Dylann Roof: How to make a rampage murderer

As the penalty-phase trial of young white supremacist Dylann Roof gets underway this week, reporters have asked me to explain the psychological dynamics that trigger deadly rampages like Roof’s at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. My answer: Although the specifics such as locale and target shift, the broad contours of such spree killings remain remarkably constant. Here is my recipe of key ingredients:

1. Alienation

We humans are tribal animals. For millennia, we lived in tightly knit, cooperative societies where individuals were rarely alone. As author Sebastian Junger explores in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, tribal identity motivates individuals to sacrifice for the collective good. In stark contrast, modern society deprives people of that essential sense of connection or belonging. Our current technological atomization is “deeply brutalizing to the human spirit,” writes Junger. Cast adrift, people feel meaningless and superfluous. Social alienation is producing epidemic rates of depression and suicide. But it is in spree killings that we see the ultimate expression of malignant alienation: Embracing nihilism, the killer finds meaning via symbolically destroying not just himself, but also the social order that rebuffed and humiliated him.

Mark Ames, author of the meticulously researched Going Postal, goes so far as to argue that mass shootings are a form of doomed rebellion against a toxic culture: Otherwise-normal people snap when pushed to the breaking point within decollectivized, militarized and ruthless settings. Workplace sprees occur in oppressive institutional settings rife with surveillance, mandatory unpaid overtime, and humiliating and degrading layoff rituals. Sites of school shootings, meanwhile, are often brutal places where students undergo chronic torment. The more endemic alienation becomes, the more people will snap.

2. Failure

This is perhaps obvious, but setting the stage for a spree killing is cataclysmic failure. Except in warfare, satisfied people don’t suddenly morph into killing machines. The killer has failed a life-stage transition, and his life has gone off track. Dylann Roof had a troubled childhood, marked by abuse, neglect, severe anxiety and academic failure, according to published accounts. He dropped out of high school. As a young adult, he couldn’t get a job or even a driver’s license. He coped by drinking heavily. The lives of other recent mass killers were similarly catastrophic, marked by failures on academic, vocational and/or relationship fronts. Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook) and Elliot Rodger (Isla Vista) had autism-spectrum conditions that left them incapable of forming intimate relationships. Omar Mateen (The Pulse nightclub) was a socially awkward loser: he flunked out of police training, got fired as a prison guard, and ended up doing lowly security work; his wife fled after he beat her.

3. Entitlement

Dylann Roof posing in his bedroom.

Failure alone is insufficient. The failure must be perceived as unfair. Like Roof, whose grandfather was a prominent attorney, the killer often has middle-class roots, inculcating the American mythology of success. Mass shooters often have higher aspirations than are realistic for their station in life. In Hunting Humans, pioneering anthropologist Elliott Leyton argues that the modern mass murderer tends to be especially socially conservative, class-conscious, and obsessed with power and status. Yet in our increasingly fragmented, alienating and high-stress world, a high-quality life is difficult for many a young American to achieve. Recognizing that he is on a dead-end trajectory and that his class aspirations will not be realized produces profound disappointment, personal shame and – ultimately - despair. To reduce cognitive dissonance, he needs someone to blame.

4. Projection

By the time he explodes, the spree killer has amassed an enormous reservoir of bitterness. He feels unfairly victimized. Through a scarcity lens, he perceives less deserving people as stealing away his opportunities and robbing him of his right to happiness. Those perceived as undeserving typically include lower-status or socially stigmatized groups such as people of color, women, sexual minorities or immigrants. This is the politics of resentment that Trump has milked so effectively.

Also feeding into the potent fury of many mass murderers are childhood histories of being bullied and socially rejected. In Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine Newman and colleagues chronicle the tormented lives of infamous school shooters. Many were incessantly harassed, with antigay epithets a common refrain. In high school, Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech) was relentlessly bullied over his social awkwardness, speech impediment and immigrant background. Dylann Roof was described as a “bug-eyed boy” with a bowl haircut who struggled academically; we can only guess at his social travails.

5. Masculinity

Spree killings are exceedingly rare (making them impossible to predict). Not every alienated, bitter loner picks up an assault rifle. But those who do are invariably male. Women are more likely to blame themselves for their misery. As journalist Jamie Bartlett reveals in The Dark Net, hundreds of thousands of young women ages 13-25 flock to the myriad “pro-cutting” and “pro-ana” (anorexia) Internet sites that have sprung up in response to demand from alienated young women.

In contrast to this turning inward, many young men regard violence against others as a way to gain status and respect. Our cultural glorification of male violence is evidenced by the enormous popularity of first-person shooter and warfare games. It is evidenced by the lack of meaningful protest over our government’s modeling of killing as a solution to problems: U.S. military drone strikes in the Middle East have ended the lives of many hundreds of civilians, with little fanfare. After all, we are the good guys, protecting the world against evil. As boys grow up, writes masculinity scholar Michael Kimmel, “they learn that they are entitled to feel like a real man, and that they have the right to annihilate anyone who challenges that sense of entitlement.”

Mass shootings are a quintessentially American theatrical production, the ultimate display of alienated hypermasculinity inside the world's leading imperial power. The production is carefully planned and staged, often accompanied by websites, online manifestos and photos that will help it propagate and endure in the cultural imagination. Embittered young men seize upon the restorative potential of violence, which enables them to extract vengeance for a litany of wrongs both real and imagined. Even more powerfully, violence offers the lure of immortality: Rack up enough dead bodies, and you become infamous. You are no longer a nobody; you are a warrior.

6. Ideology

To become a warrior, one needs a cause. There is no shortage of alienated young men like Roof, reared on a diet of masculine entitlement and believing that they have been treated unfairly. In another time, they might be like dying trees in a parched forest, standing alone and unnoticed until their eventual collapse. But in the age of the enchanted Internet, such men can simultaneously retreat from humanity yet plug into like-minded online communities where their diffuse rage can find a focus.

Elliot Rodger (Isla Vista) in pre-production selfie: "I am gorgeous"

Take Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista killer. A flop with women despite his self-proclaimed “gorgeous” looks, he immersed himself in the misogynist realm of the “manosphere,” where “men’s rights” proponents and “pickup artists” rail against power-mad feminists who are denying men their natural-born right to supremacy (and sex). Such insular communities are like echo chambers, validating and amplifying warped ideologies. Within the manosphere, Rodger transformed himself from an invisible nobody -- a "beta male," in man-speak -- into a “true alpha male,” in his words, a heroic warrior standing up for oppressed “incels,” or involuntary celibates.

“Women are like a plague,” he repeats several times in an online manifesto. “The mere sight of them enjoying their happy lives was an insult to me, because I deserve it more than them…. They don’t deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order to prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such.”

Like Rodger, Dylann Roof retreated into the Web. But instead of the manosphere, his search for meaning led him to the white supremacist channel. Specifically, the Council of Conservative Citizens, aka the “uptown Klan,” which devotes a lot of energy to disseminating propaganda about the menace of black-on-white crime. The atomization of culture into discreet identities has left many white men feeling abandoned and scapegoated, and racist ideology is quick to fill this vacuum. Roof eagerly soaked up the ideology of a white race under siege; like Rodger, he also grew frustrated with the preponderance of rhetoric over action. “[S]omeone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me,” he wrote. “I have no choice.”

Reducing the world to a stark black and white furthers the killer's self-image as a heroic warrior battling the forces of evil. In Terrorist’s Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning, fascism scholar Roger Griffin calls this “heroic doubling”: fanatics deploy violence as a call to arms to defend an idealized in-group against perceived threat by a demonized Other. Ideologically motivated killers like Roof, Rodger or the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik may act alone in the moment, but they see themselves as soldiers in a larger movement. The growing popularity of online manifestos – Roof had one, too, although at four pages it paled in comparison to Rodger’s 141-page tome – attests to the narcissistic fervor with which spree killers cling to their adopted ideologies as rationale for bloodshed.

What makes the ascendancy of extremist rhetoric so dangerous is this capacity to activate the alienated loner. A direct cause-and-effect relationship is readily observable: Donald Trump spews anti-Muslim vitriol, and in short order attacks on U.S. Muslims spike. Public figures can produce random lone-wolf violence via repeatedly demonizing an out-group, while maintaining plausible disavowal of responsibility. This practice -- most well-known for its contribution to abortion clinic bombings -- has a scholarly term, "stochastic terrorism.” In Roof's case, the Council of Conservative Citizens whose ideology Roof parroted in his manifesto was quick to issue a statement deploring the massacre, even while defending Roof's racist belief system as correct.

7. Contagion

In late-18th century Germany, groups of young men could be seen strolling about in identical outfits of blue tailcoats, yellow trousers and high boots. They were imitating Werther, the romantic hero of the sensational novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the idealistic protagonist kills himself over unrequited love. Blamed for a rash of copycat suicides among the impressionable and mentally ill, the novel was banned in Italy and Denmark.

This so-called Werther Fever is an early example of what we now refer to as a cultural meme – an idea, fashion or behavior transmitted like a virus from person to person, often via mass media, that takes on a life of its own as it propagates.

Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech) poses in pre-production selfie

Spree killings seem to have morphed into just such a cultural meme. Especially with the spread of social media, they often go viral, tempting the next angry and alienated man with the tantalizing promise of infamy and immortality – especially if the body count is high enough.

In truth, however, this immortality is illusory, as the very ubiquity of the mass shooter meme is numbing the public; one killer’s fame lasts only for the brief interval until another pushes him aside. Dylann Roof will have his moment in the spotlight this week, and then it will be on to the next case.

Instead of just dissecting each individual act in this never-ending drama (and emphasizing singular elements such as untreated mental illness, gun accessibility, social media, violent video games, bad parenting, law enforcement failures of prediction, and the like), we might do well to regard young men like Roof as canaries in the coal mine. It is only when the air in the mine is poisonous that the canary will die.

In the award-winning TV show Mr. Robot, there are these ninja assassins who, when cornered, put a bullet in their own brain. A computer-crimes detective refers to this as “erasing their histories.” In orchestrating a dramatic last stand, mass shooters like Roof are doing precisely this, erasing their heretofore empty and meaningless lives and replacing them with a meme.

Related blog posts:

• Newtown, CT: Latest massacre brings more hand-wringing (Dec. 18, 2012) 
• Aurora massacre: To speak or not to speak? (July 22, 2012) 
• Arizona rampage: Analyzing the analyzers (Jan. 23, 2011) 
• Systems failure or black swan? New frame needed to stop memorial crime control frenzy (Oct. 19, 2010) 
• Virginia Tech: Can school shootings be prevented? (April 19, 2007) 

Dylann Roof's full manifesto is HERE; Elliot Rodger's is HERE.

Film to explore gay-bashing in friendly, liberal community

Lawrence "Mikey" Partida's injuries

It was a tragic end to his 32nd birthday celebration. As Lawrence “Mikey” Partida left his cousin’s house, a young neighbor confronted him, hurling antigay epithets before beating Partida unconscious. The slightly built long-distance runner and grocery clerk was left with a fractured skull and a piece of wooden fence post embedded behind his eye. He underwent months of surgery and rehabilitation.

The event shocked the idyllic university community of Davis, California. Nestled between San Francisco and the state’s capital city of Sacramento, the town of 65,000 is ranked among the best places to live in America, with a reputation as safe, welcoming, liberal, educated and bicycle-friendly.

Perhaps more surprising than the assault itself was the identity of the perpetrator, and his kid-gloves treatment by the criminal justice system.

Clay Garzon

Clayton “Clay” Garzon, then 19, is the son of two well respected physicians, one of them a prominent humanitarian. Yet notwithstanding his privileged and progressive upbringing, this was not his first violent attack; he was awaiting trial on charges stemming from a drunken brawl the year before in which four young men were stabbed. Despite the fact that he was out on bail already when he mercilessly beat Partida, he was approved for bail of only $75,000, allowing his immediate release yet again. He ultimately pled guilty to assault, battery and hate crime charges in exchange for a sentence of five years in the local county jail, under a prison realignment law (AB 109) intended only for non-violent offenses.

Despite having used antigay slurs before, during and after the assault, Garzon and his attorney insisted that the attack was not motivated by antigay animus.

Forensic linguistics

Of potential interest to this blog's audience, the defense called an expert in the new field of forensic linguistics, who opined that Garzon's use of the term faggot was "more consistent with challenging [Partida's] masculinity" than with hatred. William Eggington, a linguistics professor from Brigham Young University, testified at Garzon's preliminary hearing that a tolerant family upbringing in a liberal community "would lower the possibility that this would be a gender- related crime." 

This testimony highlights a vexing problem with so-called “hate crime laws.” Their very name fosters a misimpression that bias crimes are necessarily motivated by hatred. As I found in my research with antigay assailants, this is far from the case. Such crimes are often driven more by instrumental goals such as fitting in with a peer group or demonstrating visible proof of masculinity than by outright animus. As the prosecutor, Jonathan Raven of the Yolo County District Attorney's Office, pointed out, hatred is not a requisite element of a hate crime: “One simply has to be motivated by a bias, in whole or in part.” The idea behind the enhanced penalty is that by attacking a person based even in part on his or her group membership, one is causing fear in the targeted class. As Raven noted in a statement, “certainly the crime in this case caused those in the LGBT community to be fearful.”

Further complicating Garzon's motivations is the fact that he lashed out at Partida when the gay man told him to stop pestering Partida’s female cousin, whom Garzon had been aggressively pursuing all night long.

Unpacking violence

Disentangling the complex and multifaceted roots of violence is the goal of anthropologist and filmmaker Daniel Bruun, who is producing a film, “Davisville 2013,” on the case.

Bruun, a Davis native, closely followed the case for a year as it wended its way through the legal system, recording more than 50 hours of courtroom proceedings and interviews. He even tracked down the victims in Garzon’s other case.

Ironically, while Partida experienced an outpouring of support from the Davis community, including an appeal from Sikh leaders for higher bail, Garzon’s other victims, young working-class white men who were not a member of a protected minority, were not feeling the love. As candlelight vigils were held in Davis for Partida, police in nearby Dixon couldn’t even be bothered to investigate, according to Bruun’s investigation.

“If [Garzon] never would’ve done that [hate crime], he probably never

Candlelight vigil for Partida

would’ve gone to jail -- ever,” lamented one of the forgotten stabbing victims. “It hurts that they didn’t really care for us.” 

In a front-page interview in the Davis Enterprise last week, Bruun said he first started contemplating the causes of seemingly senseless and random violence when he was in junior high school, and a 14-year-old Davis boy was beaten, robbed of two dollars and pushed into a moving train by three local teens. “I was affected by it, but I felt like the story was never told in a complete way,” Bruun told reporter Lauren Keene.

He seized upon the Davis case as a chance to tell a bigger story, about the causes of male youth violence as well as its impact on victims, communities, and even the assailants themselves.

“It seemed like an opportunity to tell a story like that in the best way possible -- to be involved in it as the story is unfolding.”

Filmmaker (right) with Partida

Bruun’s prior documentaries included anthropologically informed explorations of underground cultures in Manchester, England and The Bronx; his short film Temporary Sanity is on the Royal Anthropological Institute's recommended curriculum for anthropology undergraduates in Great Britain.

Bruun is kicking off a month-long fundraising campaign on Indiegogo, a San Francisco-based fundraising website. He hopes to raise $10,000 to complete the project.

Bruun plans to interview me along with prominent hate crime expert Gregory Herek of the University of California at Davis. I realize that I just put the word out about fundraising for another documentary, on violence against transgender women of color (again involving me as an expert), but if you feel so inclined, here’s a link to donate to Bruun’s worthy Davisville 2013 project as well. 

Documentary explores town's polarization over transgender murder

Forensic psychologist key element in gay panic defense

For 20 minutes, Brandon McInerney sat patiently behind Larry King in their junior high school computer classroom. Then, the budding white supremacist pulled out a handgun and shot his transgender classmate twice in the back of the head. Larry died two days later, on Valentine's Day.

The 2008 murder polarized the community of Oxnard, California. The chasm widened during the highly publicized trial three years later, when a pair of private defense attorneys managed to turn the homicide into a reverse civil rights case for beleaguered heterosexuals and white people. With the help of a forensic psychologist, they were able to convince seven out of 12 jurors that Larry King had provoked his own death through his gender transgression. After the mistrial, several jurors became outspoken advocates for Brandon, wearing "Save Brandon" bracelets and raising money for his retrial.

Director Marta Cunningham

"He [Brandon] was solving a problem," explained juror Diane Michaels, an OR nurse. “Where are the civil rights of the one being taunted by another person who’s cross-dressing? He had no one he could turn to because the school was so pro-Larry King’s civil rights, but where was Brandon’s civil rights?"

"It was the high heels, the makeup, the behavior," agreed Karen McElhaney, a fellow juror and a surgical nurse, as the jurors bonded over wine and hors d'oeuvres at one of their homes.

Through such candid interviews with family members, teachers, students (including two eyewitnesses), attorneys and jurors, first-time film director Marta Cunningham explores the conflicting ideologies regarding both gender diversity and social tolerance that Larry King’s murder graphically exposed. Cunningham spent four years and collected 350 hours of footage for Valentine Road (the name of the street on which Larry is buried), a Sundance award-winner debuting on HBO. She hopes that schools will use the film as an educational tool to promote tolerance. 

Forensic psychologist blames the victim

This blog's readers will be especially interested in the role of the forensic psychologist, who helped sell the victim-blaming theme at trial. The testimony of Donald Hoagland gave the jurors an "expert" imprimatur on which to hang their hat.

 ABC News trial coverage featuring voice of 

forensic psychologist Donald Hoagland as he testifies

"What Larry was doing was an extreme form of bullying, an extreme form of sexual harassment," Donald Hoagland told the filmmaker. "Guys don’t hit on guys. Brandon was thinking he needed to get rid of Larry. He needed to save everyone from this scourge that had come upon this school."

At the trial, Hoagland testified that the cross-dressing victim's flirtation threw 14-year-old Brandon into a fit of homicidal rage. He testified that King's declaration that he was changing his name to Leticia triggered a dissociative state in which Brandon temporarily lost track of reality, according to the Ventura County Star.

The fatal flaw with that gay panic theory of the crime is that McInerney made advance plans to kill King. He announced his plan to several people the day beforehand, according to testimony during the eight-week trial, and also acquired and loaded the gun and brought it with him to school. He shot King twice in the back of the head during a first-period class.

Jurors who voted against a murder conviction said that Larry King's request to be called by a girl's name gave Brandon a "green light" to execute him. One juror even wrote to the judge after the trial to protest the "witch hunt" against the killer, citing the victim’s "long history of deviant behavior."

"They made a murder victim the cause of his own murder," marvels Detective Dan Swanson, a hate crime expert who testified at the trial.

Prosecutor Maeve Fox, who ultimately agreed to a plea deal of 21 years for Brandon, said the case exposed the deep layer of intolerance in society, an intolerance that is even carried into the jury box.

Unfortunately, the documentary gives short shrift to another central factor in community support for Brandon. A decision by the prosecutor's office to try the 14-year-old suspect as an adult led to widespread public opposition. Brandon faced 51 years to life in prison if convicted in adult court. A coalition of dozens of gay and lesbian groups even joined the chorus of pleas to try the boy as a juvenile.

Cunningham's direction is understated. Rather than hitting the viewer over the head with a message or point of view, she allows the characters to speak for themselves, interspersing their dialogue with artful sketches, news footage and school surveillance video. The resulting nuanced tale forces audience members to think for themselves about the moral implications of the tragedy.

Ultimately, Valentine Road is a sad and haunting story about two lost boys struggling for identity in a violent world. For the two boys were alike in many ways, both of them abused, neglected and lacking competent adult mentorship as they navigated the perilous journey to adulthood. Larry had been bullied since the third grade for his effeminacy; Brandon was dependent on a bullying father who physically abused him, while his methamphetamine-abusing mother was homeless. 

Yet for all its pathos the film also shines a ray of hope. Even as the defense team vigorously promoted a victim-blaming narrative, youths from the local community came together to honor Larry King and to use his death to promote a message of tolerance. One can only hope that the film will be shown far and wide, and will contribute to that worthy endeavor.

VALENTINE ROAD WILL AIR OCTOBER 24 ON HBO. IT IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON DEMAND. CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SCHEDULE.

RELATED STORY: "The Hidden War Against Gay Teens," Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, Oct. 10, 2013

* * * * *

My prior coverage of the case: 

• What caused middle school tragedy? 14-year-old Brandon McInerney to be arraigned Thursday (June 10, 2008) 
• More on the McInerney antigay murder case: Defense may use emerging science of adolescent brain development (June 11, 2008)  
• Gay panic defense: Slain boy accused of provocation (Aug. 10, 2011) 
• Jury deadlocks in gay panic trial (Sept. 2, 2011)  
• Gay panic defendant gets 21 years (Nov. 23, 2011) 

Hat tip: John Lewis

Research: Romney's anti-gay assault fits typical pattern

Romney then

Outed for physical and verbal abuse of gay classmates during high school, U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney is trivializing the incidents as "pranks" and "dumb things," and claiming not to know the boy he assaulted was gay.

To me, his response came as no surprise. This is precisely what most gay-bashers think and say, according to my groundbreaking research on the motivations of perpetrators.

In the first empirical research into prevalence rates of and motivations for antigay harassment and violence by noncriminal young adults, I found antigay behaviors like Romney's to be alarmingly commonplace. One in 10 young adults in the politically liberal San Francisco Bay Area admitted to physical violence or threats against presumed homosexuals, and another 24 percent acknowledged name-calling. The percentages were even higher among young men. The frequency of self-acknowledged antigay behaviors among a general population sample was consistent with victim studies in which large proportions of lesbians and gay men report sexuality-related victimization.

Like Mitt Romney, most gay-bashers with whom I conducted followup interviews insisted that they were not motivated by hatred of homosexuals. This despite the fact that many of their assaults fell within legal definitions of a hate crime. Many, like Romney, were instead acting as self-appointed enforcers of gender norms for male and female behavior.

Washington Post reporter Jason Horowitz was able to track down five former classmates of Romney’s who gave similar accounts of how Romney led a "vicious" assault against a closeted gay classmate at his prestigious boarding school in Michigan. The victim, John Lauber, was "perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality." Romney reportedly became incensed about Lauber’s bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye:

"He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!" an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann's recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber's look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school's collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber's hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

"It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me," said [Thomas] Buford, the school's wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was "terrified," he said. (Buford later became a prosecutor. )

Soon after the incident, Lauber disappeared, expelled for smoking a cigarette. He died of liver cancer in 2004.

In defending himself, Romney told Fox News that he "had no idea what that individual's sexual orientation might be."

But that misses the point.

Romney now

In my in-depth interviews with antigay assailants, all insisted that their assaults were not driven by animus toward homosexuals. Rather than punishment of homosexuality per se, their assaults on presumed homosexuals were aimed at punishing those who violated mandatory sex role norms. Boys who do not conform to expected gender norms are labeled very early on as "sissies" or "fags" and subjected to merciless bullying. This peer policing is a very effective way of enforcing hierarchical gender relations. 

By wearing his hair in a feminine manner, Lauber had violated the antifemininity norm that is part of the bedrock of traditional masculinity, which apparently dominated at the elite Cranbrook School.

Romney's verbal denigration of another former classmate, also a closeted homosexual, fits this same pattern. When Gary Hummel tried to speak up in English class, Romney shouted “atta girl!” at him, Hummel told the Post.

So, Romney's assaultive and bullying conduct was not so much to punish Lauber and Hummel for being gay as for being different, for having the audacity not to conform to his chest-thumping notions of manliness. This contempt for insufficiently masculine men is a core feature of our culture, helping to explain Romney's self-righteousness and his facile dismissal of his harmful conduct as innocent hijinks.

Blogger wins scientific achievement award

Accepting the award. Photo credit: Michael Donner

I am pleased to report that I have been awarded the 2012 Distinguished Scientific Contribution in Psychology award. It struck like a thunderbolt in a clear blue sky; I had no idea I had even been nominated for an award until I got a phone call notifying me I had won. 

It was especially meaningful to come from the California Psychology Association. The only voice for California’s 18,000 licensed psychologists, the CPA tirelessly advocates for the profession as well as for the mental health needs of the general public in California.

For those of you who only know me as a blogger and/or a forensic psychology practitioner, I conducted pioneering research in the late 1990s into the motivations of hate crime perpetrators. I later extended that work to group rape, likening both forms of violence to cultural theater in which the actors publicly demonstrate masculinity, with their victims as dramatic props. (I'm excited about a forthcoming chapter in a cutting-edge text on multiple-perpetrator rape, due out next year.) I have also conducted historical research and published on the ethics of forensic diagnosis, and especially the contested sexual paraphilia of "hebephilia." More information on my research is available on my website and on Wikipedia.

The location of the awards ceremony could not have been more idyllic -- the gorgeous Monterey coast on a balmy weekend. The 270-degree view of the Monterey Bay and the surrounding hills from the 10th floor of the Marriott Hotel was breathtaking; unfortunately, a photo just can't capture it.

CPA President Craig Lareau presents award.
Photo credit: Patricia VanWoerkom

The quality of this year's convention trainings was impressive. Perhaps because the current president, Craig Lareau, is a forensic psychologist and attorney, there was a good deal of forensic programming. Alan Goldstein presented the latest on Miranda waiver evaluations (including the new instrument), Professor Gail Goodman gave an overview of the research on child witness accuracy, and there were workshops on forensic neuropsychology.

I especially enjoyed a presentation by Keely Kolmes of San Francisco and Heather Wittenberg of Maui designed to help psychologists step up their online presence. For anyone interested, Dr. Kolmes has some nice resources (HERE) for psychologists on the ethics of social media and on managing one's online reputation.

By the way, if you practice in California and don't belong to the CPA, I encourage you to join. The reconfigured CPA has a forward-looking leadership team headed by the dynamic Jo Linder-Crow and is doing essential advocacy work on behalf of psychologists and the public. It appears to have defeated (at least for the time being) an effort to axe our regulatory agency, the Board of Psychology, which would have left psychologists at the mercy of other professions. It's working hard to promote parity for mental health consumers. And it's tangibly supporting legislators who will lobby for progressive causes, for example prisoner rehabilitation instead of endless warehousing. So do your share, whether it's just paying dues or volunteering, so that all of the heavy lifting does not fall on just a few shoulders.

Sea Otter, Monterey Bay

Whether or not you belong to the CPA, if you are in California you might also consider donating to its Political Action Committee, which funds progressive politicians and reforms. The unfortunate reality is, politics is money-driven.

And now, sadly, it's back to the grindstone.

Related news: Your blogger profiled in the 2012 edition of advanced high school textbook, Forensic Science: Advanced Investigations.

Thanksgiving roundup

Brandon McInerney

Gay panic defendant gets 21 years

The gay panic case of Brandon McInerney that we’ve been tracking here since 2008 is finally over. The defendant, who was 14 when he shot and killed classmate Larry King, agreed to a 21-year prison term after a jury deadlocked in his murder trial two months ago.

"The missing militant" pleads no contest

Ronald Bridgeforth

Ronald Bridgeforth, the man I blogged about a couple of weeks ago who spent 43 years underground before deciding to turn himself in, pleaded no contest yesterday to a 1968 charge of assault on a police officer. His sentencing is set for February. For those of you who are interested in his fascinating life, I recommend a profile (HERE) by Laura Rena Murray in Tuesday's San Francisco Chronicle. As Bridgeforth put it, "Not being in jail is not the same as being free."

From Australia: Prolonged detention and mental health

An investigative journalism program in Australia has aired a remarkable documentary on the psychiatric effects of lengthy detention of asylum seekers. ABC’s Four Corners obtained rare footage of conditions in facilities that are typically kept out of sight and out of mind. The show portrays rampant self-mutilation, suicide and psychotic decompensation among Australia's 4,000 incarcerated asylum seekers. "I have only seen darkness in life and a dark future ahead," explains a young Iranian man who has just tried to hang himself after the third rejection of his immigration petition. In a secretly filmed interview, a psychiatric nurse states that suicide attempts and grotesque self-mutilations are daily occurrences, with as many as 30 detainees at a time on one-to-one suicide watch at her facility alone. Psychiatric staff are shown responding to the overwhelming despair by overprescribing sedating medications. Dr. Suresh Sundram of the Mental Health Research Institute describes the detention sites as factories for producing mental illness, especially for detainees who are held for lengthy periods and those who have undergone torture and other traumas before fleeing their homelands. Click below to watch the 45-minute video, which is relevant not only in Australia but other countries around the world with similar immigration issues.

Juveniles: Lifelong benefits of multisystemic therapy 

In a study that's getting a bit of buzz around the Web, a researcher has found that Multisystemic Therapy's positive effects on juvenile delinquents extend for decades. An average of 22 years later, youths who were randomly selected for MST treatment had significantly fewer arrests and family problems than those who got traditional individual therapy. MST, developed by study co-author Charles Borduin of the University of Missouri, has become one of the most widely used evidence-based treatments in the world. It owes its success to the fact that it involves the offender's entire family and community, whereas traditional therapy targets only the offender without modifying his problematic environment. The new study is published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. The Abstract is HERE; a press release summarizing the findings is HERE.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo (c) Karen Franklin 2011

And finally, if you're reading this in the comfort of your warm and cozy home or office, you can be thankful you're not at the bottom of the 99 percent, living in a plywood shack being torn down just in time for the rainy season. That's the plight of the folks in one of the many homeless encampments near where I walk.

I wish all of you readers and subscribers a nice holiday. 

Jury deadlocks in gay panic trial

After a closely watched trial, a jury ultimately failed to agree on whether teenager Brandon McInerney should be punished for murder in the killing of classmate Larry King. The final vote was five for murder, and seven for the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter.

The defense had played on gay panic, blaming 15-year-old King for being too provocative. Forensic psychologist Donald Hoagland, who spent 17 hours interviewing and testing McInerney, testified that when the cross-dressing victim said, “What’s up baby” to McInerney the day before the killing, it threw the 14-year-old into a fit of homicidal rage.

Hoagland further testified that when King said he was changing his name to Leticia, that triggered a dissociative state, causing McInerney not to realize what he was doing at the time of the shooting, according to the Ventura County Star.

The fatal flaw with that theory is that McInerney made advance plans to kill King. He acquired and loaded the gun, and announced his plan to several people the day beforehand, according to testimony during the eight-week trial. He shot King twice in the back of the head during a first-period class.

The only juror to speak to the media said that what really swayed the jury was not the gay panic defense, but the fact that the defendant was only 14 years old at the time of the 2008 crime. Prosecutors repeatedly rejected widespread pleas from the public -- including from a coalition of gay and lesbian groups -- to try the boy as a juvenile. He faced 51 years to life in prison if convicted in adult court.

Enough is enough, say the editors of the Star, which has provided excellent blow-by-blow coverage of the case since the outset; the prosecution needs to be reasonable:

That division among the jurors reflects the deep divide that also exists in the community at large regarding the appropriate way to punish a boy who committed an act of horrific violence that demands severe punishment, yet who had turned 14 just two weeks before the shooting, whose home life failed to provide the support and guidance that a child needs, and who was in a turbulent situation at school where there was equally little support evident.

The District Attorney's Office could refile murder charges against Brandon, but The Star believes the wisest course of action now is to take a sufficient amount of time for a good, hard look at the case that the prosecution presented and carefully consider what the jury's reactions revealed.

For starters, this trial showed it will be hard if not impossible to convince a jury that a sentence of 50 years to life in prison — which is mandatory for a first-degree murder conviction — represents justice in this criminal case, in which the defendant was prosecuted as an adult rather than in Juvenile Court.

Related blog posts:

Gay panic defense: Slain boy accused of provocation (August 10, 2011)

Don't ban gay panic defense (August 51, 2009)

What caused middle school tragedy? (June 10, 2008)

More on the McInerney antigay murder case (June 11, 2008)

Gay panic defense: Slain boy accused of provocation

The closely watched murder trial of Brandon McInerney took an unfortunate turn this week, as a self-appointed expert testified that 15-year-old Larry King contributed to his own demise by flirting with his killer and by wearing makeup and women’s clothes, thereby disrupting the middle school where he was shot to death.

The witness, family therapist Stephen Irshay, said he contacted McInerney’s defense team to offer his assistance after reading about the case in the newspaper. He said he got involved because he didn't think the defendant would have shot King without provocation.

The nature of Irshay’s expertise is not clear from the trial coverage in the Ventura County Star. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist (MFT) who was just appointed as assistant director of an MFT program at an online school, Touro University Worldwide. Expert witnesses must have special knowledge or experience to offer -- based on their education, training or experience -- that is beyond the realm of common knowledge.

The use of the gay panic defense is no big surprise, because the case is no whodunit. In front of 25 to 30 eyewitnesses, McInerney shot King twice in the back of the head during a first-period class on Feb. 12, 2008. The day before, he had told several people of his plan, acquired a gun and loaded it.

Prosecutors allege that the killing was a hate crime, and that white supremacist ieology played a role. McInerney's attorneys deny this. Rather, they say McInerney -- who had just turned 14 -- was pushed to the emotional breaking point by King's sexual harassment of him.

“This is a very troubled young man pushed to the edge," defense attorney Scott Wippert told the jury during his opening statement. "He was pushed there by a young man who repeatedly targeted him with unwanted sexual advances."

Despite his youth, McInerney is being tried as an adult. He faces 51 years to life in prison if convicted. He turned down a plea bargain that would have netted him a 25-to-life sentence. For a teenager, I'm sure, either option sounds like an equal eternity.

Ironically, his prosecution as an adult came in spite of a lobbying campaign by a coalition of 27 sexual minority groups. "We call on prosecutors not to compound this tragedy with another wrong,” wrote the coalition. "We support the principles underlying our juvenile justice system that treat children differently than adults and provide greater hope and opportunity for rehabilitation." The letter cites research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finding that children tried as adults are more likely to commit another crime than those tried as juveniles.

Does flirtation justify execution?

The gay panic defense plays on an antiquated cultural belief that a heterosexual male is justified in using violence to defend himself from flirtation by a gay man. In my own research with antigay hate crime perpetrators, I found that many noncriminal young men believed they had a right to physically assault gay men whom they perceived as flirting with them.

However, as some of the young women pointed out during my focus groups on antigay violence back in the mid-1990s, this logic is never used to justify a girl or woman violently attacking a flirtatious man.

In my research, I conceptualized antigay violence as existing on a continuum. At one end are verbal taunts that, sadly, remain socially acceptable among many adolescents. At the other end are severe acts of violence. These tend to be committed not necessarily by those with the most hostile attitudes toward gay people but, rather, by those with the most severe histories of violence or abuse.

McInerney's case fits this model. The defendant was raised in a chaotic and violent household and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. His father, now deceased, used to beat him for fun, defense attorney Wippert told the jury. The father shot McInerney’s mother, then married her and put bullets in her Christmas stocking as a joke.

According to reports back in 2008, McInerney was one among many students at the Southern California middle school who routinely teased and taunted King.

Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act

The gay panic defense is especially effective in cases where the victim was transgender, due to widespread societal revulsion against gender nonconformity. Use of the defense by the killers of Gwen Aurajo, a transgender teen, led to a backlash in California in the mid-2000s. The state passed the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act. This law allows for a special instruction to jurors, reminding them not to allow bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity to affect their deliberations. The prosecutor in the McInerney case, Maeve Fox, said she will ask that this instruction be read to the jury.

The jury instruction is brilliant. Rather than seeking to ban the gay panic defense outright, a strategy that might be unconstitutional and would only serve to drive it underground, it helps to shine a spotlight on the underlying biases that the defense promotes.

This strategy is more effective than an outright ban, says legal scholar Cynthia Lee in a lengthy and well-reasoned 2009 treatise in the UC Davis Law Review.

Suppression of gay panic claims, like suppression of bad speech, will not eliminate the underlying stereotypes and assumptions that make such claims persuasive. Open discussion and debate is a better way to combat those assumptions.

The law can and should play a role in mediating th[e] cultural dispute [over the status of homosexuality] – not by dictating what jurors can and cannot consider, but by making sure jurors are cognitively aware of what exactly is at stake when a gay person is the victim of fatal violence, and the person who killed him claims he did so in response to an unwanted sexual advance.

We won't have to wait long to hear whether the defense will help young McInerney or, more likely, backfire. The case is expected to go to the jury in about two weeks.

Related blog posts:

• What caused middle school tragedy? (June 10, 2008)
• More on the McInerney antigay murder case: Defense may use emerging science of adolescent brain development (June 11, 2008)
• Don’t ban Gay Panic Defense (Aug. 5, 2009)

The Ventura County Star has detailed trial coverage and a timeline of the drawn-out legal machinations.

Hat tip: John L.

Untattoo You

What happens when you cross the Avon Lady with a Neo-Nazi murder defendant?

Guest essay by Sam Sommers*

Several colleagues and students forwarded to me this story from the NY Times describing a criminal defendant in Florida whose attorney successfully petitioned the court to pay for a cosmetologist to help him cover up his swastika tattoos with makeup before trial each morning. The basis for the request was the defense's (quite reasonable) concerns that jurors would have a hard time remaining impartial as they sat in judgment of someone adorned by Neo-Nazi symbols.


The case raises a wide range of interesting questions involving the psychology of law, physical appearance, first impressions, and daily interaction–the very issues often at the heart of this blog. Questions such as:

Should the court have agreed? 

While the unusual nature of the request is what has rendered it newsworthy, similar issues arise in a wide range of cases. Defendants often change clothes before entering court in order to prevent them from having to appear in front of the jury in a prison jumpsuit. Similarly, defendants in custody may be unshackled outside of the presence of the jurors so as to avoid undue bias.

The question becomes, though, should such accommodation apply to tattoos? After all, the defendant in the Florida case presumably chose to decorate himself in Neo-Nazi images. Should the taxpayers foot the bill to cover up decisions that the defendant made of his own free will? Moreover, the prosecution alleges that the attacks in question were motivated by hate: one assault victim was attacked allegedly for associating with a Black man; the homicide victim was gay. Reactions to the case might be different had the defendant gotten the tattoos earlier in life and long since forsworn the ideology associated with them. This wasn't the case here.

Can the issue be reframed? 

Many people I've spoken with have suggested, as alluded to above, that since the defendant chose these tattoos, he should be stuck with the repercussions of that decision. But the issue becomes more complex when you consider that the question for the court was not simply whether the defendant should be allowed to cover his tattoos, but rather whether the court would pay for it. Because a tattooed defendant with the money for his own removal/cover-up would be free to do as he wished.

Most people I've talked to have trouble with the idea that the court would pay for a Neo-Nazi charged with hate crimes to cover up swastika tattoos. But when the same question is reframed, most of the same people agree that a poor defendant charged with capital crimes should be entitled to just as vigorous a defense as a wealthier defendant in the same situation. Pitched this way, the issue becomes more complicated.

Couldn't the judge just remind the jurors to stick to the evidence and ignore the defendant's appearance? 

Sure. And as the division director for the Florida attorney's office argues in the Times article, "We believe the jurors listen to judges' instructions."

But while I have no doubt that jurors often try to follow the rules they're given, examples to the contrary abound. For instance, years ago I published a few research studies indicating that evidence still impacts a jury even after it has been ruled inadmissible. Moreover, judicial instructions to avoid prejudice or partiality have not been sufficient to eliminate other forms of disparity, such as the increased likelihood that a defendant in a capital trial will be sentenced to death when his victim is White as opposed to non-White.

It remains the case that sometimes jurors decide they'd rather not hew to the letter of the judge's instructions. And other times, jurors aren't even aware in the first place of the biases that they're supposed to be avoiding.

If this defendant gets money to change how he looks, what about other defendants similarly disadvantaged by appearance? No good legal debate is complete without the proverbial slippery slope argument, so where do we go from tattoo guy? Should relatively unattractive defendants be allowed to ask for makeovers? Given stereotypes about overweight individuals and self-control, what about an obese defendant in a negligence case? Clearly, the slope isn't so slippery as to allow a defendant from a traditionally disadvantaged minority group to appear in court in whiteface, but where should the line be drawn?

When symphony orchestras wanted to reduce bias in the hiring of musicians, they had candidates audition behind a screen so that gender was not apparent. Accordingly, one of my students in class last week asked, why not do the same to mask the demographics and background of a criminal defendant? Not a proposal that you're likely to see anytime soon in a courtroom near you, but interesting fodder for discussion nonetheless.

So I now turn the question to you, dear readers... Court-sponsored tattoo cover-ups: misguided use of public funds or necessary protection of defendant rights?

Sam Sommers is an award-winning social psychology professor at Tufts University who has served as an expert witness on bias.

*This essay originally appeared on Dr. Sommers' Psychology Today blog, The Science of Small Talk. Reposted with the written permission of Sam Sommers.

Previous guest essay by Sam Sommers: On police, profiling, and Henry Gates (July 28, 2009)

"Islamophobia" prompting rise in hate crimes?

Chinese animation video seen worldwide

You have heard the hoopla over banning a mosque near "Ground Zero" in New York City. And the buzz about the startling level of American ignorance over President Obama's religion (a Pew poll showed about one in five Americans think he is Muslim). Now, a Chinese animated news video links these macro stories with the stabbing of a New York cab driver, making the case for a rise in anti-Muslim violence in the USA. Michael Enright (pictured at right), a film student, allegedly stabbed the cabbie out of anti-Muslim bias. Enright's journals will undoubtedly be used in court as evidence of the biased motivation necessary for a hate crime conviction. Ironically, given his own actions, he allegedly wrote that Muslims were "filthy murderers without a conscience." For a glimpse at international opinion, this 90-second video clip from Next Media Animation in Taiwan is worth checking out:

Related blog post:

Judge may block hater from misusing courts: First Amendment and fair use doctrine at issue (March 8, 2008)

"Dismantling Hate" show features this author

On August 24th 2008, a young singer-songwriter named Geo Vaughn was walking down the street in New York City when he was set upon and viciously attacked by six young men.

Random? Probably.

Senseless? Not in the minds of the attackers, who believed they had a legitimate basis to punish Geo. After all, he is gay.

Premiering today is "Dismantling Hate," an episode of the award-winning educational television program In The Life on antigay violence. The show features an interview with your very own blogger on the motivations of antigay offenders (the topic of my doctoral research and several subsequent publications).

In the Life, "the longest-running television show documenting the gay experience," is a three-time Emmy Award nominee out of New York that airs nationally on public televison.

Click on the above image to view the short segment.