Execution Slated Despite Recanted Testimonies

From National Public Radio's "All Things Considered":

"Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia later this month, despite the fact that most of the witnesses have recanted their testimony and implicated another man — new evidence that has never been heard. Davis is a black man convicted of killing a white police officer. There was no physical evidence in the case."

Listen to the show.

See the State of Georgia's press release and Amnesty International coverage of the case.

UPDATE: On July 15, after a national outcry over the case, Davis received a 90-day stay of execution. Former Congressman and U.S. Attorney Bob Barr's editorial on the case appeared in the Aug. 9 Atlanta Journal-Constitution and also on his web site, the Barr Report.

New book on offender rehabilitation

A new book by two leading criminologists, Shadd Maruna and Tony Ward, promises to make an important contribution to criminology. Here’s the blurb for Rehabilitation:

“Over the last two decades, empirical evidence has increasingly supported the view that it is possible to reduce re-offending rates by rehabilitating offenders rather than simply punishing them. In fact, the pendulum’s swing back from a pure punishment model to a rehabilitation model is arguably one of the most significant events in modern correctional policy. This comprehensive review argues that rehabilitation should focus both on promoting human goods (i.e. providing the offender with the essential ingredients for a 'good' life), as well as reducing/avoiding risk.

“Offering a succinct summary and critique of the scientific approach to offender rehabilitation, this intriguing volume for students of criminology, sociology and clinical psychology gives a comprehensive evaluation of both the Risk-Need Model and the Good Lives Model.

“Rehabilitation is a value-laden process involving a delicate balance of the needs and desires of clinicians, clients, the State and the public. Written by two international leading academics in rehabilitation research, this book argues that intervention with offenders is not simply a matter of implementing the best therapeutic technology and leaving political and social debate to politicians and policy makers.”

More information on this book is available at Psychology Press’s new on-line “Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry Arena.”

Tragic end for Texas hate crime victim

David Ritcheson was a popular 16-year-old at his Houston high school. He played football and was featured in a fashion layout in the school yearbook.

Then, last April, the young Mexican-American made the mistake of attending a party at which racist skinheads were present.

Ostensibly because Ritcheson had drunkenly tried to kiss a 12-year-old girl, two white supremacists shouting “White Power!” viciously beat and sodomized him with the pipe of a plastic umbrella stand. The attack lasted over an hour. Ritcheson was knocked unconscious and internally injured. He barely survived.

After months of hospitalization and dozens of surgeries, he physically recovered enough to testify before a Congressional committee in support of a hate crimes bill.

But psychologically, he never recovered. He declined counseling, and he never talked about his experience. In an interview earlier this year, he said it was hard to handle being known as “the kid” – the victim of an infamous hate crime.

Last week, the small, quiet young man leapt to his death from a cruise ship.

His attackers, David Tuck and Keith Turner, are serving prison terms of life and 90 years, respectively.

For more on the psychosocial motivations underlying these types of crimes, see my article, "Enacting Masculinity."

Hat tip to Jane for alerting me to this report.

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.

Psychologists and Torture

By Larry Wright, the Detroit News

Racial Bias in Jury Selection is Common Yet Denied, Study Finds

It is illegal to kick someone off a jury because of his or her race. That’s what the Supreme Court ruled back in 1986, in the case of Batson v. Kentucky. But in the real world, proving such a “Batson violation” is next-to impossible.

Now, researchers have validated this difficulty through laboratory research examining the decision-making of three groups of participants – college students, advanced law students, and practicing attorneys.

Participants were told to assume the role of a prosecutor in a criminal trial involving a Black defendant. Across the board, participants kicked off Black jurors at higher rates than White jurors. But they justified their decisions using race-neutral excuses.

This research finding conforms to a growing body of data on subtle, sometimes unconscious racism.

“People can offer compelling explanations for their behavior even when unaware of the factors – such as race – that are actually influential,” wrote researchers Samuel Sommers and Michael Norton in the current issue of the journal Law & Human Behavior. “Even if attorneys consciously and strategically consider race during jury selection, they would be unlikely to admit it.”

Of course, prosecutors do not have to be closet racists to dismiss African American jurors. Jury research consistently finds that African Americans are less likely than are White jurors to convict, particularly in interracial cases involving African American defendants. Such findings are complicated, however, because real-life juries are complex groups rather than the single individuals used in most of the laboratory studies.

The full article, “Race-Based Judgments, Race-Neutral Justifications: Experimental Examination of Peremptory Use and the Batson Challenge Procedure,” is available on-line.

See also, "How Much Do We Really Know about Race and Juries? A Review of Social Science Theory and Research." S. R. Sommers and Phoebe Ellsworth, Chicago-Kent Law Review, 2003, pp. 997-1031.