Odd twist in latest DNA exoneration

Speaking of movies -- here's a yarn that would make a good film plot:

A man named Clay Chabot is suspected of raping and killing a woman named Galua Crosby. He goes to trial. A key piece of evidence is the testimony of his brother-in-law. The brother-in-law, Gerald Pabst, testifies that Chabot forced him to tie up Mrs. Crosby and then ordered him out of the room; he could hear Ms. Crosby saying "no" before she was shot. With this kind of evidence, it is no surprise that Chabot is convicted. He gets life.

For the next two decades, Chabot insists he is innocent. He requests DNA testing to prove it. Finally, he gets his wish and - guess what - the incriminating DNA belongs to his good samaritan brother-in-law.

What makes the case all the more interesting is that the prosecutor, Janice Warder, had cut a secret deal with Pabst, promising him immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Considering his guilt, it was too good a deal to pass up.

And, since no bad deed goes unrewarded, the prosecutor went on to become a judge in Dallas County, Texas; she is now up for uncontested reelection as the District Attorney of Cooke County, Oklahoma.

For Dallas Morning News coverage on this case, see:

Former Dallas County prosecutor who withheld evidence will be Cooke County's District Attorney

Judge calls for retrial in 1986 slaying because of ex-prosecutor's misconduct

Jury convicts man of murder in 1986 Garland slaying

On an unrelated note, the Dallas Morning News also has a cool web page devoted to the Dallas Police Department's cold-case squad and some of its more interesting unsolved cases. Check it out; it's better than the TV series by the same name.

Hat tip: Grits for Breakfast

Engaging new techno-political thriller

Eagle Eye

I don't know about you, but on those rare occasions when I have time to go see a movie, I am having trouble finding any worth seeing. With that in mind, I thought I would pass along a recommendation for Eagle Eye. It's an action thriller with a timely and relevant message. If you liked Gattaca (1997), you'll enjoy this one. I won't say more on this blog, but my Amazon review is online here.

New manual for SVP evaluators

I just finished reading the brand-new manual, Evaluation of Sexually Violent Predators by Philip H. Witt and Mary Alice Conroy, and I regret to say that I was disappointed. Perhaps the title should have been a clue: We are supposed to be evaluating convicted sex offenders to see whether they meet the legal criteria of being "Sexually Violent Predators," not making an a priori assumption that they do. At any rate, I found the book superficial and one-sided.

For more specifics, see my Amazon review - online here. (If you like the review, please click on the little "Yes" button where it says "Was this review helpful to you?" That helps to boost my Amazon ratings, which improve the placement of my reviews.)

The manual is one in a new "Best Practices in Forensic Mental Health Assessment" series from Oxford University Press. The series editors include such luminaries in forensic psychology as Thomas Grisso and Kirk Heilbrun.

The title in the Oxford series that I'm really looking forward to is The Evaluation of Juveniles' Competence to Stand Trial by Thomas Grisso and my old colleague from Washington, Ivan Kruh, both of whom really know their stuff on this topic. It's due out in November; you can pre-order it here for just $35.

Jam-packed new issue of psychiatry-law journal

The latest issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law is now available online, with interesting articles on competency, insanity, dangerousness, practice guidelines, diagnosis in SVP proceedings (a topic I am addressing in an upcoming training and an article in press), and much more:

• Revisiting the Politics of Dangerousness by Gregory B. Leong

• Mandated Community Treatment: Applying Leverage to Achieve Adherence by the illustrious John Monahan

• Clinical Practice Guidelines as Learned Treatises: Understanding Their Use as Evidence in the Courtroom by Patricia R. Recupero

• Commentary: When Is a Practice Guideline Only a Guideline? by Howard Zonana

• Forensic Applications of Cerebral Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury by Hal S. Wortzel, Christopher M. Filley, C. Alan Anderson, Timothy Oster, and David B. Arciniegas

• Applications of Functional Neuroimaging to Civil Litigation of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury by Robert P. Granacher, Jr

• The Conditional Release of Insanity Acquittees: Three Decades of Decision-Making by Barbara E. McDermott, Charles L. Scott, David Busse, Felecia Andrade, Michelle Zozaya, and Cameron D. Quanbeck

• Biases That Affect the Decision to Conditionally Release an Insanity Acquittee by Patrick K. Fox

• Conceptualizing and Characterizing Accuracy in Assessments of Competence to Stand Trial by Douglas Mossman

• Facts and Values in Competency Assessment by Alec Buchanan

• Making Consent More Informed: Preliminary Results From a Multiple-Choice Test Among Probation-Referred Marijuana Users Entering a Randomized Clinical Trial by Daniel B. Rounsaville, Karen Hunkele, Caroline J. Easton, Charla Nich, and Kathleen M. Carroll

• Defining Mental Disorder When It Really Counts: DSM-IV-TR and SVP/SDP Statutes by Allen Frances, Shoba Sreenivasan, and Linda E. Weinberger

• Testimony by Mentally Ill Individuals by Yuval Melamed

The LEGAL DIGEST section includes the following summaries and analyses:

• Competence to Waive Miranda Rights by Aimee Kaempf and Debra A. Pinals

• Waiver of Postconviction Relief (PCR) and PCR Counsel by Kimberly A. Larson and Albert J. Gruzdinskas

• Videotaped Confessions and Miranda Rights by Paul Noroian

• Guardianship and Autonomy in Decision-Making by Deepak Dev and Debra A. Pinals

• Competence to Plead Guilty and Seek the Death Penalty by Casey Helmkamp, Hal S. Wortzel, and Richard Martinez

• Mitigating Evidence in a Death Penalty Case by Gregory Kellermeyer, Hal S. Wortzel, and Richard Martinez

• Mental Retardation and the Death Penalty: Addressing Various Questions Regarding an Atkins Claim by Jacob Widroff and Clarence Watson

• Sum of Errors and Due Process Owed to Mentally III Defendant by Elena del Busto and Clarence Watson

• Termination of Parental Rights by Sarah Rasco and Heidi Vermette

And there's even more, believe it or not – check out the full table of contents here.

Memory: The sharper, the falser

One of the most surprising things about memory is that contrary to popular belief, the more specific the detail, the less likely the memory is to be accurate. And while gaps in a memory are generally believed to indicate an unreliable memory, the reality is that gaps are virtually a hallmark of the remembering process.

"People still have this intuitive belief that if someone recounts a memory, it must be true if they display strong emotions," says Cara Laney, lecturer in forensic psychology at the University of Leicester. "But I've been studying memory so long that I don't trust very many of my childhood memories at all."

From rose-tinted views of childhood to clear recollections of events that never happened, research shows that memories are both suggestible and inherently idealised.

The rest of UK Guardian reporter Kate Hilpern's fascinating summary of memory research, "Is your mind playing tricks on you?"” in online here. The accuracy of memories is of central import in the field of forensic psychology, as well as related fields such as criminal investigation. So, if Hilpern's brief summary whets your appetite for more, I highly recommend scholar Daniel Schacter’s The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (my Amazon review is here). After reading about the seven sins, you’ll never think the same about your own memory, or anyone else's.

Willie Bosket: Tale of a wasted life

Imagine spending one day all alone in a 9-by-6-foot room.

Now, imagine spending one week in that room. How about one year? It seems almost unbearable.

But Willie Bosket hasn't been in that room for just a day or a week or a year. He has spent two entire decades there, and he is scheduled to be there for another four - until the year 2046. In fact, since the age of 9, the 45-year-old New Yorker has been locked up for all but about two years of his life. He gets three showers a week, plus one hour a day of solitary "recreation."

If that is not torture, I don't know what is.

As today's New York Times describes him, the man who at age 15 killed two people on a New York subway is "a paradox, a man of charm and extraordinary intelligence but also of inexplicable fits of rage." His story also exemplifies the human spirit at its most enduring:

Despite his bleak situation, Mr. Bosket refused to concede defeat: "I'm not broken down and never will be."
His life has always been empty, he said. "I grew up with nothing," he said. "I was born with nothing. I still have nothing. I will never have nothing. Forty-five years of living the way I have lived, I like 'nothing.' No one can take 'nothing' from you."

"I've become so callous to the poking of the sword that, literally, instead of bleeding to death, the blood was drained and I became absent of concern, void of emotions, cold - plain cold to the degree that not much affects me anymore," he said.

Yet Mr. Bosket did hint at something of a life of suffering.

"If somebody came to me with a lethal injection, I'd take it," he said. "I'd rather be dead."

The full story, "Two Decades in Solitary" by John Eligon, is here. If Bosket's name sounds familiar, it is because he is rather infamous. It was his case that led to New York's law allowing children to be tried as adults. His family is the subject of a controversial 1995 book by journalist Fox Butterfield, All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence (available in a new paperback edition this year) that traces the family's descent from slavery in South Carolina. The Crime Library also has an online version of Bosket's life story. The prisoner portrait above was drawn by his father, Butch, when he was an inmate at the Wiltwyck School for Boys as a child; by the time his son Willie was born, Butch himself was already serving life in prison.