The sports culture surrounding football and wrestling may be fueling violence among teen male players and also among their male friends, according to a Penn State study released this week.
"Sports such as football, basketball, and baseball provide players with a certain status in society," said Derek Kreager, assistant professor of sociology in the Crime, Law, and Justice program. "But football and wrestling are associated with violent behavior because both sports involve some physical domination of the opponent, which is rewarded by the fans, coaches and other players."
Analyzing data from about 7,000 male students at 120 schools, the researchers found that football players and wrestlers were especially likely to get into serious fights. Perhaps more startingly, just having football-playing friends predicted violence among boys who were not athletes.
The Penn State press release is here.
Hat tip: Kirk Witherspoon
January 25, 2008
Killing time: Dead men waiting on Oregon's death row
Today's Willamette Week of Portland, Oregon has a hard-hitting expose of capital punishment in that northwestern mecca, complete with an interactive display of the 35 men on death row. Here are excerpts; the complete story is here.
. . . Whether you’re for or against capital punishment, you should be outraged by what's happening. To please the tough-on-crime crowd, we keep the death penalty. But to appease progressives, or to assuage our own conscience, nobody actually gets killed. . . .Hat tip: Sentencing Law & Policy
Yet for the most part, this shameful situation stays hidden. Death row is tucked away on the third floor of a building deep inside the Oregon State Penitentiary. The rarely used execution chamber is behind locked doors in the same prison. And no executions means no front-page headlines.
"A lot of people aren’t even aware that we have a death penalty here," says Rachel Hardesty, a Portland State University criminal justice professor who has spent a decade studying capital punishment in Oregon. . . .
Nationwide, experts say capital cases are 20 times more expensive to prosecute because of the length of appeals. Oregon officials don't make guesses about how much it will cost here, because after 24 years of letting juries sentence killers to death, not a single case has yet gone all the way through the appeals system.
But Bill Long, a Willamette University law professor and death penalty opponent who wrote the only book on capital punishment in Oregon, has estimated Oregon's oldest cases could end up costing more than $10 million per defendant (the national average for capital cases is around $3 million). . . . Added up for all 35 capital-punishment cases, that totals $35.7 million in public-safety money. . . .
Meanwhile, there are about 50 more defendants currently charged with death penalty crimes in Oregon, which will suck more than $50 million more out of the state budget if the defendants are sentenced to death. Despite the expense, they may never see execution. Nationwide, only 12 percent of people who are sentenced to death are actually executed.
That leaves even death penalty proponents questioning whether the cost is worth it.
January 23, 2008
Appellate courts grapple with controversial sex offender risk assessment tools
Rulings on Abel and Static 99
Without scientific-sounding risk assessment tools, forensic psychologists in the sex offender civil commitment industry would have a hard time earning a living. Increasingly, instruments designed specifically for this burgeoning industry are being scrutinized by the courts. Here are two new appellate cases in point:
Louisiana appellate court approves profiling with Abel
In a troubling ruling out of Louisiana, an appellate court OK'd expert witness testimony that a man was 81 percent likely to have molested a child based on his psychological test results.
Interpreting the defendant's scores on the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest, clinical psychologist Maureen Brennan had testified that "there is an 81 percent chance that anyone with that pattern has at some point in their life been sexually inappropriate with a child" and that the defendant would falsely deny that fact.
After hearing that powerful testimony back in 2006, a jury deliberated only one hour before convicting schoolteacher Timothy Brannon of Beauregard Parish of all 12 counts against him.
Over defense objections, the trial judge had qualified Dr. Brennan as an expert in the "characteristics and diagnosis of child sexual abuse and perpetrators."
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals found no problem with Dr. Brennan's testimony, including her use of the Rorschach inkblot testing to help predict Brannon's conduct. Among other reasons for not finding error, the appellate court pointed out that substantial other evidence implicated the schoolteacher.
Both the Abel instrument and the Rorschach are highly controversial in court. Abel has responded to criticisms by clarifying that the instrument is not intended to assist triers of fact to reach decisions about an individual's guilt or innocence. The Abel uses visual reaction times to sexual imagery to deduce individuals' relative sexual interests in different types of people.
Even more importantly, even when reliable and valid psychological tests are administered, the science is never strong enough to assign a mathematical probability of guilt.
I have placed the opinion online here.
7th Circuit questions reliability of Static 99
The EvidenceProf blog has more on that case; the case itself can be found here.
Hat tip: Wendy Murphy
Without scientific-sounding risk assessment tools, forensic psychologists in the sex offender civil commitment industry would have a hard time earning a living. Increasingly, instruments designed specifically for this burgeoning industry are being scrutinized by the courts. Here are two new appellate cases in point:
Louisiana appellate court approves profiling with Abel
In a troubling ruling out of Louisiana, an appellate court OK'd expert witness testimony that a man was 81 percent likely to have molested a child based on his psychological test results.
Interpreting the defendant's scores on the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest, clinical psychologist Maureen Brennan had testified that "there is an 81 percent chance that anyone with that pattern has at some point in their life been sexually inappropriate with a child" and that the defendant would falsely deny that fact.
After hearing that powerful testimony back in 2006, a jury deliberated only one hour before convicting schoolteacher Timothy Brannon of Beauregard Parish of all 12 counts against him.
Over defense objections, the trial judge had qualified Dr. Brennan as an expert in the "characteristics and diagnosis of child sexual abuse and perpetrators."
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals found no problem with Dr. Brennan's testimony, including her use of the Rorschach inkblot testing to help predict Brannon's conduct. Among other reasons for not finding error, the appellate court pointed out that substantial other evidence implicated the schoolteacher.
Both the Abel instrument and the Rorschach are highly controversial in court. Abel has responded to criticisms by clarifying that the instrument is not intended to assist triers of fact to reach decisions about an individual's guilt or innocence. The Abel uses visual reaction times to sexual imagery to deduce individuals' relative sexual interests in different types of people.
Even more importantly, even when reliable and valid psychological tests are administered, the science is never strong enough to assign a mathematical probability of guilt.
I have placed the opinion online here.
7th Circuit questions reliability of Static 99
In this case, 31-year-old Christopher McIlrath was appealing his 4-year sentence in an internet sting conviction. He argued that the trial judge improperly dismissed the testimony of forensic psychologist Eric Ostrov, who had administered the Static 99 actuarial risk assessment tool and testified that McIlrath matched the characteristics of offenders with a 9 to 13 percent chance of recidivism.
The appellate court rejected McIlrath’s argument that he should have been sentenced just to home confinement based on the Static 99 data. While not directly ruling on the admissibility of the instrument (the rules of evidence don’t apply at sentencing hearings), the court expressed skepticism about the Static 99’s reliability in predicting recidivism risk.The EvidenceProf blog has more on that case; the case itself can be found here.
Hat tip: Wendy Murphy
By popular demand: Expert testimony at Masters trial
Readers wondered if I knew how to obtain the actual transcript of forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy's testimony at the trial of Tim Masters. (That's the apparent wrongful conviction case that I've blogged about most recently here). So, by popular demand, I've uploaded the transcript here:
J. REID MELOY TESTIMONY
Dr. Meloy waxes eloquent on sexual homicide, rehearsal fantasies, the paraphilia of picquerism, the Rorschach inkblot test, and more. He psychoanalyzes the 15-year-old Masters' military fiction and violent drawings of Freddy Krueger. On cross-examination, he even references his own sexually sadistic and predatory fantasies. Happy reading!
January 22, 2008
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:
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.
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.
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.
January 19, 2008
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?
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?
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