Of child molestation and crystal balls

How much can a forensic psychologist really tell?

Defense attorneys regularly telephone me seeking an expert to testify that their client does not "fit the profile" of a child molester.

"What profile?" I want to ask. Men who molest children have no special profile. They come in all shapes and sizes.

After explaining this, I always pass on such cases.

Some forensic psychologists disagree. They think there is a profile, or that we can reliably determine the veracity of children who say they were abused.

Forensic psychologist excluded

In Louisiana, after the courthouse reopened following Hurricane Gustav, one such expert was slated to testify in the high-profile trial of church pastor Louis D. Lamonica.

The defense planned to call the forensic psychologist to tell jurors how to judge the veracity of abuse allegations made by children. No can do, ruled Judge Zoey Waguespack; the children's veracity is up to the jury to decide. Prosecutors had cited Supreme Court precedents to support that position.

The jury began deliberating yesterday. They must decide whether Lamonica molested his two young sons or falsely confessed, as the defense maintains, because he was being controlled by a self-proclaimed prophet who had tortured him, deprived him of sleep, and forced him to wear a dress and two rubber snakes.

The jurors' job won't be easy. Lamonica's sons - both now adults - testified that they were never abused. They, too, allege their confessions were the result of control by self-proclaimed prophet Lois Mowbray, who was arrested but never charged in the case. The boys testified that Mowbray controlled their mother and had her coerce the boys into accusing their father.

The bizarre case harkens back to the largely discredited satanic ritual abuse hysteria of the 1980s. In his tape-recorded confession, which was played for jurors, Lamonica talked about a child-sex ring at his Hosanna Church that practiced satanic cult rituals. Former church members also testified that the church had devolved from an established church into a Christian cult where worshippers publicly confessed and vomited to cast out the demons of sin. The allegations rocked the small town of Ponchatoula, about 40 miles northwest of New Orleans.

Ironically, the case broke when Lamonica himself walked into the local sheriff's station back in 2005 and began babbling about having molested children, taught them to have sex with each other and with a dog, and poured cat blood over the bodies of his young victims. At his trial, Lamonica testified that was all lies.

Unfortunately, the jurors won't have much in the way of science to guide them in choosing which of Lamonica's two diametrically opposed stories to believe.

But wait! High-tech mind reading in the works

While not in time to help Lamonica's jurors, scientists are feverishly working on new technologies to enable us to differentiate truth from lies. The science holds promise, they say, for identifying pedophiles based on their mental attitudes toward children.

Researchers tout the Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Harvard scholars to measure unconscious racism, as having the potential to sniff out pedophiles and even psychopathic murderers. (See Gray et al, 2003 and 2005.) A modified IAT called the Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer (TARA) can classify responders as liars or truth tellers based on the speed at which they classify sentences and "manipulate response incongruities," they claim. (See Gregg, 2007.) Other researchers have been working to adapt functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) into a lie-detection tool, with mixed results. (See Ganis et al, 2003, and Iacono & Lykken, 1999.)

The current issue of Psychological Science presents an article summarizing this research and offering a new tweak, the autobiographical IAT (aIAT), which researchers boast "outperforms currently available lie-detection techniques."

The authors concede that this and other emergent technologies do "leave important neuroethical issues unresolved." (See Wolpe et al 2005.)

You don't say.

In the forensic realm, it seems particularly problematic to equate attitudes with behavior. After all, many more men lust after children and teens than go on to commit illegal sex acts against them.

The Psychological Science article is: "How to Accurately Detect Autobiographical Events," by Giuseppe Sartori, Sara Agosta, Cristina Zogmaister, Santo Davide Ferrara, & Umberto Castiello. The abstract is available online, and the full article can be requested from the first author.

The Lamonica story, from the Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is here. You can search the newspaper's database using the keyword Lamonica for additional case coverage. A New York Times article on the original arrests is here. The Rick A. Ross Institute, which bills itself as a repository for information on cults, has much more on the Hosanna Church here.

A few of my prior related blog posts are:

• Why the next civil rights battle will be over the mind

• Forensic brain scanning: Online resources

• Using lie detectors to monitor sex offenders

• The evidence does not lie – or does it?
  

Scholarly articles referenced in this post are:

Ganis, G., Kosslyn, S.M., Stose, S., Thompson, W.L., & Yurgelun-Todd, D.A. (2003). Neural correlates of different types of deception. Cerebral Cortex, 13, 830–836.

Gray, N.S., Brown, A.S., MacCulloch, M.J., Smith, J., & Snowden, R.J. (2005). An implicit test of the associations between children and sex in pedophiles. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114, 304–308.

Gray, N.S., MacCulloch, M.J., Smith, J., Morris, M., & Snowden, R.J. (2003). Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers. Nature, 423, 497–498.

Gregg, A.I. (2007). When vying reveals lying: The Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21, 621–647.

Iacono, W.G., & Lykken, D.T. (1999). Update: The scientific status of research on polygraph techniques: The case against polygraph tests. In D.L. Faigman, D.H. Kaye, M.J. Saks, & J. Sanders (Eds.), Modern scientific evidence: The law and science of expert testimony (pp. 174–184). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.

Wolpe, P.R., Foster, K.R., & Langleben, D.D. (2005). Emerging neurotechnologies for lie-detection: Promises and perils. The American Journal of Bioethics, 5 (2), 39–49.

Photo credits: ora mia and Josh Bancroft (Creative Commons license)

Scarface idolatry: Evidence of violence?

I was driving past an abandoned gas station where vendors usually sell fresh strawberries and oranges from the back of a pickup truck. This day, the vendors were selling Scarface posters instead. Framed ones, all different poses of the cultural icon.

The sight harkened me back to a young drug trafficker I evaluated. Although he had no known history of violence, federal agents found a Scarface poster along with a loaded handgun in his home. The poster, argued federal prosecutors, showed a propensity for violence.

I don't know how many young drug traffickers hang Scarface posters on their walls, but after last month's appellate decision in U.S. v. Marin I can say that it is not a good idea. Antonio Marin of Massachusetts was caught under very similar circumstances to the young man I evaluated. Charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, he said no, he simply had a "casual," innocent interest in guns. At trial, the government rebutted that defense by presenting a Scarface shadow box found in Marin's apartment. The display case contained (among other items) a picture of Al Pacino aiming a machine gun, a replica gun, and a cigar.

An appellate court upheld the use of the Scarface memorabilia against Marin, saying its probative value outweighed its potentially prejudicial impact.

That's where expert testimony might have proven helpful. As I wrote in my report in the similar case, research has established certain factors as correlated with violence. Scarface idolatry, no matter its intuitive appeal, is not one of them. If it was, the crime rate would be much higher: Scarface is one of the most popular DVD's on Amazon, and the Internet has dozens of Scarface-related sites and hundreds of spin-off products, including music tapes, posters, and T-shirts.

Researchers have studied the effects of violent media on aggression for decades, generating hundreds of studies on this topic. Although the debate continues to rage, there is general consensus that no direct link exists between violent cinematic imagery and real-life violence. Watching large amounts of violent movies or TV shows might encourage violence in those already so inclined, but fantasy violence is neither necessary nor sufficient to trigger real-life violence.

Interestingly, the potentially unfair prejudice of Scarface memorabilia was acknowledged in a second case last month, this time when the defense tried to introduce it at a trial.

High school students Jean Pierre Orlewicz and Alexander Letkemann of Michigan were on trial for a gruesome beheading-murder of a 26-year-old man named Daniel Sorensen. To bolster their claim of self defense, the teenagers sought to introduce images from Sorensen's MySpace page of - you guessed it - Scarface.

No can do, the judge ruled. The photos "would tend to move the jury to decide the matter on an improper basis such as inflamed passions and emotions."

Sorensen is not the only murder victim whose MySpace site was scoured for the low-down on his personality and proclivities. Indeed, that is one of the first places police (as well as people like me) will look for uncensored (if sometimes exaggerated) self portrayals when someone gets caught up in a crime. That potential reality is far from the minds of young people as they immerse themselves in the semi-public world of social networking.


Take the case of University of California Berkeley fraternity member Christopher Wootton. He was killed this month in a drunken, late-night brawl. His loyal friends and family insist he was a peaceable guy who must have been trying to defuse the combatants. On his MySpace site just a week earlier, however, he had bragged about grinding another man's face into the pavement during an unrelated drunken fight.

Will this admission be allowed in court, to bolster the 20-year-old murder defendant's contention that he acted in self defense? Only time will tell.

One thing is certain: If either of these young men had a Scarface poster on their wall, we will hear about it on the local news. And then those street-corner vendors might have to go back to selling fruit. So far, no one has tried to link strawberries to violence.

Hat tip: Colin Miller at EvidenceProf

"The Tim Masters Case: Chasing Reid Meloy"

That's the title of a hard-hitting article focusing on forensic psychologist Reid Meloy's troubling role in the Tim Masters case in Colorado that many of my forensic psychologist readers have been following closely. This continues to be quite the cautionary tale for the rest of us.

"Meloy's reports and opinions about Masters' artwork have been the source of controversy from the beginning, but never so much as during recent courtroom testimony in which reams of material was introduced for the first time that bring into question not only Meloy's objectivity but whether or not he even came to his conclusions independently," writes journalist Greg Campbell of Fort Collins (Colorado) Now.

Campbell hunted down Meloy at a 4-day youth violence risk assessment training course in San Diego, where Meloy was giving a talk entitled "Adolescent and Young Adult Mass Murder: Assessment and Management of a Catastrophic Risk." He describes Meloy as a "rock star" in the crowd of law enforcement officials, psychologists and education professionals:

" ... taking second billing in the world's small population of celebrity forensic investigators to Roy Hazelwood, Gregg McCreary and John Douglas if only because he never worked for the FBI as they did, and because he's not technically a 'criminal profiler,' a career that has proved so popular in recent American pop culture. His resume more than compensates for being just a step below these movie- and TV-show-inspiring pioneers, however. He is a professor at two San Diego universities, a faculty member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and former chief of the San Diego County Forensic Mental Health Division. He's written more than 170 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and has written or edited 10 books. Currently, he operates a private forensic practice, consults with the FBI on counterterrorism measures and works to analyze threats to British politicians and the Royal Family. He is a diplomate in forensic psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology.

"Meloy made no reference to Masters in his presentation, which was focused on the characteristics of mass murderers like Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Omaha mall shooter Robert Hawkins, and Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho. In general terms, Meloy outlined traits of these killers that were similar to traits he attributed to Masters. They tend to be loners. They use fantasy to compensate for shortcomings in their lives. They have poor family relationships. They have a fascination with weapons and war."

Campbell repeatedly emphasizes Meloy's refusal to publicly comment on the case or his role in it. He quotes Meloy as telling him: "I don't want to say anything extrajudicially. It's just too sensitive. ... There will be a time and a place."

"The forensic psychologist has never been shy about his opinion that Tim Masters' doodles made him a killer ... but now that charges are dropped, Reid Meloy has only one thing to say: 'No comment.' "

"Although he now doesn’t want to say anything extrajudicially, Meloy was interviewed for a 2000 documentary about the case that appeared on the A&E Network's 'Cold Case Files.' The show is an uncritical ode to how Meloy, Broderick, Gilmore and Blair [the police detectives] joined forces to crack the case using something akin to mentalism.

" 'After spending six months on the case, I felt I understood the motivations for this homicide and that I had become convinced that Timothy Masters was the individual that had committed this homicide,' Meloy said on the show.

"For Meloy, Masters' drawings represented a 'fantasy rehearsal' for the crime, especially a doodle on Masters' math homework of a knife-wielding hand cutting a diamond shape that Meloy interpreted as a vagina, 'which may have been a rehearsal of the genital mutilation,' as he wrote in his first report to Broderick.

"Equally damning in Meloy's interpretation was a picture Masters drew [that] depicted one figure dragging another, which was apparently wounded or dead, from behind. The wounded figure was riddled with arrows and blood seemed to flow from its back. The figure's heels dug furrows in the ground similar to furrows found where Hettrick’s body was dumped.

"Entirely discounting the presence of the arrows - which had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder - Meloy wrote in his report that this picture represented the crime as it actually happened."

Campbell describes Meloy's role as pivotal to Masters' conviction, providing the only "evidence" of guilt:

"Meloy was the cornerstone of that prosecution - without him, it's unlikely that Masters would have been arrested in the first place. To date, he has provided the only 'evidence' in the nearly 21 years since the murder that implicated Masters in any way: an analysis of Masters' boyhood doodles, crude sketches and violent short stories that - even in the complete vacuum of physical evidence connecting Masters to the crime - convinced Meloy he was guilty.

"Meloy drew his conclusion based on a review of certain evidence provided to him by [Detective] Broderick, including Broderick's own categorization and interpretation of Masters' fictional productions, police videotapes and suspect interrogation transcripts, among many more items.

"Meloy did not, however, speak to or interview Masters himself.

"It apparently wasn't necessary.

"In his first report to Broderick he plainly states in several places that Masters committed the crime - referring to him not as a 'suspect,' but a 'perpetrator' - and he was apparently so convinced that he sent a pretrial letter to then-Larimer County DA Stuart Van Meveren in which he hoped for a 'successful prosecution.'

"And thanks to Meloy's testimony, they got it.

"In court, the jury was bombarded with Masters' scary pictures that were shown on a large video monitor while Meloy pointed out features of them that he testified showed pairing of sex and violence; evidence of 'picquerism,' the sadistic pleasure derived from stabbing; degradation of women; and fascination with weapons and death.

"In his first report to Broderick, Meloy wrote that Masters killed Hettrick because he felt abandoned by his mother, who died unexpectedly almost exactly four years to the day before the murder. He opined that her death, an 'emotionally distant' relationship with his father who spent a lot of time away from home while on active duty in the Navy, the departure of his sister from their home to join the U.S. Army, and his retreat into a fantasy world combined to create a boiling kettle of latent violence just waiting to erupt.

" 'A retreat into such a compensatory narcissistic fantasy world, replete with sexuality and violence, works for awhile, but at a great cost,' Meloy wrote. 'The unexpressed rage continues, depression may ensue, and anger toward women as sources of both pain (abandonment) and erotic stimulation builds.'

" 'Sexual homicide represents the solution, particularly in the form it took in this case: If I kill a woman, she cannot abandon me; if I desexualize her (genital mutilation) she cannot stimulate me,' he wrote. 'These are not conscious thoughts for Tim Masters, but likely represent the unconscious beliefs that drove his behavior the night of Feb. 11, 1987, when he killed and sexually mutilated Peggy Hettrick, a victim of choice and opportunity. Ms. Hettrick represented all Women (sic) to Tim Masters.' "

The full article is online here. Also at that website are copies of some of Masters' so-called "scary doodles."

Masters scandal highlights need for oversight of prosecutors

Revelations of official malfeasance such as occurred in the Tim Masters case cause a massive erosion of public confidence in the judicial system. The potential upside is reforms to safeguard other citizens from being similarly railroaded.

For example, "Masters is free, but justice not yet served" is the headline of a hard-hitting editorial in the Coloradoan, calling for just such reforms.

But reforms will not come easy. As a new book explains, prosecutors in the United States wield ever-growing power under new laws granting them unfettered "prosecutorial discretion" in charging and sentencing decisions.

Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor is the book, authored by public defender Angela J. Davis (no, she's not the same Angela Davis you're probably thinking of).

Arbitrary Justice does two things:

• It exposes the "dangerous shift in power from judges to prosecutors" (in the words of law prof Barry Schenk of Innocence Project fame) happening in the courthouse trenches.

• It provides a detailed agenda for reforms aimed at safeguarding defendants, victims, and the public at large.

Hat tip: Corrections Sentencing. Photo is of author Angela J. Davis. See more about the book at its dedicated web site. More blog posts on the Tim Masters case are listed here.

By popular demand: Expert testimony at Masters trial

Readers wondered if I knew how to obtain the actual transcript of forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy's testimony at the trial of Tim Masters. (That's the apparent wrongful conviction case that I've blogged about most recently here). So, by popular demand, I've uploaded the transcript here:

J. REID MELOY TESTIMONY

Dr. Meloy waxes eloquent on sexual homicide, rehearsal fantasies, the paraphilia of picquerism, the Rorschach inkblot test, and more. He psychoanalyzes the 15-year-old Masters' military fiction and violent drawings of Freddy Krueger. On cross-examination, he even references his own sexually sadistic and predatory fantasies. Happy reading!

Breaking news flash: DNA evidence may exonerate Masters

I've been blogging about the fascinating case of Tim Masters in Colorado, who was convicted in part based on a prominent forensic psychologist's testimony about his doodles.

Yesterday, in a stunning development in the twisting case, it was announced that reanalysis of the DNA linked it to a different man who had once been a suspect in the case. The prosecutor has recommended that Masters be freed pending a new trial, but police detectives are stubbornly sticking with their original theory that the 15-year-old Masters was the killer.

Jan. 22 postscript: Tim Masters is being freed today. He was busy packing his family photos and other belongings but was planning to leave behind his television, coffee pot, and prison-issued clothes. The Daily Camera has the story.

CNN has the story and related links.

For more background, especially on the forensic psychology angle, see my earlier posts, including:

Fascinating new twists in Tim Masters case

The Scary Doodles case

Did forensic profile go too far?

Fascinating new twists in Tim Masters case

Expert witness psychologist cited FBI profiler who had rejected prosecution theory of case

The forensic psychology angles in Tim Masters' ongoing motion for a new trial in Fort Collins, Colorado are increasingly fascinating. Here are a few of the newest:

Roy Hazelwood, the pioneering FBI profiler, was hired as a police consultant but rejected the police theory of the case, which linked 15-year-old Masters to a 1987 sex-murder based on the boy's doodles. Police withheld this information from defense attorneys at Masters' 1999 trial, and Hazelwood was never called as a witness.

With Hazelwood giving a thumbs-down to the police theory, prominent forensic psychologist Reid Meloy became the prosecution's star witness. He did exactly what Hazelwood had cautioned against, connecting Masters to the killing based on a series of violent sketches. Ironically, Meloy cited Hazelwood's theories on profiling as a basis for his opinion.

In addition to the "scary doodles," as they have been dubbed by the media, Meloy theorized that the date linked the killing to Masters, because it was the anniversary of the date that Masters' mother had gone to a hospital. But the information now being turned over by prosecutors suggests that this theory was fed to Meloy by Fort Collins police.

No physical evidence has ever linked Masters to the crime. The newly revealed police notes reflect that authorities were suspicious of a suspected sex offender who lived nearby and later killed himself. Authorities destroyed evidence linking that man, eye surgeon Richard Hammond, to the murder, and did not provide his name to the defense.

The ongoing hearings are aimed at getting a new trial for Masters, who is serving a life sentence, and also getting sanctions against the original prosecutors, both of whom are now judges, for withholding evidence.

The moral for forensic psychologists: Carefully protect your neutrality and independence; never let partisans for one side or the other influence (or appear to influence) your theories or findings.

Note: A more recent post on this case is here.

For my earlier blog posts on this case, click HERE and/or HERE. A Denver Post video, "The Story of Tim Masters," shows details of Masters' police interrogations. The Pro Libertate blog has case analysis, graphics, and links. A blog dedicated to the case, Free Tim Masters Because, has a lengthy page devoted to the role of Dr. Meloy.

Other news coverage includes:
Undisclosed Masters evidence nags, Denver Post, Dec. 20, 2007Notes in Masters case wanted "profile" stricken, Denver Post, Dec. 18, 2007Attorneys: It was the doctor - Master’s defense says Hammond had all the makings of real killer, Reporter Herald (Loveland, CO), Dec. 18, 2007Testimony returns to subject of expert, Reporter Herald, Dec. 17, 2007

"The Scary Doodles Case"

The tale of a teenage doodler,
a disputed confession,
and a forensic psychologist

One of the most interesting disputed conviction cases in the news these days is the case of Tim Masters in Colorado, which I first blogged about back in July. If you haven't read up on it yet, it's worth checking out.

The Rocky Mountain News is pulling no punches in calling for a new trial for Masters, who was only 15 when the murder in question occurred. The News' most recent editorial, entitled "In need of a new trial: Prosecution handicapped Tim Masters' original defense," begins like this:

The worst thing you can say about a legal system is that it railroads defendants - convicts and sentences them without allowing juries to hear the full story and without investigators pursuing equally viable suspects. That's why the case involving a Colorado prisoner named Timothy Lee Masters is so important - and why it is critical that he be granted a new trial.

For purposes of this blog, the case is intriguing because of the disputed confession (see my earlier post) and also because of the central role of J. Reid Meloy, a prominent forensic psychologist. Meloy "worked hand-in-glove with prosecutors," even reviewing the arrest warrant before it was served. The News editorial comments:

Forensic psychologist Meloy's analysis, so crucial to the prosecution's theory, at times has the tone of a pulp crime thriller. Portentous but debatable conclusions are scattered throughout, such as: 'Sexual homicides are often unconscious displaced matricides'; '[the victim] also resembled his deceased mother, which is of enormous psychological significance . . .' ; and, Masters 'knows the distinction between slicing and stabbing, terms that generally would not be distinguished by the lay person.'

Indeed, it was largely on the basis of Masters' violent doodles – and Meloy's interpretation of them – that the boy was convicted, legal observers say. Prosecutors "bombarded" jurors with blown-up images of the doodles, projected onto the wall of the courtroom.

The News article continues here.

My more recent posts on this case are here and here.

The Denver Post has additional coverage of the case and an online video, "Sketchy Evidence: The Story of Tim Masters." The Pro Libertate blog has case analysis, graphics, and links. And there's even a blog devoted solely to the case, Free Tim Masters Because, which has a lengthy page devoted to the role of Dr. Meloy. See further commentary on this topic at the Witness LA blog.

Of profiling, astrology, and magic

Malcolm Gladwell exposes the tricks of forensic profilers

The Rainbow Ruse, the Barnum Statement, the Fuzzy Fact, the Greener Grass technique, the Diverted Question, the Russian Doll, Sugar Lumps, Forking, and the Good Chance Guess.

These are all magic tricks described in the classic how-to manual of magician Ian Rowland, "The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading." When skillfully woven together, these tricks can convince even the most skeptical observer that you possess uncanny wisdom and insight.

For example, take the Rainbow Ruse. Here, one attributes to the listener both a personality trait and its opposite, as in: "I would say that on the whole you can be rather a quiet, self effacing type, but when the circumstances are right, you can be quite the life and soul of the party if the mood strikes you." Or, the Barnum Statement, an assertion so general that anyone would agree. And the Fuzzy Fact: a seemingly factual statement couched in ambiguity, as in: "I can see a connection with Europe, possibly Britain, or it could be the warmer, Mediterranean part?"

Writing in the Nov. 12 New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell presents a crash course in how such time-worn magic tricks have convinced the world of the scientific legitimacy and deductive powers of forensic profiling.

Like a fortune teller's prognostications, the profiles generated by famous FBI profilers John Douglas and Robert Ressler are "so full of unverifiable and contradictory and ambiguous language that [they] can support virtually any interpretation." The magic lies in the fact that police detectives and laypersons alike do not realize this without the aid of detailed, sentence-by-sentence analyses.

Gladwell cites the research on profiling, which shows they are accurate enough to lead to an arrest in only a tiny fraction of cases, less than 3% in one study by the British Home Office.

Partly, the failure of profiling may be due to the unscientific manner in which its premises were generated. For example, the well-known organized/disorganized typology of serial killers – which falls apart under empirical scrutiny – came out of a convenience sample of offenders interviewed using no scientific, standardized method. FBI profilers Douglas and Ressler just "sat down and chatted" with "whoever happened to be in the neighborhood." That's not how one generates good science.

Criminal profiling is glorified in prime-time TV shows such as Criminal Minds. Perhaps as a result, I get multiple queries from youngsters interested in becoming criminal profilers. And I typically get at least one such student each year in my graduate courses on forensic psychology. As a result, I devote at least one lecture to debunking profiling as pseudoscience; I also make this point in my online essay on becoming a forensic psychologist. Thus, I am tremendously excited to see this lucid and wonderfully written essay in the popular press. Perhaps naively, I hope it may lay to rest some of the unwarranted allure of profiling.

Further resources:

The Forensic Psychologist's Casebook: Psychological Profiling and Criminal Investigation, edited by Laurence Alison

"The organized/disorganized typology of serial murder: Myth or model?" by Canter, D.V., Alison, L.J., Alison, E., & Wentink, N. (2004). Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, Vol. 10, pp. 293-320.

"Validities and Abilities in Criminal Profiling: A Critique of the Studies Conducted by Richard Kocsis and His Colleagues," by Bennell, C., Jones, N.J., & Taylor, P.J. (2006). International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology, Vol. 50, pp. 344-360.

Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology, edited by Charles Patrick Ewing and Joseph T. McCann (see especially Chapters 1 & 11, the latter a great account of profiling in the USS Iowa disaster)

"Criminal profiling: the reality behind the myth: Forensic psychologists are working with law enforcement officials to integrate psychological science into criminal profiling," by Lea Winerman, American Psychologist, August 2004.

Photos: Top: Robert Ressler (left) and John Douglas (right); Bottom: The presence of actor Shemar Moore in television's prime-time drama Criminal Minds hasn't hurt the popularity of criminal profiling.

ADDENDUM: Criminal profiler John Douglas, critiqued in Gladwell's essay, has issued a lengthy response that is printed in full at the Crimson Shadows blog.

What's it take to become a forensic psychologist?

Profilers. Silence of the Lambs. The criminal mind. So eerie, so glamorous.

***** NOTE: AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS ESSAY IS AVAILABLE HERE. *****

I get many emails and phone calls from students interested in pursuing forensic psychology as a career. So, by popular demand, here is a brief overview.

First, what is a forensic psychologist?

Forensic psychologists are licensed clinical psychologists who specialize in applying psychological knowledge to legal matters, both in the criminal and civil arenas. Forensic psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology, with its own professional organizations, training programs, and research journals. Forensic psychologists are found in academia, public service, and the private sector.

Forensic psychologists are called upon to assist in a wide variety of legal matters, including the mental state of criminal defendants (insanity, competency, etc.), jury selection, child custody/family law, violence risk prediction, mediation/dispute resolution, discrimination, civil damages, social science research (e.g., recovered memory), and civil commitment.

What is the state of the field?

Forensic psychology is a rapidly growing discipline. Currently, the American Psychology-Law Society has about 3,000 members, and the number continues to grow. Many experienced psychologists are seeking to respecialize into this field in order to escape the confines of managed care. Students are attracted to the field by our culture's growing absorption with all matters criminal, as well as fictional depictions such as TV's The Profiler and Criminal Minds.

The growth of forensic psychology is not without controversy. Some have accused forensic psychologists of being hired guns or even - less politely - "whores." Recent federal court decisions are causing increasing scientific scrutiny of psychological evidence. This in turn is leading to the development of increasingly rigorous training programs, instruments, and procedures that will allow us to withstand such adversarial scrutiny.

In the long run, well-trained forensic psychologists will likely fare well in the increasingly skeptical marketplace of the future.

What skills must a forensic psychologist have?

Forensic psychologists are psychological scientists. The investigatory component requires strong detective skills. We must compare data from multiple sources in order to test alternative hypotheses. The emphasis is on written reports and court testimony that are scientifically valid and can withstand scrutiny in the adversarial environment of the courtroom.

Becoming a successful forensic psychologist requires, at minimum, the following:

• solid clinical psychology training and experience

• firm grounding in scientific theory and empirical research (understanding of scientific validity, research design, statistics, and testing)

• critical thinking

• thorough knowledge of social and cultural issues

• legal knowledge (including mental health law, case law, and courtroom procedures)

• excellent writing skills

• strong oral presentation skills (and ability to maintain composure in stressful circumstances)

So, how can I sign on?

At the present time, there is no single acceptable training model for forensic psychologists.

The dominant model continues to be one in which a student obtains a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, and subsequently pursues a postdoctoral specialization in forensics. However, more and more graduate schools are beginning to adopt forensic tracks. An online list of institutions offering various types of Ph.D./Psy.D. programs in forensic psychology is available here.

Some newer programs also offer terminal master's degrees in forensic psychology, although it is unclear how master's level clinicians will fare in a field dominated by professionals with more advanced degrees.

Only a handful of formal postdoctoral specialization programs exist nationwide, and these programs are quite small and selective, typically accepting only one to two candidates per year. These rigorous programs are aimed at training future leaders in the field.

Some people also pursue dual degrees in psychology and law. There are a few such joint degree programs, and some law schools offer a scaled-down, one-year Master of Legal Studies degree. Having a dual degree may make one more competitive, but for most practitioners it is not realistic or cost-effective.

A more thorough discussion of the pros and cons of different types of educational programs is available in the brand-new edition of Psychological Evaluations for the Courts.

The Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice has just (Vol. 7 #2, 2007) published a point-counterpoint pair of articles on whether forensic psychology should necessarily require a doctoral degree:

"Raising the bar: The case for doctoral training in forensic psychology," by Carl B. Clements, Ph.D., ABPP, and Emily E. Wakeman, MA

"The time is now: The emerging need for master's-level training in forensic psychology," by Matt Zaitchik, Ph.D., Garrett Berman, Ph.D., Don Whitworth, Ph.D., & Judith Platania, Ph.D.

What tips do you have for trainees?

• Apply for forensic-related internships, such as at forensic hospitals, correctional facilities, and community mental health settings.

• Tailor your doctoral dissertation to a psychology-law topic in your area of professional interests.

• Become a student member of the American Psychology-Law Society, an interdisciplinary organization devoted to scholarship, practice, and public service in psychology and law.

• Purchase and read Psychological Evaluations for the Courts, a critical resource in forensic psychology.

• Stay current by regularly reading the leading journals in the field, among them Law and Human Behavior, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, and Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

Becoming successful in this field is an arduous endeavor. However, for those with the energy, stamina and critical thinking skills, it can be a rewarding occupation.

But what about criminal profiling?

Oh, yes. That question.

Unfortunately, one of students’ biggest misconceptions about forensic psychology is that we do criminal profiling. This mythology comes directly from movies and TV shows such as Silence of the Lambs, Criminal Minds, and The Profiler.

In reality, most law enforcement agencies do not regularly use criminal profiling methods. When they do, they typically employ profilers with extensive backgrounds in law enforcement rather than in psychology. Perhaps more importantly, many scholars dispute that profiling even qualifies as a scientific method meriting inclusion in the behavioral sciences.

So, if your primary interest is in criminal profiling, the field of forensic psychology may not be for you.

***** NOTE: AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS ESSAY IS AVAILABLE HERE. *****

Did forensic profile go too far?

Psychological profile helped convict teen who maintains his innocence

Police detective Jim Broderick in Fort Collins had set his sights on 15-year-old Tim Masters. He was convinced that the boy had kidnapped, sexually mutilated, and murdered a woman.

No physical evidence tied the boy to the crime. But for years after the 1987 crime went cold, Detective Broderick continued to insist that Masters was the killer.

The detective was haunted by Masters’ oddness during questioning, his collection of survival knives, and the timing of the woman’s death - within a day of the fourth anniversary of the boy's mother's death. But most troubling of all, according to a Denver Post expose on the case, were Masters’ violent sketches. Especially one featuring a blade tearing into a diamond shape.

Finally, in 1995, Broderick telephoned forensic psychologist Reid Meloy and asked him to study Masters' artwork. “Meloy had developed a reputation as an expert witness on sexual homicides,” writes Post reporter Miles Moffeit. “He even disclosed a deeply personal fascination with the subject, according to court testimony, saying he himself had sexually sadistic fantasies.”

Without interviewing Masters, Meloy wrote a damning opinion: Masters fit the profile of a killer because he was a loner who came from an isolated or deprived background and harbored hidden hostility toward authorities as well as violent fantasies. This was a displaced sexual matricide, stemming from Masters' feelings of abandonment by his dead mother. "The killing of Ms. Hettrick translated Tim Masters' grandiose fantasy into reality," Meloy wrote.

Meloy’s profile helped garner a conviction, and in 1999 Masters was sentenced to life in prison.

Now, a legal team has launched what the Post characterizes as “one of the most ambitious and expensive bids ever in Colorado to prove a man's innocence.” The investigation focuses on a sexually deviant medical doctor who lived near the scene of the killing; the doctor committed suicide and police destroyed much of the physical evidence that could have tied him to the crime.

Watch the Denver Post's online video, “The Story of Tim Masters,” which shows details of Masters' interrogations at the hands of police.

My more recent posts on this topic are here, here, and here.

Thanks to Denver forensic psychologist Michael Karson for bringing this case to my attention.

Report provides blueprint for reducing wrongful convictions

Jeffrey Deskovic was 16 when he confessed to raping and murdering a classmate. He spent the next 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Now, the District Attorney’s Office has released an independent review of the case that provides a blueprint of what goes wrong in false confession cases, and how to fix the problems.

The case against Deskovic was built on his own statements, most of them unrecorded. No eyewitnesses or physical evidence connected him to the crime. Indeed, seminal fluid and hairs found in and on the victim’s body “definitely excluded” him.

Over the years, Deskovic exhausted all of his state and federal appeals. But he did not give up trying to prove his innocence. Finally, the Innocence Project took his case. The DNA found on the victim was matched to a man serving life for another murder. That man subsequently confessed and pleaded guilty. Deskovic was released last November.

The independent review was commissioned by the D.A.’s office and prepared by two retired judges, a former district attorney, and a criminal defense attorney. It highlights the following structural errors, many of them common in wrongful confession cases:

Over-reliance on offender “profiling”: Police obtained an offender “profile” that proved inaccurate in almost every way, but which fit Deskovic.

Tunnel vision: Partly because of the profile, police and prosecutors focused unduly on Deskovic. Taking advantage of his youth, naivete, and psychological vulnerabilitites, they hammered at the 16-year-old until he confessed. As is common in these types of cases, they failed to adequately investigate other theories of the crime or other potential suspects.

Failure to record statements: Police only selectively recorded the series of statements that they took from Deskovic over a period of days. In one of several interviews, they recorded only 30 minutes out of four hours. On the day he confessed, nothing was recorded. Prosecutors told the jury that Deskovic knew details of the crime that only the killer could know. Given his innocence, it is likely that police – either deliberately or inadvertently – communicated that information to him during the questioning.

Downplaying of physical evidence: Police ignored the fact that no physical evidence tied Deskovic to the crime. At trial, the prosecutor presented “strained and shifting theories” to explain away the DNA evidence.

Defense failures: The defense failed to present evidence about false confessions, such as why someone might confess due to their psychological vulnerabilities, or the rates of such confessions. The defense also did not adequately confront the lack of scientific evidence against their client, which should have been the “centerpiece” of their case.

The task force strongly recommended that police videotape the entirety of all interrogations in felony cases. In addition, they recommended honoring defendants’ post-conviction requests for DNA matching. It was not until a new chief prosecutor was appointed in Westchester County that Deskovic’s repeated requests were finally granted, leading to his exoneration.

The report is available at the Westchester District Attorney’s website.

The Innocence Project's profile of Deskovic is also available online.

Hat tip to Jane for alerting me to this report.