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)