Are juries fair?

Whether you think so may depend on your race, according to the results of a Harris Poll released yesterday.

Not surprisingly, most white respondents said yes. Most African Americans said no.

To some extent, both answers may be right. Whether the jury system is fair may depend a lot on the race of the person being judged. At least that's what an expert witness testified just last week, at an ongoing hearing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts over whether a black man convicted of murder should get a new trial.

Christopher McCowen was convicted of murder by a mainly white jury. Within two weeks of his conviction, three jurors came forward with concerns about allegedly racist remarks made by other jurors. One juror, for example, reportedly argued during deliberations that blacks were more violent.

Sam Sommers, a Tufts University psychology professor who's done some intriguing research on jury deliberations (see my recent post), testified last week that this stereotype of black men as violent is pervasive, even among individuals who believe themselves to be fair-minded.

Sommers' research on jury deliberations helps explain the racial gap found by the Harris pollsters.

The pollsters found some other interesting things:

• Although most Americans have been called for jury duty, fewer than a quarter have actually served.

• More educated people are even less likely to serve.
  

That latter finding (about which the Drug and Device Law blog has more to say) is too bad for scientific expert witnesses, because educated people find it easier to grasp the technical concepts about which we are often called to testify.

Hat tip to the Deliberations blog. More resources on jury deliberations are available at my Jan. 3 post on Sommers' research. The Cape Cod Times has ongoing coverage of the McCowen case.

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?

Daryl Atkins, Lindsey Lohan, and the Cuckoo's Nest

This week has seen lots of interesting forensic news. A few highlights, with links:

Daryl Atkins' sentence commuted

On Thursday, more than five years after Daryl Atkins made legal history with a U.S. Supreme Court ban on executions of the mentally retarded, a judge commuted his death sentence to life in prison.

The reprieve came for reasons that few would have guessed during the ever twisting, nearly 12-year course of the case, which had focused largely on Atkins's mental limitations. Instead, it resulted from an allegation that prosecutors suppressed evidence prior to Atkins's murder trial in 1998.

The Washington Post has the story.

Cuckoo’s Nest still crazy

Most people know Oregon State Hospital only for the movie that it was based on, 1975's award-winning "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."

Well, it looks like Nurse Ratched never retired. A U.S. Justice Department report issued Wednesday cites numerous horror stories, including patient-on-patient assaults, outbreaks of infectious diseases, and a patient being held in seclusion without treatment for a year.

State officials said things have improved since the 2006 investigation, and that conditions at the crumbling, century-old psychiatric hospital are a symptom of years of neglect and underfunding of the entire public mental health system.

The Oregonian has the story. Also online are the federal report and a Pulitzer prize-winning series from the Oregonian, "Oregon’s Forgotten Hospital."

Better news from the other side of the country -
No more "hole" for mentally ill prisoners

On Tuesday, New York's legislature approved a landmark law to remove severely mentally ill prisoners from solitary confinement in prison and place them in secure treatment facilities.

Prisons will also be required to conduct periodic mental health assessments of all prisoners in segregated or special housing units known as SHUs, where they are typically locked up for 23 to 24 hours a day.

New York has had more prisoners in segregated units for disciplinary purposes than any state. Confinement in tiny cells for 23 to 24 hours a day is known to seriously worsen psychiatric illnesses, which are suffered by large numbers of prisoners. (See my online essay on segregation psychosis for more on this topic.)

The governor is expected to sign the law, paving the way for construction of the new residential mental health units.

Newsday and the Poughkeepsie Journal have more.

Online registry for domestic violence?

In another example of the potentially endless expansion of symbolic laws, a California lawmaker has introduced a bill to develop an online database of domestic violence offenders, modeled after the popular sex offender databases.

Although the San Jose Mercury News is reporting this as the first such law proposed in the United States, I blogged last June about a similar effort in Pennsylvania.

Whatever state gets to it first, it's just another misguided, tough-on-crime attempt to get votes, in my opinion. Why?

First, it is costly and likely to divert funds from existing domestic violence programs that are already facing cutbacks. (This week's Boston Globe, for example, reports that women are waiting weeks for scarce beds in battered women's shelters, forcing them to return to their abusers and face greater danger.)

Second, as mentioned by a spokeswoman for the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, a victims' advocacy group, women who have been wrongfully convicted of assaulting their abusers will likely find their names on the registry, creating further victimization.

Third, and most important in my opinion, is that these registries do more harm than good. They don't stop crime. All they do is stigmatize. The more they expand, the harder it is for people to get jobs, find housing, and be rehabilitated. And the number of candidate pools is endless: Drug offenders. Drunk drivers. Terrorists. Antiwar protesters. Traffic light violators.

The Mercury News has the story.

But what about Lindsey Lohan?

Oh yes, since I've been doing the celebrity blog thing lately, reporting on the Britney Spears-Phillip McGraw controversy, I must not neglect the innovative sentence handed down on Thursday to Ms. Lohan.

The L.A. courts have a program to show drivers the real-life consequences of drinking and driving. So as part of her sentence for misdemeanor drunk driving the 21-year-old actress must work at a morgue and a hospital emergency room for a couple of days each. I think it's a great idea. And maybe it will give her fodder for new acting roles. I'm rooting for her to get past all of this mess and get on with her promising career.

The Associated Press has the story.

Crime fears hijack science, make people sick

Crime calls forth so many emotions. Fascination. Horror. Anxiety. But probably most of all, fear.

Fear is a powerful emotion. In deft hands, it can drive public policy and create laws that engender more fear and more laws, in an escalating spiral.

In part due to this spiral, the crime-fighting industry has grown staggeringly. It's big business around the world. And that, of course, leads to - what else? - more fear of crime. The cult of crime dominates not only government, the news media and the entertainment industries but, increasingly, the fields of science and technology.

Indeed, one could argue that science and technology are being hijacked away from other, more productive ventures by the relentless focus on crime. Let's go to England for a couple examples of this.

"SmartWater" is a perfect example.

SmartWater a high-tech crime-fighting solution prominent in the UK. A special sprinkler sprays intruders with an invisible fluid containing a unique code connecting the crook to that specific location. At present, 15,000 homes and 117 schools in the town of Doncaster are armed with SmartWater. Think about the scientific resources that went into developing this tool.

Here's a fun fact: Three out of four criminals surveyed said they wouldn't break into a building if they saw the SmartWater logo on display.

I'm not kidding. This is from an actual study, done by a criminology researcher at the University of Leicester in England. How’s that for free advertising?

Microchip implants?

More controversial than SmartWater is the British plan to reduce prison overcrowding and keep track of sex offenders by injecting microchip tracking devices like those used on dogs, cats and cattle into the arms of offenders. One company plans deeper implants that could administer electroshock, broadcast messages, or even serve as microphones to transmit conversations.

Now, think about how society might benefit if -- instead of being diverted to high-tech crime-busting tools like these -- all of this money and scientific expertise was rechanneled to, say, innovative ways of combating heart disease.

Why heart disease?

Well, all roads leading back to Rome, it turns out that fear of crime may actually cause heart disease.

That's the finding from a study published last week in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers found that people who worried most about terrorism in the wake of 9/11 were way more likely than the rest of us to develop cardiovascular illness.

No matter that their chance of dying at the hands of international terrorists is about the same as the risk of being struck by an asteroid or, heaven forbid, drowning in a toilet.

Click here to watch a video of the lead researcher in the terrorism study, Alison Holman of the University of California at Irvine, discussing the findings. John Tierney, a science writer for the New York Times, has more to say here about how the "terrorism industry" distorts risks. More links on fear of terrorism are here.

Photo credit: IZ, "Industry of Fear" (Creative Commons license)

Costly SVP law enriching psychologists without netting more predators

With California children sharing textbooks in dilapidated schools where "riding the bus" is slang for mental illness, California is throwing away an extra $27 million a year evaluating more sex offenders under a new state law that's netting almost no additional culprits.

"Sex predator laws coming up empty" is the headline of that sad story in today's Contra Costa Times.

Under the expanded Sexually Violent Predator law passed by voters in 2006, more than 10 times as many men are being screened for possible civil commitment before being paroled from prison. But this drastic increase isn't radically increasing how many are being civilly committed as a danger to the public, because the old law was already catching most of the real bad guys.

The extra $27 million is only for psychological screenings. It doesn't include the added costs to house the backlog of prisoners awaiting evaluations. Almost six times as many prisoners are being detained at the state mental hospital in Coalinga past their parole dates, at a cost of about $12,500 a month each (more than twice the cost of a prison bed), according to the Contra Costa Times article.

Critics point out that the state has spent more than $1 billion on the SVP program to date, including the cost of building the new hospital in Coalinga, all to get fewer than 600 men off the streets.

Although this might not sound like much of a catch, there's one group I haven't heard complaining: the state evaluators. Some have seen their annual earnings from SVP evaluations and court testimony skyrocket to about $1 million. And that doesn't include their income from other work.

You can be sure that the largely working- and middle-class folks who serve on the typical jury at SVP civil commitment trials raise their eyebrows when they hear about this bonanza.

"It's silly, really,” Doug Tucker, a San Francisco Bay Area psychiatrist who does SVP evaluations for the state of Washington, commented to Times reporter John Simerman. "It's good employment for psychologists, but it doesn't really achieve anything. You're going to get a lot of people who don't have a sexual disorder, who just got drunk."

Photo credit: Rachael (Creative Commons license)

New book on cutting-edge controversies in psychology-law

Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom
Edited by Eugene Borgida and Susan T. Fiske

So many books are pouring out these days on forensic psychology and psychology-law that my first thought was, Do we really need another one? But when I took a look at the contributors and the topics I changed my mind. Why? Because this book focuses on the influences of stereotypes and prejudice, topics too often overlooked.

Says Claude Steele, the Stanford University scholar of stereotype-busting fame:

This world-class collection of scholars and researchers upends our common sense understandings of human prejudice and the law's ability to control it. Yet, just as importantly, it brings to the fore a vastly deeper understanding of these issues. It is more than a state of the art collection. It is a classic collection that, for a long time, will be indispensable to discussions of prejudice and the law, as well as the relationship between science and the public good.

Here's more, from the book's description:

Beyond Common Sense addresses the many important and controversial issues that arise from the use of psychological and social science in the courtroom.

• Chapters by leading experts in the field of psychology and law including Elizabeth Loftus, Saul Kassin, Faye Crosby, Alice Eagly, Gary Wells, Louise Fitzgerald, Craig Anderson, and Phoebe Ellswort

• Each chapter identifies areas of scientific agreement and disagreement, and discusses how psychological science advances an understanding of human behavior beyond what is accessible by common sense

• The 14 issues addressed include eyewitness identification, gender stereotypes, repressed memories, Affirmative Action, and the death penalty -- among others

• Commentaries written by 7 leading social science and law scholars discuss key legal and scientific themes that emerge from the science chapters and illustrate how psychological science is or can be used in the courts.

"Dr. Phil" controversy highlights public confusion over psychology

The uproar over Phillip McGraw's intrusive interaction with Britney Spears raises a number of interesting issues about clinical psychology and the privacy rights of hospital patients.

As most of you know by now, McGraw barged into Spears' hospital room January 5, apparently without an invitation from the beleaguered pop star. After soliciting her appearance on his TV advice show, he issued a public statement about her condition.

In the wake of this incident, some have accused McGraw of violating doctor-patient confidentiality. But McGraw is not a doctor, nor was Spears his patient.

Much of the public confusion on this point is due to the TV personality's use of the title "Doctor." Like Laura Schlessinger, the conservative radio pundit with a Ph.D. in physiology who calls herself "Dr. Laura," anyone with a doctoral degree is technically a doctor (of philosophy). But to engage in therapy as a clinical psychologist, a person must also be licensed in the appropriate state. While McGraw holds a doctoral degree in psychology, he is not licensed as a psychologist or a mental health practitioner in any state.

Once upon a time, McGraw really was licensed as a clinical psychologist. In 1989, the Texas board that licenses psychologists disciplined him for an inappropriate "dual relationship" with a 19-year-old patient. (McGraw denies the young woman's claim that the relationship was sexual.) The Texas Board of Examiners of Psychologists ordered him to take an ethics class and have his practice supervised for a year. He subsequently stopped practicing therapy and started a jury consultation firm, Courtroom Sciences Inc. (CSI). It was in this capacity that he met Oprah Winfrey, then fighting a lawsuit by the beef industry, who boosted him into the world of show biz.

His haranguing style of voyeuristic quasi-therapy has proved enormously popular. Last year, he netted 6.7 million viewers and earned a whopping $45 million.

What’s the attraction? Some scholars have compared it to a religious conversion narrative, involving a confession, a testimonial, a moral authority (Dr. Phil), and an instant cure.

"It's the quintessential cultural product," said media consultant Ellen McGrath, also a psychologist. "Get some quick advice and change your life. You, too, can hit the psychological jackpot…. It's a spectator sport to watch someone be humiliated. It's the psychological version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

Bottom line: Since McGraw (much like Britney Spears) is a celebrity icon rather than a licensed professional, he is not governed by any code of medical ethics or by the state and federal rules and regulations that apply to licensed clinical psychologists.

What about the hospital? Some have suggested that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center may have violated Spears' privacy rights when they allowed McGraw into her hospital room with her permission. But even that claim is somewhat tenuous, since her parents invited him into the hospital.

Ironically, amidst all of the fury over whether McGraw or the hospital violated any legal or ethical rules, other professionals who are exploiting Britney Spears' problems have escaped reproach. For example, three clinical psychologists and psychiatrists are quoted in an online gossip magazine as publicly diagnosing Spears with everything from mania to borderline personality disorder to a "genetic predisposition" to depression.

The Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association has several sections addressing drive-by assessments conducted without benefit of personal evaluation.

Ethical Standard 9.01 states that, in general, psychologists should only provide opinions about someone's psychological characteristics after having conducted an examination adequate to support their statements or conclusions. More broadly, Principle E, "Respect for People's Rights and Dignity," states that psychologists respect "the rights of individuals to privacy, confidentiality, and self-determination."

These self-same spokespersons for psychology and psychiatry call themselves by their first names, a la "Dr. Phil," and one is even premiering his own online TV show tonight - a live celebrity rehab show.

Between "Doctor" Phillip McGraw and the rest of these spokespeople, it's no wonder some members of the the public are confused, not to mention a bit leery of the mental health profession.

For more information:

"Do the rules apply to Dr. Phil?" New York Times, Jan. 10, 2008

"Analyze This," Dallas Observer, April 13, 2000 (background on McGraw’s career; information on legal cases involving Dr. Phil can be found here and here).

"Patient in the spotlight," Newsweek, Jan. 8, 2008

"Spears clan calls foul on Dr. Phil's blabbermouth," E! Online, Jan. 9, 2008

Photo credit r5d4 (Creative Commons license)

Historic hearings to commence on Calif. death penalty

Amid renewed national controversy over capital punishment, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is holding public hearings beginning tomorrow on the death penalty in California. At the first hearing, a lineup of luminaries will present evidence about racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities in who is sentenced to die.

The Commission was created by the state Senate in 2004 to investigate the causes of wrongful conviction and wrongful executions, and to recommend reforms to make California's criminal justice system "just, fair, and accurate." Composed of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and citizens, the Commission has already issued a series of unanimous recommendations on other criminal justice issues, including:

• Eyewitness Identification
• False Confessions
• Use of Jailhouse Informants
• Scientific Evidence
• Professional Responsibility and Accountability of Prosecutors and Defense Lawyers
• Remedies for Wrongful Conviction
• Fair Administration of the Death Penalty

(Click on any of the above links to see the related report.) A press release about the death penalty hearings, slated for January, February and March, is here.

Guest commentary: Prisoners of panic

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times featured a great opinion piece on the costly and out-of-control effects of tough-on-crime rhetoric. It was written by Joe Domanick, a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. Mr. Domanick, author of "Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State," is currently at work on a book about California's prison system. With his permission, I'm posting the entire piece.

Guest commentary by Joe Domanick

Prisoners of panic: Media hype and political quick fixes have swelled our inmate population

from the L.A. Times, January 6, 2008

How much more folly, absurdity, fiscal irresponsibility and human tragedy will we endure before we stop tolerating the political pandering that has dictated our criminal justice law and policy over the last two decades?

The pattern has become all too clear. Our politicians, fearful of being labeled "soft on crime," react to sensationalistic coverage of a crime with knee-jerk, quick-fix answers. Only years later do the mistakes, false assumptions and unexpected consequences begin to emerge, and then the criminal justice system is forced to deal with the mess created by the bad lawmaking.

For example, remember the great crack scare of the 1980s? When basketball superstar Len Bias, who'd been drafted by the Boston Celtics as a franchise player, died of a crack overdose, the media went wild in covering it. Alarmed by the sudden increase in crack use and fearful that the drug was highly addictive and disposed users to commit violence, Congress mandated tough minimum sentences for crack-related crimes. A defendant convicted of possessing a small amount of crack could receive the same sentence as one possessing 100 times that amount of powder cocaine. Because crack users were disproportionately African American (and powder cocaine users were disproportionately white), 85% of those receiving dealer-like sentences for possession or sale of small amounts of crack were black -- an outcome that helped to fuel widespread perceptions among blacks that there was a double standard of justice in the U.S.

In December, the overly harsh and misguided sentencing policy concocted during the "war on drugs" in the 1980s was finally modified. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that judges were no longer bound by the strict sentencing guidelines, freeing the jurists to craft punishment that best fits the crime and the background of the defendant.

The 1990s produced its own racially tinged crime panics. Led by John J. Dilulio Jr., a political scientist at Princeton University, and William J. Bennett, a former secretary of Education in the Reagan Cabinet, law-and-order proponents declared that the U.S. was being overrun by a new generation of remorseless "super-predators" spawned by crack-head mothers in violence-infested ghettos. Stories of kids committing heinous crimes were common in the media. One of the most sensational occurred in Chicago in October 1994. Two boys, one 10 years old, the other 11, dropped 5-year-old Eric Morse from the 14th floor of a housing project, killing him, because he refused to steal candy for them.

In response to such crimes, politicians across the country passed anti-super-predator laws. In many states, including California, the age kids could be tried as adults was lowered to 14, and in 48 states, the decision to try juveniles as adults was taken away from judges and given to prosecutors. As a result, the number of people under 18 tried as adults rose dramatically through the 1990s, and a small percentage of them were even sentenced to prison. Ironically, the predicted crime explosion caused by super-predators never materialized. Juvenile arrests declined by more than 45% from 1994 to 2004, according to FBI statistics.

But the ultimate example of media hype meeting irresponsible politicians to produce bad public policy is California's three-strikes law. It was chiefly written by Fresno photographer Mike Reynolds after the murder of his daughter, Kimber, in 1992.Introduced in the Legislature, the bill languished until the rape and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. A network of right-wing talk-radio hosts reacted to the killing by fiercely promoting Reynolds' measure, which had provisions like no other three-strikes bill in that virtually any crime, no matter how petty, could be prosecuted as a third strike.

In 1994, the Legislature unanimously put the measure on the November ballot, and Proposition 184 passed easily. The law would eventually send thousands of Californians to prison for 25 years to life, some for such third-strike crimes as attempting to steal a bottle of vitamins from a drug store, buying a macadamia nut disguised as a $5 rock of cocaine from an undercover cop and shoplifting $2.69 worth of AA batteries.

Today, Californians are still paying the price for that folly and other like-minded laws, not just in the ruined and wasted lives of people sentenced under these laws, but in other ways. There are now tens of thousands of inmates in California convicted of nonviolent crimes and serving out long second- and third-strike sentences, as well as thousands more behind bars because minor crimes were turned into felonies with mandatory minimum sentences.

All these laws have contributed to severe overcrowding in the state's prisons -- as high as 200% of capacity -- that has produced conditions of such "extreme peril" for prisoners and guards that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced to declare a systemwide state of emergency in 2006. Since 2003, the inmate population has grown 8%, to about 173,000. But the budget of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has skyrocketed 79%, to $8.5 billion, becoming the fastest-growing category in the state budget and a factor in opening up a $14-billion budget deficit.

The get-tough-on-crime laws also have helped create a crisis in California's prison healthcare system, where spending has risen to $1.9 billion a year, up 263% since 2000. A large part of the problem is that the prison population is aging because inmates are serving the longer sentences approved by lawmakers, and with aging comes more medical problems. The system became so understaffed and dysfunctional that a federal judge ruled that it was causing at least one avoidable death a week through sheer neglect and ineptitude. He has seized the entire prison medical system and placed it under his direct supervision.

Faced with the huge budget deficit and judicial threats to cap the state's prison population, Schwarzenegger's office has been floating the idea of early release for about 22,000 inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes. That 13% cut in prisoners, however, would require legislative approval, something that is by no means certain. The story of crime and punishment in California -- and the country -- since the 1980s, after all, has been quick-fix answers fueled by media hype. Let's hope that such proposals as releasing nonviolent inmates receive serious attention rather than panicky headlines that lead to bad criminal justice laws.

The death machine: "One thoroughly screwed-up system"

Just in time for next Monday's U.S. Supreme Court hearing on a challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in most U.S. executions, Time magazine has issued a scathing denunciation of the state of capital punishment in the United States. This follows negative publicity in Newsweek magazine a couple of months ago (see my blog post of Nov. 25, 2007). Perhaps wind is on my mind due to the incredible windstorm we're having here in the San Francisco Bay Area today, but I'm sensing winds of change in the air.

Here are some tantalizing excerpts from the no-holds-barred Time piece:

In a perfect world, perhaps, the government wouldn't wait 30 years and several hundred executions to determine whether an execution method makes sense....

Any other government program that delivered 3% of what it promised -- while costing millions of dollars more than the alternative -- would be a scandal, but the death penalty is different. In its ambiguity, complexity and excess, the system expresses a lot about who we are as a nation....

Our death penalty's continued existence, countering the trend of the rest of the developed world, expresses our revulsion to violent crime and our belief in personal accountability. The endless and expensive appeals reflect our scrupulous belief in consistency and individual justice….

We add safeguards one day, then shortcut them the next. One government budget contains millions of dollars for prosecutions, while another department spends more millions to defend against them. Indeed, the very essence of ambiguity is our vain search for a bloodless, odorless, motionless, painless, foolproof mode of killing healthy people….

We now have a situation in which a majority of the states that authorize the death penalty seldom if ever use it. Last year only 10 states carried out an execution. And even that number overstates the vigor of the system. If you don't count executions of inmates who voluntarily dropped their appeals and asked to be killed -- essentially government-assisted suicides -- the state count falls to eight….

The ungainly, ambivalent collapse of the death penalty seems unfitting for a punishment whose very existence is largely symbolic. But the trend is unmistakable.

The Supreme Court is part of this slow-motion shutdown of the death-penalty machine. In recent years the court has banned executions of mentally retarded inmates and of prisoners who committed their crimes as minors. The mere fact that the court is hearing the lethal-injection cases is historic because the institution has always been reluctant to inquire into the business end of the death penalty….

The discussion itself is another sign of the nation's ambivalence about the ultimate, irreversible punishment. And as long as we're ambivalent, we'll continue to have the system we have made for ourselves--inefficient, beyond repair and increasingly empty.

Hat tip to Sentencing Law & Policy for alerting me to this article.

Colorful juries more competent

At a holiday party, the topic of jury duty came up. Immediately, everyone started competing to tell how they "got out of" serving. That's too bad, I thought. These folks would all make fine jurors.

Last month, I was involved in a trial in which a group of citizens who did not shirk their civic duty voted to free a teenager facing life for a murder he did not commit. The defense attorney described the jury fondly as "colorful."

What's color got to do with it? Quite a bit, as it turns out.

A colorful, or racially diverse, group actually thinks better than a more homogeneous one. In a recent study, mixed-race juries performed better on all areas assessed, including:

• Amount of information considered
• Factual accuracy of deliberations
• Thoroughness of analysis
• Open-mindedness (especially about race)

Traditionally, people have assumed that the difference is because minority jurors bring different life experiences and perspectives to the group. As Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall put it more than 30 years ago, exclusion of "any large and identifiable segment of the community" removes "varieties of human experience" from the mix: "It is not necessary to assume that the excluded group will consistently vote as a class in order to conclude . . . that its exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance in any case."

But new evidence suggests there is more to it than that: White jurors actually think more efficiently when they are faced with the prospect of being part of a diverse group. It's as if the goal of not being perceived as prejudiced, or of being accepted by others, switches the brain from autopilot to full-concentration mode.

In contrast, all-white juries tended to be lazy, inaccurate, superficial, and unwilling to discuss uncomfortable topics (especially race). At least that's what Samuel Sommers, the author of a recent study, found.

Interestingly, even bringing up the issue of race during voir dire questioning of potential jurors may increase open-mindedness and thoughtfulness, Sommers observed. (Asking questions like, for example, "Do you have any biases or prejudices that might prevent you from judging an African American defendant fairly?")

This makes sense, because modern racism is largely subtle and unconscious. In other words, people behave in biased ways while consciously thinking of themselves as fair-minded. So if you activate race as a salient issue, whites will more likely make conscious efforts to avoid prejudice.

The court-sponsored research used mock jurors who were drawn from actual jury pools in a Michigan county. The jurors were presented with a video of a Court TV case involving an African American man accused of sexually assaulting a white female.

Such research suggesting the superiority of multicultural juries is not likely to dissuade prosecutors from their frequent practice of removing Blacks through peremptory challenges. After all, predominately white juries are more punitive, especially toward non-white defendants. More thorough and efficient deliberations generally work in favor of the accused, especially if he is African American.

That's apparently what happened in the trial I just mentioned. After much deliberation, the "colorful" jury migrated from leaning toward guilt to outright acquittal.

Although I didn't get to be a fly on the wall inside of that deliberation room, I can imagine the scenario based on what I experienced when I served on a similarly colorful jury earlier this year. Unlike in the mock jury study described above, the case in which I was a juror did not explicitly involve race. The defendant, the victim, and the arresting officers all were white. Yet, as Justice Marshall predicted, the jury's diversity provided perspectives that would not otherwise have been considered. Several white jurors walked into the deliberations room ready to cast their vote (for guilty), thinking that the case was cut-and-dried. After a sometimes-heated discussion that lasted for days, they came to realize there was more to the case than initially met the eye. The vast economic and educational range - another great thing about American juries - also increased the range and quality of the deliberations.

I hope the above-described research is extended in the future to cases like this, in which race is not an explicit issue but still broadens (or colors, if you will) the deliberations.

* * * * *

The study is: Samuel Sommers (2006), "On racial diversity and group decision making: Identifying multiple effects in racial composition on jury deliberations," Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 4, pp. 597-612.

Other resources:

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

"Jurors deliberate competently, study finds"

Samuel Sommers & Michael Norton (2006), "Race-based judgments, race-neutral justifications: Experimental examination of peremptory use and the Batson challenge procedure," Law & Human Behavior.

Jury & Democracy Project

"Harmful effects of unintentional racism"

Antonio et al (2004), "Effects of racial diversity on complex thinking in college students," Psychological Science, Vol. 15, pp. 507-510.

Joel Lieberman and Bruce Sales, Scientific Jury Selection (see my review at Amazon.com)

Intriguing new book: Psychology of women's violence

The second edition of Anna Motz's Psychology of Female Violence: Crimes Against the Body is now available for download as an ebook. The print version is forthcoming from Taylor & Francis. From the book's description:

What are the causes of violence in women? What can be done to help these women and their victims? Why does society deny the fact of female violence? This book explores the nature and causes of female violence from the perspectives of psychodynamic theory and forensic psychology. This fully updated and expanded second edition explores developments in research and services for violent women. The Psychology of Female Violence will be valuable to trainees and practitioners working in the fields of clinical and forensic psychology, women's studies, sociology, psychiatric nursing, social work, probation, counselling, psychoanalysis, the criminal justice system and criminology. Recent high profile cases of female violence are discussed alongside clinical material and theory.

Topics in the new edition include:

• The Victoria Climbié Inquiry
• The controversy surrounding Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy
• Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder in women
• The impact of pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites
• Clinical issues of working with women who kill
• Designing therapeutic services for women in secure mental health settings
• Women who sexually and physically abuse children
• Infanticide
• Fabricated and induced illness
• Self Harm

Was Tatiana the tiger attacked with slingshots?

A news report today adds further support for the theory that the San Francisco Zoo tiger who attacked three men on Christmas Day was responding to extreme provocation.

Citing an unnamed source, today's New York Post reports that the injured men were armed with slingshots and had an empty vodka bottle in their car. This would support the theory that the men were engaging in a drunken display of masculine bravado when the 350-pound Siberian tiger went into hyperdrive, leaping across a moat to attack them. (See my post of Dec. 29.)

NOTE: On Jan. 2, the day after I posted this, ABC News quoted police as flatly denying that the men were carrying slingshots. The Dhaliwal brothers' high-profile attorney, Mark Geragos (of Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson fame), called the slingshot story an urban legend.

Speculation is rife about the circumstances of the mauling that left a 17-year-old boy dead. Neither police nor the surviving brothers, Kulbir and Amritpal Dhaliwal, are talking, and no other witnesses have come forward.

My original post of Dec. 29 is here. I also recommend an interesting commentary by professor of medicine Marc Siegel on the fight-or-flight instinct as it pertains to Tatiana: "The Emotions of Attack."

Teen drug and alcohol use still declining

Drug and alcohol use among teens continues to decline from its high of about a decade ago. That's the good news announced by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy just in time for the new year. The declines since 2001 are as follows, according to the annual survey conducted by the University of Michigan:

• 15% drop in alcohol use (although it's still pretty high!)
  
• 24% drop in overall use of illegal drugs
• 25% drop in marijuana use
• 33% drop in steroid use
• 54% drop in Ecstasy
• 64% drop in methamphetamine
• 33% drop in cigarette smoking

On the other hand, prescription drug abuse continues to increase. Since 2002, Oxycontin use has increased 30% among teens; Vicodin use also remains high.

Here are a few colorful slides illustrating the trends; the complete report and slide show are available online.

A plague in Coalinga

You may have heard about the epidemic of valley fever at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, located in California's Central Valley. Today's news reported that more than 900 prisoners and 80 employees have been stricken.

The sometimes-lethal fungal infection is endemic to, and on the rise in, the American Southwest. Like something out of a body snatcher flick, the spores that cause it live in the soil, and are inhaled when the soil is disturbed.

"You don’t do stupid things like go out on windy days or dig in the dirt," the mayor of Coalinga was quoted as saying. (Eek!)

New construction is suspected in the alarming rise in cases at the prison, where 1 out of 10 prisoners now tests positive. News reports mention as a possible culprit an increase in custom-home construction in the out-of-the-way hamlet of Coalinga. But what the news reports aren't mentioning is the construction of a $400 million state hospital immediately adjacent to the prison. Coalinga State Hospital, built primarily to house the state's burgeoning population of civilly committed sex offenders, opened just two years ago, right before the peak in valley fever infections at the prison.

Coincidence? Hmm.

Whatever the cause of the plague, revelations of its ubiquity in Coalinga will likely add to the hospital's already massive problems in recruiting qualified professional staff.

See my previous posts on the Coalinga State Hospital woes here and here.

Happy New Year, San Francisco Zoo

When I was a little girl, a friendly keeper at the San Francisco Zoo invited me into a cage and let me hold a koala bear. It was a thrilling moment. And one not likely to be repeated in today's climate of institutional fear over "deep-pocket" lawsuits.

Because the topic of my doctoral research and subsequent publications was public exhibitions of masculinity among young male humans, my antenna went up on Christmas when I heard about the tiger attack at the S.F. Zoo.

What caught my interest was the initial news report that the tiger attacked three young men who had been lingering by the tiger's cage after the zoo had closed - possibly ignoring other potential victims.

Another detail increased my professional interest. The two surviving victims, brothers age 23 and 19, were hostile and uncooperative with police. Think about it: If you were stalked and mauled by a rampaging tiger, why would you try to mislead and obstruct investigators?

A third revelation of note was that these brothers, Kulbir and Amritpal Dhaliwal, were awaiting trial for a recent display of alleged drunken aggression. In that Oct. 9 incident, police caught the brothers chasing two men; after their arrest they allegedly cursed police and kicked the police car's security partition. They are scheduled to appear in court in a couple of weeks on misdemeanor charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Interestingly, it was the older of these belligerent brothers that Tatiana the tiger first attacked; the unfortunate Carlos Sousa Jr. was apparently killed when he intervened to save his friend.

While speculation persists about the victims' potential contribution to the attack, the media are focusing more on the height of the wall outside of the tiger grotto's moat. Is it built to the height of the recommended standards of the 21st century? Of course not. It is 67 years old. And in all those years, not one tiger has escaped. Indeed, experts say that around the world thousands of tigers are kept in enclosures of roughly the same height, and they don't escape.

As one wildlife expert commented, the ultimate explanation for Tatiana's attack is not the height of the wall, but the "stimulus" she was reacting to. "Tigers around the world are perfectly safe behind 10-foot or 12-foot walls," said Martine Colette, founder of a wildlife refuge in Southern California. "There had to have been a tremendous stimulus that made the tiger react the way she did."

In a state of extreme fear or anger, a tiger - like a human - is capable of extraordinary feats of strength that otherwise would not have been possible. Based on this, professor of medicine Mark Siegel commented, "It seems clear that Tatiana was provoked or taunted to such a state of anger or agitation that her hyper-drive took over."

If indeed the tiger was provoked, this would conform with a typical display of masculine aggression. These displays - which often take the form of sexual aggression or antigay harassment - serve the functions of proving masculinity, social bonding, and the celebration of male power. In these forms of participatory theater, the targets - whether they be women, gay men, or even, as in this case, a tiger - serve as interchangeable dramatic props. (See my article on this topic.)

While no avenue of investigation should be ignored, I hope the media and investigators will focus as much attention on the likely provocation as in Monday morning quarterbacking of the zoo's response. As a struggling public institution whose aim is to educate the public about wildlife conservation and endangered species, the S.F. Zoo can ill afford a deep-pocket verdict based on misplaced castigation.

Also see my update of Jan. 1, 2008.

Photo credit: Kurt Rogers, S.F. Chronicle

Prisoner reintegration: An ethical duty?

The Second Chance Act of 2007 (H.R. 1593) would authorize $340 million in programs to reintegrate prisoners to their communities. Passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and now pending in the Senate, the legislation could present new opportunities for psychologists and other mental health professionals interested in working with high-needs parolees. The upcoming issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter focuses on re-entry issues. The introductory article, "The Second Chance Act and the Future of the Reentry Movement," is available online. Here is the abstract:

Recently passed by the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support and currently awaiting action in the Senate, the If enacted, the SCA would represent a new milestone in the growing influence of the prisoner reentry movement, which has focused public attention on the daunting obstacles facing returning prisoners who seek to rebuild their lives as productive citizens. This essay, which introduces a forthcoming issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter devoted to the SCA and the challenges of reentry, critiques aspects of the SCA, considers the implications of the reentry movement for sentencing, and argues that reentry-based reforms should not be conceptualized primarily as recidivism reduction measures, but as opportunities to fulfill ethical obligations to some of the most marginalized and disadvantaged members of society.

Hat tip to Sentencing Law & Policy.

California: Throw off your chains, ye wretched prisoners?

Two big stories out of California today:

In what would probably be the largest mass release in U.S. history, prison doors could swing open early for more than 22,000 prisoners. The governor's plan to release nonviolent offenders with less than 20 months to go on their sentences would ease prison overcrowding and save the state almost $800 million over the next couple of years with little risk to the public. California has the largest prison population in the nation, with 172,000 prisoners. The guards' union, a major influence in this prison-heavy state, will undoubtedly try to halt the move, which would cost more than 4,000 prison jobs. The full story is here.

In another development, officials admit they are removing GPS tracking devices from sex offenders who have completed parole, in violation of a state law that requires lifetime monitoring. That's because Jessica's Law, enacted by voters in 2006, doesn't specify who is responsible for the monitoring or who will pay the exorbitant costs. Nor does it penalize ex-offenders for removing the GPS devices.

Both state and local officials say they don't have the funds to monitor the offenders. "We don't know what it's going to cost, and the conservative estimates are hundreds of millions of dollars" as more offenders complete parole, said Nancy O'Malley, chief assistant district attorney in Alameda County.

The state's Sex Offender Management Board is pondering a solution. The full story is here.

Photo credit: Puff's Daddy's (Creative Commons license).

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

News roundup

Scot freed after 20 years

This story hasn't been getting much press in the United States, but it's been a topic of interest in Europe. Kenneth Richey of Scotland has spent 20 years on death row in Ohio, exhausting round after round of appeals for a crime he insists he didn't do. Finally, a plea bargain has been reached in which he will plead no contest to involuntary manslaughter and be home in time for Christmas.

Europeans had been outraged at the conditions of Richey's confinement, which are ho-hum here in the prison nation. Said one Scottish official who visited Richey:

"The reality of somebody who is kept locked up in a cell for 23 hours a day for 19 years is quite mind-blowing. It is a dreadful, inhumane and dehumanising system. If one man is off it, then remember there are hundreds [sic!] of people in America still enduring that dreadful situation."

The London Times has more.

Children electroshocked (roll over, Stanley Milgram)

A prankster has outdone experimental researcher Stanley Milgram by a long shot, telephoning a school for the severely disturbed and easily convincing school officials to shock pupils up to 77 times each!

The prank is highlighting the fact that the Massachusetts school, Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, routinely administers electroshock as punishment. The school is the only one in the United States that does so; the device's inhumanity is concealed by the clinical-sounding name of graduated electronic decelerator.

ABC News has the story here.