Gory details sway jurors to convict

That's the fascinating finding from new research out of Australia. As reported in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

JURORS given gruesome evidence including pictures of a murder victim or descriptions of torture and mutilation are more than five times more likely to convict than jurors not given gory details, Australian research shows.

Findings from mock criminal trial studies by University of NSW researchers provide the first direct link indicating that juries might be prejudiced by such evidence and might make biased decisions influenced by a desire to punish.

One researcher, a university PhD candidate, David Bright, said both those studies, and a third with similar results involving a mock civil accident damages case, were the first in which "emotional reactions were directly measured in response to gruesome photos which were then shown to have an impact on decisions" of the mock jurors. The results underscore concern expressed more than 20 years ago by the Australian Law Reform Commission that allowing gruesome evidence could be prejudicial to defendants.

Mr Bright, soon to submit his PhD in forensic psychology, said Australian judges were more likely to override defence objections and admit gruesome evidence because its probative value, or ability to prove or disprove a controverted fact, outweighed any potential negative influence.

The story continues here.

Nov. 26 UPDATE: The jury consultation blog DELIBERATIONS has more detail on this topic.

California court upholds indeterminate commitment of Sexually Violent Predators

An appellate court yesterday denied a challenge by a group of civilly committed sex offenders to the state's new Jessica's Law.

The sex offenders had argued that the indeterminate commitment provision of Jessica's Law did not apply retroactively to them. Prior to last year's passage of the Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act (Proposition 83, or Jessica's Law), civilly committed sex offenders were entitled to a jury trial every two years on the issue of whether they remained mentally disordered and dangerous. Now, commitments are for an indefinite period. A group of previously committed sex offenders whose recommitment petitions were pending when the law passed had argued that they should either be released or, at minimum, should remain entitled to a new hearing every two years. A new law cannot be applied retroactively unless it specifically says so in the text of the law, they pointed out.

In the ruling, Bourquez v. Superior Court, the Third District Court of Appeal disagreed. Using rather strained logic, the court held that it is not a retroactive action to apply the new law's commitment criteria, because an extension hearing is "a new and independent proceeding" aimed at determining the person's current mental state. Under California's SVP law, a sex offender may be civilly committed if he has a mental disorder that keeps him from controlling his sexually violent behavior, making him dangerous and likely to sexually reoffend. (See Hubbart v. Superior Court, 1999, 19 Cal.4th 1138.)

The intention of both Jessica's Law and a similar bill passed by the state Legislature earlier last year (the Sex Offender Punishment, Control, and Containment Act of 2006, SB 1128) was to increase the punishment and control of sex offenders, not to let some SVP's go free, the court pointed out.

Much of the media coverage of Jessica's Law has focused on its residency restrictions banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or parks, its longer periods of parole, and its requirement that sex offenders be monitored for life using global positioning technology.

But the changes in the SVP laws under which people may be civilly committed after serving their criminal sentences were also significant. The previous requirement of two separate victims was reduced to only one victim. The single offense may have been committed as a juvenile. And the requirement of "substantial sexual conduct" in crimes against children was eliminated. Theoretically, then, the new law might allow lifetime commitment of a 16-year-old who had fondled a child on a single occasion.

Yesterday's ruling will likely further foment the unrest I've been reporting (here and here) among the men being held at Coalinga State Hospital.

The full text of the ruling in Bourquez v. Superior Court (2007 SOS 6712) is available here. The changes to California statutory law made by Jessica's Law are viewable here. (The SVP provisions fall under Welfare & Institutions Code sections 6600 et seq.) California's Department of Mental Health also has a listing of related statutes and legal cases, online here.
Photo credit: lyzadanger - "The End of Coalinga, California" (Creative Commons license)

L.A. Times investigates "Titanic State Hospital"

"BREAKDOWN"

California's sex offender treatment and detention center in shambles

Two days ago, I posted about the continuing problems at Coalinga State Hospital, California's expensive new detention facility for civilly committed sex offenders. Today's L.A. Times features an in-depth look at the institution's problems. The article, "Breakdown: Turmoil replaces treatment at Coalinga hospital," is written by Scott Gold and Lee Romney, who have been covering California's troubled state hospital system over the past couple of years. Astonishingly, the reporters found a former psychiatric technician from the hospital who was willing to assert on record that many of the men being detained at Coalinga pose little risk to the community if released.

Excerpts of the hard-hitting article follow; the full article (plus a photo gallery) is available online.

Two years after California opened the nation's largest facility designed to house and treat men who have been declared sexually violent predators, Coalinga State Hospital is described by both patients and staff as an institution in turmoil.

Convinced that they stand little chance of being released and angry about perceived deficiencies at the hospital, patients are engaged in a tense standoff with administrators, according to interviews with more than 40 patients and staff members.

… "We're calling it the Titanic State Hospital," said a psychiatric technician who, like most other current employees, spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from administrators. "We've lost control. I've been saying for a couple of months now that the monkeys are running the circus."

Patients, meanwhile, are despairing.

"It's hopeless," said Robert Bates, 41, who was sent to Coalinga after serving a 10-year prison term for committing a lewd and lascivious act. "This is a therapeutic setting, supposedly. But it's nothing more than a mock-up prison. They can call it what they want. But it's prison."

… Michael Feer, a psychiatric social worker with more than three decades of experience, worked at Coalinga for a year before leaving this spring. He now works in San Diego County with recently paroled sex offenders, men who in some cases committed the same crimes as those at Coalinga but who are being released into the community, he said.

Feer said that although all Coalinga patients qualify as violent predators on paper, he believes that more than a third of them would pose no threat if released.

"They did their time, and suddenly they are picked up again and shipped off to a state hospital for essentially an indeterminate period of time," Feer said. To get out, he added, "they have to demonstrate that they are no longer a risk, which can be a very high standard. So, yeah, they do have grounds to be very upset."

The hospital, Feer said, "is a setup" - ostensibly a treatment hospital but one built with a wink to a public that has little compunction about locking up sex offenders forever....

Article continues here.

Oregon high court clarifies drug-free school zone law

Prosecutor need not prove defendant's knowledge

A drug dealer need not know of his proximity to a school in order to be convicted under a drug-free school zone law, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled. The ruling follows similar case law in other states.

Oregon's law is intended to protect children "regardless of whether the dealers know they are within 1,000 feet of a school," the ruling states.

"That's typical with drug crimes when you're looking ... at the social harm as opposed to the mental intent of the seller," commented law professor Laura Appleman.

A 2001 study by the Boston University School of Public Health found that a similar drug zone law was not effective in reducing drug sales near schools.

The full AP story is online at the Oregon Statesman Journal website.

Criminal justice news out of Washington

Prisoner reentry

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to provide help to people leaving prison. The Second Chance Act of 2007 would ease the re-entry process by providing increased funding for mentoring programs, substance abuse treatment and job training.

Federal sentencing equity

Earlier this month, the U.S. Sentencing Commission lowered the federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses due to widespread concern over racial inequities. That change will likely impact about 3,500 prisoners per year, reducing the average sentence by 15 months.

Yesterday, the commission held a hearing into whether the change should be made retroactive. That would make about 19,500 crack cocaine offenders now in prison eligible for shorter sentences. The U.S. Justice Department strongly opposes retroactivity.

Paul G. Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, has an excellent op-ed in today’s Washington Post that provides a lot of background on this issue, along with links to further references.

More information on these and related issues is at The Sentencing Project.

Studies debunk popular beliefs about youth sexuality

Two new studies are contradicting widely held beliefs about adolescents and sex.

Sex and delinquency

The cause-and-effect link between early sexual activity and juvenile delinquency is widely accepted. Teaching youngsters about this link is even a mandated component of federally funded "abstinence-only" school curricula. But researchers from the University of Virginia, studying 500 pairs of twins within a larger data set of 7,000 children, have made a surprising finding: All other things being equal, adolescents who have consensual sex earlier are less likely to end up delinquent.

"There is a cultural assumption in the United States that if teens have sex early it is somehow bad for their psychological health," said the study's lead researcher, Paige Harden. "But we actually found that teens who had sex earlier seem to have better relationships later."

The surprise finding "calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems," Harden added. More useful, she said, might be education pertaining to the prevention of contraception and venereal disease.

Hip hop music and sexual activity

Another assumed connection challenged by recent research studies is that between the explicit sexual lyrics of hip hop music and early sexual behavior.

After spending three years studying the hip hop dance club scene in New York, a Columbia University professor said the relationship is more complicated. Rather than music and dancing, it is the old standbys of alcohol, drugs and peer pressure that influenced sexual behavior, found Miguel A. Muñoz-Laboy.

That finding is consistent with last year's research by the Rand Corporation finding that degrading lyrics, not sexual lyrics, are connected with early sex. Out of the 1,400 teenagers interviewed for the Rand study, those who listened to the highest levels of sexually degrading lyrics were twice as likely to have had sex by the end of the two-year study. The researchers defined degrading lyrics as those that portrayed women as sexual objects and men as insatiable.

The San Francisco Chronicle has online coverage of the sex and delinquency research. The Munoz-Laboy study on the hip hop dance scene is in the current (November) issue of the journal Culture, Health, and Sexuality. The New York Times has additional coverage. The Rand study was published last year in the journal Pediatrics.