific study of behavior, cognition, and affect to inform legal disputes.
Often equated with applying clinical psychology to legal contexts, emphasizing that the APA suggests forensic psychologist training should be primarily clinical.
Advanced certification beyond a Ph.D. often involves applications of clinical psychology to legal matters.
Key Distinctions
Clinical Psychology:
Collaborative.
Confidential.
Focused on subjective experiences.
Governed by professional ethics.
Forensic Psychology:
Adversarial in nature.
Publicly accessible information.
Focused on objective information.
Governed by ethics and legal standards.
Correctional Psychology
Activities Breakdown:
Treatment (25% of time): Focus on individual therapy instead of group therapy.
Common issues treated: Depression, anger, psychosis.
Assessment/Evaluation (20% of time): Intelligence and personality testing.
Administration (30% of time): Common practices in correctional settings.
Witness, Consultant, and Party Roles
Witness: Aims to provide relevant information to assist courts in resolving disputes, with no bias towards outcomes.
Functions include jury and trial consulting, as well as mental health consulting.
Roles as witnesses and consultants are mutually exclusive.
Party: Involves being directly affected by legal action (e.g., under arrest, facing a lawsuit).
Trial Consulting
Historical Example: The Harrisburg Seven case (1971), involving Vietnam protesters, used demographic juror profiles leading to a hung jury.
Consulting Mechanics: Includes community surveys, focus groups, mock trials, jury selection (voir dire), and pretrial investigation of potential jurors.
Effectiveness: While studies indicate some effectiveness, they often rely on weak methodologies. Even a small sway in jury opinion can yield significant impacts due to jury composition (12 members).
Fairness Concerns: Initial goal was to assist underprivileged clients. Current practices might serve wealthier clients, raising questions about inherent biases and potential regulatory needs. Possible reforms include limiting voir dire questioning and controlling peremptory challenges.
Historical Perspectives
Early Inroads of Mental Health Expertise into Legal Cases
McNaughten Rule (1843): Established insanity standards replacing outdated standards.
Defined insanity as a defect of reason from mental disease preventing awareness of the nature of the act.
Sigmund Freud (1906): Proposed that psychoanalysis could improve legal evaluation procedures, emphasizing objective sign-based guilt or innocence determination.
Hubris: Overselling significance or relevance in evaluations.
Hugo Munsterberg (1908): Advocated for the use of psychological methods to inform legal decision-making and faced ridicule which impacted future integration efforts in law.
Legal Cases Impacting Mental Health Integration
Psychologists were not prominently involved until Jenkins v. U.S. (1962), showing limited social science influence initially.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Represented the first successful legal challenge using social science data as authority.
The rise of law and psychology research throughout the 1960s-70s facilitated the establishment of professional societies and influenced legal practice.
Tom Grisso's Assessment of Mental Health Professionals: Stated that professionals could rely on forensic evaluations for reasonable income, leading to the development of ethical guidelines and specialty practices.
Law and Psychology: An Uneasy Alliance
Differing Cultures in Psychology and Law
Psychology Characteristics:
Creative, empirical, experimental, descriptive, theory-driven, probabilistic.
Law Characteristics:
Authoritative, adversarial, perspective-driven, case-specific, certain.
Current Legal System and Psychology Interaction
The law's attention to social science data appears selective, primarily engaging with it when beneficial.
Example: Lockhart vs. McCree (1987) addressing death qualification procedures in juror selection.
Overview of the Legal System
The Trial Process
Trial Objectives:
Uncovering the truth, though seldom straightforward; involves credibility assessments of differing narratives.
Additionally serves conflict resolution and provides a sense of justice and closure.
Procedural Justice: Emphasizes perceived fairness and transparency in the legal decision-making process.
Steps in the Trial Process
Preliminary actions including arrest and arraignment.
Development, disclosure, and exchange of evidence.
Plea bargaining and various legal motions.
Jury selection processes.
Involves drawing a panel (venire), where jurors may be excluded through challenges for cause and peremptory challenges.
Jury Selection Mechanics
Weighs subjective assessments of jurors, sometimes influenced by implicit personality theories and demographic stereotypes.
The Trial Execution
Initial phases: Opening arguments (not evidentiary) and burden of proof considerations.
Presentation of evidence, noting the exclusion of potentially relevant evidence.
Eyewitness Identification Evidence
Issues with Eyewitness Testimony:
Commonly misperceived as accurate.
Incorrect identifications feature prominently in wrongful conviction cases, as evidenced by a substantial percentage of DNA exonerations involving eyewitness errors.
Factors Affecting Eyewitness Accuracy
Confirmatory Bias: A tendency to favor information that aligns with existing beliefs, neglecting contrary data.
Weapon Focus Effect: A phenomenon resulting in narrowed attention affecting memory quality.
Memory Breakdown Factors
Encoding failures impacted by stress during the witnessing event.
Effects of stress on memory recall and identification accuracy.
Impacts of Eyewitness Testimonies
Witness reliability can unduly influence juror perceptions, often overestimating identification accuracy and confidence levels.
Admissibility of Expert Testimony
Criteria for Admissibility
Evidence must be relevant to the case at hand.
Frye Standard (1923): Evidence must demonstrate "general acceptance" within its relevant field.
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993): Set forth four criteria to assess the admissibility of expert testimony:
Testability of the technique.
Peer review of the methods.
Reliability and known error rate information.
General acceptance in the relevant scientific community.
Judges serve as gatekeepers for expert testimony admission.
Trial Process Continuation
Closing arguments: Non-evidentiary summary of the case.
Jury instructions regarding eyewitness identification legal standards.
Final verdict and sentencing process in criminal cases.
Overview of the appellate process following trial completion.