Atkins claims: Did Texas psychologist skew data for death?

Denkowski faces loss of license for role in capital appeals

The U.S. Supreme Court's Atkins decision triggered a wave of ferocious legal battles in the 35 death penalty states. Since 2002, an estimated 7 percent of condemned prisoners have filed Atkins claims on the basis of mental retardation, with about 40 percent succeeding. As of mid-2008, by one tally, at least 82 death sentences had been overturned on Atkins grounds.

At the center of these ongoing skirmishes are forensic psychologists, whose expert opinions about a condemned prisoner's IQ and real-world functioning can literally make the difference between life and death.

With so much at stake, the pull toward partisanship is especially strong. In Texas, one psychologist who has testified in a whopping 29 cases -- nearly two-thirds of all Atkins appeals in that state -- now faces the loss of his license for alleged errors that systematically favored prosecutors.

George Denkowski skewed the administration and interpretation of test data to rule out mental retardation, according to an expose by investigative reporter Renée Feltz in the current issue of the Texas Observer. The state Board of Examiners of Psychologists has upheld a complaint against him, finding that he made "administration, scoring and mathematical errors" in three death penalty evaluations. The State Office of Administrative Hearings will hear his case Feb. 16.

The complaint was initiated by Jerome Brown, a forensic psychologist who had worked on opposite sides from Denkowski in five capital cases and was appalled by his technique of inflating obtained IQ and adaptive functioning scores through "estimation."

As Denkowski explained his method in the American Journal of Forensic Psychology, he uses a "composite methodology" to inflate the scores of "persons from the criminal socioculture," on the grounds that formal testing assesses "mainstream skills" that criminal offenders never learn.

In the case of Daniel Plata, a Mexican immigrant featured in the Observer expose, Denkowski used this clinical judgment technique to raise Plata's adaptive-behavior score from 61 to 71, and his IQ score from 70 to 77. (Antonin Llorente, a neuropsychologist who evaluated Plata in his native Spanish, reported Plata's IQ score as 65.)

Click on above image to see excerpt of
Denkowski's videotaped evaluation of Daniel Plata.

This subtly racist argument of cultural deficit seems to be becoming increasingly popular as a way to explain away the deficits of low-functioning Mexican immigrants in particular. I have encountered it in recent cases I have been involved in. Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics, offers a psychometric critique over at his Intellectual Competence and the Death Penalty blog, focusing on another Texas death case involving a Mexican immigrant.

After hearing all of the evidence in the Plata case, Federal District Court Judge Brock Kent Ellis issued a scathing critique of Denkowski's method, writing that all of his testimony "must be disregarded due to fatal errors." Plata’s sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Plata's lawyer, Kathryn Kase, told the Observer that all 17 appeals in which Denkowski opined against mental retardation should be re-heard:

"When you have junk science in a case, it’s like pouring poison into a punch bowl. You aren’t going to get the poison out. So you have to pour out the punch, clean the bowl, and start all over again."

In the case of one convict, Michael Richard, that suggestion comes too late. Richard has already been executed.

According to the Observer article, Denkowski originally opined that Richard was mentally retarded, with an IQ of 64 and an adaptive-behavior score of 57, well below the 70 cutoff. But he adjusted his scores after prosecutors showed him a list of books found in Richard's cell, concluding that Richard’s reading level suggested he was not retarded.

The defense psychologist, Jerome Brown, said when he asked Richard about these books -- one of which was written in German -- the prisoner said he used the books to sit on, since his death row cell lacked a chair.

Denkowski's unorthodox method has sparked outrage in the psychological community, including two rebuttals in the American Journal of Forensic Psychology (see resources below) and a pointed caution in the 2010 edition of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities’ diagnostic manual against use of his method.

Further resources:

Denkowski, George C. & Denkowski, Kathryn M. (2008). Adaptive behavior assessment of criminal defendants with a mental retardation claim, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 26, Issue 3, pp. 43-61.

Widaman, Keith F. & Siperstein, Gary N. (2009). Assessing adaptive behavior of criminal defendants in capital cases: A reconsideration, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 5-32 (response to Denkowski and Denkowski 2008)

Denkowski, George C. & Denkowski, Kathryn M. (2009). Adaptive behavior misconceptions about criminal defendants with a mental retardation claim: A response to Widaman and Siperstein, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 33-61

Olley, J. Gregory (2009) Challenges in implementing the Atkins decision, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 63-73 (response to Denkowski and Denkowski 2009)

Blume, John H., Johnson, Sheri Lynn, and Seeds, Christopher (2009), An Empirical Look at Atkins v. Virginia and Its Application in Capital Cases, Tennessee Law Review, Volume 76, p. 625

New findings on juvenile sex offending

Sexually Violent Predator laws have so colored our perceptions that we often ignore a more typical type of sex offender -- the kid next-door. Indeed, of known sex offenders against children, more than a third are other juveniles, according to a new study commissioned by the Justice Department.

Most of these young offenders are not pedophiles or sexual deviants. Rather, they are sexual experimenters, date rapists, and boys who commit sexual assaults as part of a group. Risk of sexual acting out increases sharply as boys enter puberty, and plateaus at age 14, according to the study. The overwhelming majority of youths apprehended for sexual misconduct -- an estimated 85-95 percent -- have no further arrests for sex offenses.

This suggests that new federal rules placing juveniles on public sex offender registries are counterproductive, as the broad majority of youthful sex offenders will mature out of offending and should not be stigmatized for life. Rather, says study co-author David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, early sex education is a key to preventing youthful sexual misconduct.

Even as U.S. states get set to implement the registration and reporting requirements of the Adam Walsh Protection and Safety Act this year, under penalty of losing grants if they do not comply, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee is receiving testimony about problems with the registry.

"There are some very compelling cases that ... don't rise to the threshold of a predator and shouldn't be on the register," Republican Representative Tonya Schuitmaker of Michigan, a member of the committee, told the Michigan Herald-Palladium. "Unfortunately, they get lumped in with the predators."

The newspaper cited as an example the case of a 17-year-old boy who perfectly illustrates the juvenile study findings:

Since committing his offenses between the ages of 12-14, he has not had any further problems. He successfully completed probation and 200 hours of public service work and he excels in school, where he plays several sports. Yet, when he turns 18 his name will be placed on a registry that will stigmatize him until his 40s.

Gloria Gillespie, a sex offender therapist, told the newspaper that the boy's offenses were exploratory, and he is not a predator at risk of committing new offenses.

"Juvenile murderers get off at 21 and they're not on any list," she said. "What's the purpose of this?"

The juvenile study is available here; USA Today coverage is here. An excellent Herald-Palladium (Michigan) article on sex offender registries is here. Graphics credit: Adreson (Creative Commons license)

ON A RELATED NOTE: For a judicial analysis of the punitive and stigmatizing impact of the federal reporting law (SORNA), see the Maine Supreme Court opinion in Maine v. Letalien. Eric S. Letalien was 19 years old when he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl. He was sentenced to prison and placed on a public registry for 15 years. Later, the law was amended, requiring him to register for life. He appealed, citing the negative impact on his ability to maintain employment and fulfill his roles as a husband and a father. In last month's decision, Maine's Supreme Court overturned the lifetime registration requirement in cases like Letalien's as unconstitutional on ex post facto grounds.

2009: Bad year for death penalty

The writing is on the wall: Death sentences are at an all-time low, more states are abolishing capital punishment altogether, and -- in what is being called a "tectonic shift" -- the American Law Institute announced it will wash its hands of the enterprise.

Adam Liptak, the New York Times' astute legal analyst, says that of all of last year's developments, the American Law Institute action is the most critical. The influential institute, comprised of 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors, created the modern framework for the death penalty in its 1962 Model Penal Code. Its vote to abandon its capital punishment structure followed a study finding that the system was plagued with systemic problems, including racial disparities, risks of executing innocent people, and exorbitant costs.

A campaign to have the institute take a formal stance against the death penalty failed, Liptak said in yesterday's column. Instead, the institute voted to disavow the structure it had created "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."

Meanwhile, New Mexico last year joined 14 other states that have abolished the death penalty in favor of the option of life without the possibility of parole. And although the number of executions was up nationwide from the previous year (from 37 to 52), fewer new death sentences were imposed than in any year since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

That may reflect not only dwindling popular support for capital punishment, but also the high costs during these tough economic times. The ever-rational state of California, which bucked the national trend despite an especially acute economic crisis, is spending an estimated $137 million per year on the death enterprise not including an estimated $400 million for a new facility to house its 690 death row prisoners, Time magazine reported.

Summing up the current pendulum shift, Time noted: "Urgently important to fewer and fewer people, yet less and less compelling to the country at large, the death penalty keeps sputtering along, dwindling as the years go by."

Graphics credit: Finishing-school (Creative Commons license)
Double hat tips: Tim D. and Gretchen W.

Best wishes for the holidays

If you have noticed a dearth of posts lately, it is because I am taking a holiday break. Until my return, I would like to wish all of you -- and especially my loyal subscribers -- a wonderful holiday season and a new year of peace and happiness.

Karen Franklin, Ph.D.

The high court and "selective empathy"

In a previous blog post, I briefly referenced the U.S. Supreme Court's recent opinion in Porter v. McCullum. The high court unanimously reversed a death verdict because the defense attorney failed to present mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of the trial.

George Porter Jr. was convicted of shooting his former girlfriend and her new lover to death. The potentially mitigating evidence that the jury didn't get to hear included military heroism during the Korean War, post-war adjustment problems, childhood victimization, a brain abnormality, inadequate schooling, and limited literacy.

The decision was widely hailed by death penalty opponents and veterans' groups. But Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times for 30 years and now teaches at Yale Law School, says the decision raises an important question about equity:

Is selective empathy better than no empathy at all?

Greenhouse was struck by "the sympathy that all nine justices displayed for a man who, in the fullness of his adulthood and after promising a friend that she would soon be reading about him in the newspaper, stole another friend’s gun and shot two people to death in cold blood."

She contrasted this with the court's unanimous opinion just last month in another case alleging inadequate representation and failure to adequately pursue mitigation themes in a death case. That case involved Robert Van Hook, also a military veteran, who robbed and murdered a man he picked up in a gay bar. In a decision that "sent chills down the spine of death-penalty opponents," the high court overturned an appellate reprieve, paving the way for Van Hook's execution.

Comments Greenhouse:

Setting the Porter and the Van Hook cases side by side, what strikes me is how similarly horrific the two men's childhoods were -- indeed, how common such childhoods were among the hundreds of death-row inmates whose appeals I have read over the years and, I have to assume, among the 3,300 people on death row today. It is fanciful to suppose that each of these defendants had lawyers who made the effort to dig up the details and offer these sorry life stories to the jurors who would weigh their fate.

I don't make that observation to excuse the crimes of those on death row, but only to underscore the anomaly of the mercy the court bestowed this week on one of that number. Am I glad that a hapless 77-year-old man won't be put to death by the State of Florida? Yes, I am. Am I concerned about a Supreme Court that dispenses empathy so selectively? Also yes.

The full essay, well worth your perusal, is online HERE.

APA announces postponement of DSM-V

Today, shortly after the New Scientist article and editorial hit the Internet, the American Psychiatric Association issued a press release announcing that the publication of the DSM-V will be delayed by at least a year. The "anticipated release date" was moved back from mid-2012 to May 2013. The timing is rather prophetic on the part of reporter Peter Aldhous, who concluded his New Scientist article by predicting:

The final version of DSM-V is scheduled to be published in 2012, but given the level of controversy and the need to test whether psychiatrists can reliably use the proposed diagnoses, that date seems certain to slip.

The full release from the American Psychiatric Association is HERE.