March 2010 Archives

Many of us may enjoy the occasional alcohol/energy drink combination, but what do we really know about the possible consequences of drinking these concoctions?  New research has found that even though these mixed drinks may taste good, they have negative side effects.

The study found that individuals who drink alcohol/energy drink combinations are three times more likely to leave bars intoxicated and are four-five times more likely to drive drunk.  Energy drinks, which contain caffeine, lessen the effects of alcohol leading individuals to "drink more or make uninformed judgments about whether they are safe to drive."

From introductory psychology, we learned that alcohol impairs judgment.  Everybody knows that driving while intoxicated is not ideal, but when under the influence of alcohol, individuals often feel on top of the world and that they can do anything, including drive.  Now that we add caffeine (energy drinks) to the mix, instances of drunk driving may become more frequent.

It is often times hard to teach an old dog new tricks, so if you are one of those individuals who enjoy alcohol/energy drink combinations, consider this research the next time you drink and perhaps limit yourself.  The last thing any of us would want is to get an OWI or perhaps be charged with vehicular manslaughter! 

For the crimescene workshop, I'm in charge of the "Memory" station. Upon researching informatoin about memories, I came across this helpful website that explains the difference concepts of memory. It's a very easy read, and I think it helps to explain what memory actually is, and how it works. Hopefully it will help me with the workshop as well!

 

 

Image from http://sciconrev.org/uploads/2007/04/cov_memory.gif

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/2003Nature.pdf

I found this article by Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and professor of law at the University of Washington. Loftus has written many articles about memory, and its vulnerability to manipulation. This article discussed a few studies Loftus and some colleagues conducted to prove the malleability of our memories. She emphasized the importance of memory when it comes to crime and legal issues. Loftus thinks there should be new approaches implemented to reduce and eventually eliminate witness misidentification. America has a much higher rate of wrongful convictions than Canada and Great Britain because they have less faith in witness identification and are more strict on their reviews of cases involving eye witness testimonies.

The article summarizes a few of the studies Loftus and her colleagues have performed concerning the power of false memories, and the ease of misleading a person to believe they saw or did something  that never happened. Memory is vulnerable and it should be treated with care to avoid tampering with real memories.

http://www.straypetadvocacy.org/html/cruelty_laws.html

This is a website that is all about being an advocate for animals. There are now 41 states plus the District of Columbia that have felony charges for people who abuse animals. This website talks about the Animal Welfare Act, which is the federal law that provides regulations for shelters, pounds and places that recover stolen animals. It also shows each state and what their charges are for people who abuse and neglect their animals. There are also other places you can go to on this website that talk about de-clawing and the laws with that, as well as sterilization and shelter laws.

There are also a lot of shows on tv that deal with animal cruelty. One particular show is Animal Cops on Animal Planet. They rescue animals that have been abused or neglected and take them to the vet or to the pound where they can be adopted. The cops then arrest the people who abused the animals and give them proper punishment they deserve.

These days, it seems like people will do anything to get public attention.  Reality t.v. has without a doubt taken over our living rooms, but exactly how far will producers and contestants go to reach fame?  Apparently, they will go pretty far.  One of the most controversial psychological studies, the Stanford Prison Experiment, was made into a reality television show called The Experiment.  Like the original experiment, the television show was also stopped early.

Now, since we are all aware of the psychological consequences that could be brought about by this study, why would they even think about replicating the study in the form of a reality show?  Personally, I don't think it was a good idea, but it's Hollywood, apparently they can do whatever they want.

Here is some information about the reality show:
http://bbcprisonstudy.org/index.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1986889.stm
        

I think discretion is necessary in our legal system because if the employees of our judicial system took a complete legalistic approach everyone that got caught breaking the law would be fined, sent to jail or punished in some way. That sounds like a good idea for serious offenses, but that policy would have to apply to ALL offenses, including speeding tickets, a headlight out, etc.

I have greatly appreciated the discretion I have been shown by state troopers when I have been pulled over for speeding. The couple times I have been stopped for speeding and given warnings I wasn't going more than 10 over. The officers saved me a lot of money by giving me warnings instead of tickets, and I really appreciated it. The members of law enforcement are there to keep us safe, not bankrupt us with fines and court costs, their use of discretion shows us that they are really working to make society a safer place by punishing acts that are dangerous to others.

I don't think I have ever used legal discretion with another individual, but I guess there have been times when I have given people the benefit of the doubt and not reported every law violation I see to the authorities. I'm not saying that I have witnessed serious crimes and not called the police, but just minor violations that I hoped the people didn't do on a daily basis and weren't going to harm another individual.

Recently, a jury in North Carolina awarded a woman $9 million in damages from her husband's mistress. The ruling was made based on North Carolina's "alienation of affection" adultery law.  The law, which was created in the 19th century, basically allows wives to sue their husband's mistresses if they believe the affair ruined their marriage.  The jury came up with the $9 million, which is comprised of $5 million in compensation and $4 million in punitive damages.  The mistress plans on appealing, based on the fact that she doesn't have a lot of money and thinks $9 million is ridiculous.  The husband also has stated that this affair didn't single-handedly ruin their marriage; he said it's suffered "significant problems" for years.  More on the story can be found here: http://www.smh.com.au/world/woman-told-to-pay-9m-to-lovers-wife-20100324-qwuv.html?

I personally have never been a child of divorce or separation. My parents were never together as I grew up and that was normal to me. I do however have a nephew who is two going through a separation and a brutal custody battle between his mom and dad. Since the start of this battle I have been paying close attention to his attitudes, his behaviors, and his actions since things have started. Although he is only two and does not know what is really going on, I can tell that he has a sense of some kind of tension between his parents.

With that said I decided to make this blog on children of divorce and how it affects them as well as both the mom and dad. It has always been said that a child who goes through a divorce they will suffer from depression, failing grades and acting out. This is not ALL true now today. Research has shown that if both parents separate their divorce from the well being of their child that the child will most likely still feel loved and do well in life as oppose to those parents who are putting their divorce first and the well being of their child second. This is a website all on the psychological and Emotional aspects of divorce of children and the families. It has some recent and good statistics on many different aspects. It also breaks down the emotional stages of divorce the child is most likely to go through as well as the parents.

I found this website to be very beneficial and it brought new knowledge to me that I did not know or understand before. I hope this blog brings about good discussion and other people's points of view.

http://www.mediate.com/articles/Psych.cfm 

 

 

When selecting a jury, attorneys want to know all they can about a juror so they can select or reject them.  Attorneys want to know the potential jurors' backgrounds, beliefs, biases, etc.  Sometimes this is harder than it seems; some potential jurors don't want to talk.  I found a website that gives some examples on how to ask questions in a way that will get the jurors to actually reveal information about their backgrounds and biases:

I've always been interested in the amount of crimes that occur while influenced by either drugs or alcohol. As I was researching this, the results were slightly shocking. I found out that less than half of committed crimes were caused by people who were either on drugs, or drinking. One statistic showed that about 25% of all crimes are drug induced. Although this may not seem like a lot, it's still 1/4 of all crimes. Another statistic showed that the first time a person commits a crime, they're more likely to be sober. However, if that same person commits a second crime, the person is more likely to be influenced by a drug/ alcohol. Another statistic I found rather interesting is that 19% of all inmates are in jail because they tried to attain money from drugs. It also said that 81% of drug arrest were due to possession. I think that's pretty nuts, I mean you'd think they'd learn to hide it more or just not do it to begin with. 
Here's the link where I got all my information...
http://www.safetycops.com/drug_related_crimes.htm

Last summer in San Antonio Texas the police were sent to a grizzly crime scene that was almost too grusome to describe. From what they did indicate in news it was something from a slasher zombie movie. The 33 yr old mother used a knife and 2 swords to kill her 3 week old son and that is not even the horrible part is just gets more strange and guresome. The police commented that the infants toes were actually bitten off, decapitated and his face ripped off and some of his brain were eaten. After the mother did that she stabbed herself twice. She is alive still though and when asked why she did it, she said because the devil told her to. So is she in fact mentally ill or suffering from some type of postpartm depression (possibly psychosis)or is it just a way to cover her track so later on she can take the insanity plea. Just as Andrea Yates also did. http://newsone.com/nation/associated-press/police-say-woman-killed-infant-son-and-ate-his-brain/ 

 

When you watch law shows or observe a proceeding in a court room you hear people being sentences to a certain amount of year in prison at the discresion of the judge and due to the severity of the crime. However, have you every wondered how those numbers are configured?  With this idea in mind I search articles on the internet that discussed how sentencing works. On the website indicated below I found information on sentencing guidelines. One of the nice things about this website is that it is written for everyone to understand and uses terms in which everyone can interpret.

            When reading through this article it identified five different categories that are taken into consideration when sentencing a criminal.

1.      Offense level-level of seriousness

2.      specific characteristics

3.      adjustments/multiple court adjustments

4.      acceptance of responsibility

5.      criminal history

 

Offense level is based on a scale from 1-43. level 1 is the lowest and less serious of the crime and 43 is the most serious and most severe. This level serves as the base level predicting the amount of punishment that will be rewarding if found guilty. The next category is that of the specific characteristics. The specific characteristics are used in order to determine whether or not more levels should be added due to the severity of the specific crime. On the website they use the example of theft. Theft alone is a level seven crime resulting in 20 years or more. However, if there is $6,000 that the victim loss then the level increases by two, if the loss of the victim is $50,000 then the level jumps up by six.  Robbery is another example used on the website. Robbery with a firearm is a level 20.  If the firearm is shown to the victim during the crime the level increases by five, in the firearm is discharged during the crime then level increases by seven.

            In addition to the characteristics, adjustments are also considered. These adjustments are at the discretion of the judge. There are three factors that influence adjustments; minimal level of participation-decreased 4 levels, vulnerability of the victim by age, physical or mental health-increases by two levels, obstruction of justice-increases by two levels.  If there are multiple adjustments or crimes at hand then the baseline level is figured from the more severe of the two crimes; however, the judge can use discretion with this and lower the level if they feel the criminal accepts responsibility for the offense by admitting, restitution before there is a guilty verdict, or pleading guilty.  This idea is most likely the driving force for interrogators in the criminal justice system that use these adjustments as a way to get people to release information to them by promising they will have a less sever punishment (when in reality it is up to the judge, not the criminal justice/FBI investigator. The last factor has to do with criminal history. How recent ones last conviction is on a scale from one to six can also produce a less severe punishment.

            As one might guess after reading this article, there a lot more information that goes into sentencing than one internet webpage can offer, however, this is  good website to get a general idea of how the process works.

 

 

 

http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/federal-sentencing-guidelines.cfm

I was sitting in my homicide class and someone gave a presentation on the Jonesboro Massacre. I wanted to learn more about what happened. I don't know who knows about this school shooting, but two young boys, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11 went to their school on March 24, 1998, with about 9 guns and waiting in the woods until Golden had to go in and pulled the fire alarm to make the students come out. As the students exited the school they shot at them. They managed to kill 5, 4 students and one teacher, and wound 10.

 

The murders were said to motived by the both of the girlfriends breaking up with them. They had told students about their plan but no one took them seriously about the threat. This is an article for the day after the shootings occurred. Due to Arkansas' law the boys only had to serve time in a juvenile detention center until they were 21 years old. My question is to why two young boys would do this at such a young age. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/jonesboro-massacre-slaughtered-by-boy-who-had-a-lot-of-killing-to-do-1152422.html

Here is another article that was written in 2008 that has more information on what happened and what happened after they were released.

http://www.nyctransitforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4460

 

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/myths.html

This is a list of common myths about rape. There are several important aspects which relate to psychology. One of the most important of these aspects is that rape is not usually about sex,  in the sense that it does not occur because the rapist is sexually attracted to the witness. (This is not the primary motive) The motivation is typically about power and control.  This is important to consider, because of implications for educating people on avoiding being put into dangerous situations, and for how investigators can potentially solve a case.

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm

I found a website about domestic abuse and what you are to look for if you are in a domestic abuse situation. Sometimes it is hard to notice that you are in an abuse situation, because you love that person and you make up excuses for their behavior. Everyone else in your life will notice that they are treating you bad or belittling you, but you will not notice. This website shows the signs of all the different kinds of abuse and the different ways that your significant other is treating you. There is also a hotline to call if you or someone you know is being abused.

There are many differnt types of domestic abuse, and most of them, such as emotional and psychological abuse, are hard to recognize. There are so many cases that go unresolved and so many people do not report the abuse.

You don't have to live in fear:

Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-787-3224

I came across this article of a man, Allan Menzies, in the UK who murdered his friend in order to become a vampire. Menzies had watched the movie Queen of the Damned at least 100 times and claimed that he was told he had to kill someone in order to become immortal. Menzies called Thomas McKendrick to his house where Menzies attacked and killed him with knives and a hammer. After the death, Menzies drank his blood and ate some of his flesh. He then put McKendricks body in a wheelbarrow and dumped his body in a ditch, which was found 6 weeks later. After the killing, Menzies was convinced he was a vampire and immortal. Menzies was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The psychological issues surrounding Menzies is enormous. He had been diagnosed a psychopath by three psychologists in court. Menzies lawyer also said he was schizophrenic, which definitely runs true with Menzies actions. There needs to be more education for people to understand these mental health problems.

article

When it comes to Heath Care our country is pretty much split down the middle. So who is right the Democrats or the Republicans? I have been trying to follow what is going on in the news, but it is hard to find an opinion that is not bias to either side. So how does this have to do with Law and Psychology? If you listen to the new you will hear about what kind of lawsuits the Republicans are trying to come up with to challenge the bill now that it has been passed. And psychologically this battle over health care is going to be very harmful on our generation. How do we learn what to do for our country if the people who are supposed to be role models do not even know how to get along? Is there another war in our future? As for right now this is not the case. the bill has been sent back to the House for another vote by the Republicans. Below is a link to where the bill is right now. The Republicans have used to amendment process to send the bill back into vote and therefore delay the process of implementing the bill.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/health-care-bill-back-house-vote-republican-challenges/story?id=10197766

 

 

I'm going to go way back and focus on the Lindbergh kidnapping.  Charles Lindbergh and famous aviator and his wife Anne Marrow Lindbergh were at their East Amwell, New Jersey home with their 20 month old son Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.  On March 1, 1932 Charles Jr. was abducted from his home.  Just two months later the boy of Charles Jr. was found near the Lindbergh home.  The baby had died from a massive fracture of the skull.  Two years went by before Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby.  Hauptmann was found guilty and was executed by the electric chair in 1936.  This crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act also called the Lindbergh Law, which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.

The law aspects of the case found start from the time of the kidnapping, the finding of the body, the actual investigation, the arrest of Bruno Hauptmann, the trial and the death of Hauptmann by electric chair.  Of course all the other aspects that went in between these parts of the time line.  The psychology aspects of the crime are what was the kidnapping thinking when he took Charles Jr.  The parents emotional state went out the window.  The American people were effected by this.  This was a very public case and everyone knew about.  It scared the American people to know that someone could just come in a take a baby, this was even a baby of a famous person.  We could even think of how this effected the people finding the body of Charles Jr.  This case had an emotional impact not just on the family, but on the American pubic.

Here is the link for more details about the case:

http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/lindber/lindbernew.htm

The story of Tiger Woods has been the top story for the past how many weeks. It seems as if people cannot get enough on this topic. I can across an article on PsychCentral that gives several reasons as to why Tiger Woods cheated on his wife. To view the different studies and psychological reasons why he cheated you can visit the link here. 

I also chose to blog about this article because it seems as if people are being consumed by this personal issue of his life. Although he is a famous golfer and an idol to many people, is his infidelity really anyones business? Being famous does put some guidelines on how people should act, but everyone is human. How much of someone private life should be given to the public even if they are famous? I believe the media crosses the line and that someday there may even be a law banning this sort of publicity, at least I hope so. The US recently passed a health care bill and even still Tiger Woods cheating scandal was being aired more often than information on the bill. Hopefully people will realize the implications that media exposure has on people's lives, and stop supporting it so much.

Photography at crime scenes is one of the most essential parts of the crime scene preservation, yet it's usually taken for granted. What seems so simple is actually so important because it preserves the layout and the exact elements of the crime scene.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/serial-killer.htm

Howstuffworks.com. Great site. It has everything you would ever want to know about how anything works. I was surprised to find a considerable amount of information about crime scene investigation, down to the specifics of the tools and chemicals they use in forensic science.

The fist page I looked through was how serial killers work. It has info about classification, behavior, motives, sanity, and more. The term serial killer actually was coined in the 1970's by Robert Ressler a former FBI director who selected serial, because English police called the murders "crimes in series", formerly known as mass murderers or stranger on stranger crime.

To be considered a serial killer, an individual must commit three or more murder's with a "cooling off" period between each one. According to the FBI there have been 400 serial killers in the United States in the past century, but there is no way to really tell how many there are. This number was considerably larger then I had previously thought.

The site is full of information and small interesting facts, there is a piece on America's first serial killer, who was HH. Holmes. He had opened a massive castle like hotel in 1893. Investigators actually believed he killed hundreds. He was caught finally when a custodian told police he was only allowed to clearn certain floors of the hotel. He was convicted and hung.

It also details how serial killers behave splitting them up into multiple categories and behavioral habits. They are classified by their organization and social skills, organized or disorganized and nonsocial or asocial, also providing a list of characteristics for each type.

Catching a serial killer and the serial killer sanity sections were both very interesting. They actually have a diagram detailing parts of the brain and describes how serial killers may actually have brain damage or biological abnormalities that contribute to their actions.

Many people like to hear of people being put in jail for stealing or for small crimes usually. That way we know justice is being served, but when the person who is put in jail cannot even afford to make bail, thus ultimately crowding the jails with non violent offenders, we don't really say anything and look the other way. These are people who are just simply trying to survive and the only way to do that sometimes is to break the law. Yes it is wrong, I am not going to argue it isn't, but I do believe that those who are caught with offenses that are so minor and they cannot get out on bail should be given the chance to go on parole instead of spend their lives in jail and waste the states money and waste their life away. In this article, the effects of jail are critical on the inmates. Prisons often show scenes of violence and stress. Prisoners are faced with this and like one man said, everyone is afraid, it is not an emotional or psychological fear, it is a practical matter. If you don't threaten someone at the very least, someone will threaten you...Many times you have to prey on someone, or you will be preyed on yourself. The prison system is meant to fix and cure the criminal inside, but the jail system has been anything but impressive. For the younger individuals who are put into the system, the chances of them being preyed on are even higher. These non violent offenders are put at the mercy of not the system, but the ones who are in it. Just because they cannot afford bail for a small crime does not mean they should be punished like a criminal who is in jail like they murdered someone.

More on this article is at the link below.

http://www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc82.html

After looking for research topics in one of my criminology classes I became more interested in how effective rehabilitation programs are in America's prisons.  According to the article I found the United States has the largest percentage of imprisoned citizens compared to all other countries.  One major goal of prison is to rehabilitate criminals into being productive citizens.  Prison programming can be easily linked to psychology and law in many ways.  One reason I chose this specific article is because it makes readers aware of the criminal theories that can be often applied to psychology.  An example is the social-conflict theory created by Karl Marx.  He believes crime occurs because the stress that lower class people experience when the upper class uses their power.  This theory can be used for prison programming in the fact that prisoners would be taught to be obediant to the powerful meaning to obey the laws of the government if they are released into the public. Another theory behind the rehabilitation of prisoners ignores the rehabilitation process all together.  Structuralists and functionalists view prison as a success already because it allows people to recognize who is "bad" and who is "good."  The people who agree with this theory believe it does not matter if a prisoner is rehabilitated because they will forever be labeled as a criminal by others.  This article is wrapped up after explaining the symbolic-interaction perspective which states that a person would only learn to be deviant if they are around people who teach them to be deviant.  This theory could prove to be an advantage or disadvantage for prison programming.  Either an inmate learns from other criminals or prison staff to be deviant or is rehabilitated by taking advantage of positive life skill programs within the prison.  All theories that are introduced in this article have their positive and negative sides to them.  Everything depends on the specific deviant behavior that occurs.  Yet, understanding these theories and more can help programming move a step in the right direction.  Also, it is obvious that one must understand psychology to understand why and how people act the way they do and also what keeps a person from doing that again.  Prison rehabilitation deals a lot with behavioral and social psychology.  Read for yourself to learn some more information.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/307778/prisons_in_america_their_effectiveness.html?cat=17

 

I saw a comment on here earlier talking about how to salvage keeping your license if you got pulled over for an OWI this made me want to go and search some of the worst excuses for an OWI.  I have put the sight on here, it's actually kind of funny how dumb these are.

http://www.maxim.com/humor/stupid-fun/83270/worst-celeb-dui-excuses-ever.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/12/scotus.sex.offender.law/index.html

In the article it gives a first hand account of a boy that was kidnapped and sexually assulted that is now an advocate for others that have also been sexually assulted.  They support a procedure that many states already have in place and that is a detention sort of program for sex offeneders when they get out of prison and what it does is it serves as a coaching program on how to cope in the world around them now that they are out and they oppertunity is there for them to commit a crime again. The program is state funded and has psychological staff on hand to help these previous offenders fight their urge soon as they are out of prison. But they also get into the other side of things and have previous sex offenders that advocate civil rights and say that the right due process is being over turned.  The basic question is, is it legal to hold someone even after they serve their time for the crime they commited? My personal opinion is in the case of sexual predators YES. They not only broke a law but they aslo violated another person against their will. They deserve to be thought how to control those anti-social behavior because jail time alone does not deter offenders from reapting those crime in most cases it simple puts their fantasizes on ice until they get out again.  

For my book report for this course I am reading Mind Hunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.  In the book, Douglas describes his interviews with criminals in the prison system in order to develop profiles for serial killers as part of a huge research project.  This was part of an effort to develop a Psychological Profiling Program, to make it easier for investigators, police, and the FBI to catch criminals faster and easier, by being able to "get inside their heads" and track their next moves. This got me interested in criminal and psychological profiling so I decided to google it.  I came across digital physiognomy software and free downloads.

 

 

Digital Physiognomy was developed as entertaining software, allowing people to create a portrait of a person and then provide a description of the person's character, traits, preferences, likes and dislikes, etc. You can choose different facial features and put them together, similar to the composite software that we can borrow from Dr. Maclin for our projects and what police use to make sketches of suspects. 

Testing out digital physiognomy or composite software gives us a real life account of creating a "picture" of a suspect.  I checked out the composite software from Dr. Maclin and found it difficult to do.  Difficult for the "witness" to come up with a description and difficult for me to choose accurate features from the extensive list.  Of course composites are biased to either the witness's perception or memory and the composite creator's training and expertise; however, both are useful in coming up with a tangible idea of the suspect. 

A free demo version is available at http://www.uniphiz.com/.  I did not have a chance to download it or see if it works, but I encourage people to check it out and see what it is all about!

 

 

Adolf Hitler, a toddler (not "the" Adolf Hitler) was denied a cake for his third birthday.  When Adolf's parents placed an order at the local ShopRite, they refused because they felt that it was "inappropriate" to decorate a cake bearing a Nazi name.  ShopRite has also refused to make birthday cakes for Adolf's two siblings, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell (named after Heinrich Himmler).

The parents of these three children, Heath Campbell and his wife Deborah, who both deny that the Holocaust ever happened and decorate their homes with swastikas, were upset by the refusal.  Lucky for them though, Wal-Mart stepped up and offered to decorate a cake for the family. 

Heath and Deborah feel as though their family and children are frequently discriminated against.  Part of me just wants to ask them what they expected to happen?! 

Obviously, the Holocaust is definitely not something to be proud of, but is making a cake that says "Adolf Hitler" on it really that big of a deal?  The fact that the local ShopRite refused to make this child a birthday cake makes the chain as a whole look very stereotypical.

Employers are not supposed to pick people for the job based on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc., etc., so is this case any different?  Should a three year old child be denied of a birthday cake because he was given a Nazi name?  I don't think so!

Here is a link to the article.  If you click on the Lehigh Valley Live News reported link within the article, it will bring to you other articles about this incident as well.     

Upon reading the transcript from the Sandoval trial, I became interested in how defense attournys work. While Googling this, I came across this article that explains how to protect yourself when pulled over for drunk driving (which is pretty common among college kids, which is why I chose it!) I'm not saying I'm defending drunk driving, but I am trying to say that there are ways that we can protect ourselves from the system, and to make sure that people who get pulled over for it are being treated fairly.  You can do this by contacting a defense attourny.

Within the article, there are other links that you can click on that provide further information behind this issue.

·         In 2008, 7,703 children under age 18 were held in American adult local jails.

·         3,650 children under the age 18 were held in American adult state prisons.

·         22 states allow children as young as 7 to be tried as adults.

·         Every year, nearly 80 children age 13 and younger are judicially transferred to adult court.

These are absolutely shocking statistics. The book, "From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System," tells of how the nation treats pre-adolescent children (age 12 and under) who commit serious crimes.

This report recommends a few things to keep children out of the harsh conditions in prisons. The first is that we should work to keep our children in the juvenile justice system. The second is that parole opportunities should be given to young children regardless of the length of the sentence. The article says that in Florida and Pennsylvania, children as young as 7 can serve life in prison without parole.

The final recommendation is that children in the adult system should not be housed with adult criminals, but instead in a juvenile facility. This I would absolutely agree with. Most seven year olds are raised by their parents in a cozy and safe environment. I can only imagine the psychological impact that growing up in a prison amongst adult criminals would have on a seven year old.

Here is a news article about a 12 year old boy being charged as an adult for the murder of his father's pregnant girlfriend:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/21/jordan-brown-killed-fathe_n_168862.html

My view on this is that I think our system takes it too far when trying children as adults. I understand that they do some very adult things, but I can't help but feel that we aren't realizing they are children. If we simply look at how they are developed emotionally we can see that they by no means act in adult ways. It scares me to think of my little brothers, who are around the age of 12, going to prison. Not only that, but spending their life there around the other people in prison. I believe our law system needs to get a better grip on children and charging them as adults. Any one of us can think back to the stupid things we used to do when we were kids. I even read old diaries and think, "Wow, that isn't even like me! I was so stupid!" Children at age 12 are still being molded, and I think by placing them into a prison, with adult criminals, is going to mold them in a very negative way.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hansen

 

http://www.serialkillerdatabase.net/roberthansen.html

 

While reading the novel Mind Hunter by John Douglas for my book report assignment, I came across a particularly interesting case. In the early 1980's Robert Hansen went on a murderous rampage that shocked the community of Anchorage, Alaska. Hansen, known throughout his community as a mild mannered baker with a strong affinity for hunting, was abducting local prostitutes and strippers, taking them back to his home while he raped and tortured them, then flew them out to his cabin in the woods where he promised if they cooperated they would be released. He would then let them go naked through the wooded area where he would hunt them down.

 

I was very interested in this case for two reasons. The first reason was that the killers MO closely followed one of my favorite short stories that I read in High School; The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. The story is about some shipwrecked sailors who find themselves being systematically hunted down one-by-one through an island jungle. They are hunted by a man named General Zarroff, who tired of hunting animals and wanted more of a challenge. In Douglas's novel, he cites many similarities between Hansen and Zarroff, not only in MO. According to Douglas, Hansen felt that by killing prostitutes and women he felt were degenerate, he was doing society a favor. Likewise Zarroff felt that shipmen were degenerates and tramps.

 

The second reason that I found this case so interesting was because the killer, Robert Hansen started his criminal career about 40 miles from where I grew up; in small town Pocahontas, IA. In the 1960, Hansen served as a police academy instructor in Pocahontas. Later that year he was arrested for burning down a school bus garage and was sentenced to jail for 4 years. It was after this time that he moved to Alaska. Because Hansen had moved away from the area nearly 20 years before he started his killing spree, I was unaware of his existence and my friends from that area were also unaware. Digging a little deeper into Hansen's past, I discovered he was born in Estherville, Iowa; the small town where both of my parents grew up, but again, because Hansen hadn't lived there since before my parents were born, they were unfamiliar with the case. However, I do plan on asking my grandparents if they are at all familiar with Hansen since he would be closer to their age.

One of the themes that Douglas talks about in his book is that Hansen is an excellent example of how a killers MO changes and develops with each kill. In his earlier killings of prostitutes, Hansen would simply tie them up and kill them execution style, then fly their bodies and level them in the wooded area near his cabin. As he became more confident in his killings, Hansen began to torture his victims and then finally began to hunt them like animals. It is because of this sort of changing pattern that it makes a series of murders hard to tie together. If four women are murdered in different ways, people assume that it is a different killer. Douglas argues that MO can change while significance of the murder does not change. In this case, we see Hansen's method of killing change but they are all related in how they spoke to Hansen personally. He liked the thrill of the hunt, and he went after high-risk individuals such as prostitutes.  

 

This website is very informative and goes through everything from the crime scene to identifying the suspect.  What I thought was very informative is the identifying of the victim and how long the victim has been dead.  It goes through a time line of 0 days to 31+.  When looking at a time line for when a victim has been dead you must look at the body temperature, hardening, the eyes, skin color, pooling of the blood, the digestive system, and forensic entomology. 

Forensic entomology is the use of insects to determine the time line of death.  In this website it shows the physical appearance of a person in cooperation with insects present of the stage relative to the time of decomposition. 

When looking around this website it also shows the different stages of a case and what to do during theses stages, not just forensic entomology. The first stage is the crime scene.  It goes through discovering the scene, identifying the scene, recording the incident, to searching for the evidence.  The second stage goes through the autopsy which goes though the cause of death, time of death, manner of death, marks of violence, to storing the evidence.  The third stage is the identity of the victim.  This goes through facial reconstruction, DNA and dental matching, and blood analysis.  The fourth stage is the evidence, which is pretty much self explanatory. The next stage the suspect.  This goes through lists of suspects, psychological profiling, fingerprinting, and both spoken and written evidence.   The last stage goes through the weapons that can be used by the suspect.  

This website can be very useful in order to understand the different aspects of solving a case starting from the crime scene to the capture of the suspect.

ICBFI? It is likely that your thinking WTF in your head right now but when it comes to jury duty it actually makes more sense. The abbreviation ICBFI stands for "I Cannot Be Fair and Impartial".

http://theununifiedcourtsystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/idiots-guide-to-getting-out-of-jury.html 

That is the statement that an attorney at law suggests is the best way in getting out of serving jury duty. The following websites, although they are amusing, are pretty ridiculous and some bluntly obvious.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty

http://ezinearticles.com/?Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty---Find-the-Perfect-Excuse&id=1899538

http://www.fullduplex.org/humor/2007/06/how-to-get-out-of-jury-duty/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/105502/valid_excuses_to_get_out_of_jury_duty.html?cat=17

If you want to take the time and amuse yourself and read all those go ahead but keep in mind that things such as being the president of the U.S. (reference to and earlier post of Obama being chosen) or other positions such as being at war, won't keep most of you average folks from serving your duty.

The statement I cannot be fair and impartial is actually quite simple and works effectively only if it is used at a correct time. It's sort of like saying that you support racism in a case that is prosecuting the KKK. The right timing is key; otherwise the trial lawyers will be onto your little plan and give you back an even more clever response just to keep you.

Let's use a murder trial as an example. A defense attorney is not going to choose you to be on the jury if when they ask everyone if murder can sometimes be justified and you sing out "I CANNOT BE FAIR AND IMPARTIAL because I knew someone that was murdered and all murderers should rot in jail no matter the circumstance... See that? Perfect timing to sing ICBFI even though that person you knew that was murdered was your cousin's best friend neighbors dad.

So the point of not following all the other silly ways to get out of jury duty and to use the ICBFI method, is all about timing your well prepared ICBFI song.

 

Initial jury selection procedures quickly eliminate persons who would not be fit to sit on the jury of a certain trial.  This is necessary because many people will be unable or unwilling to participate.  The number of possible jurors is endless and finding the most fair jury would be near impossible if our legal process was not the way it is.  Common sense tells us that as the process continues, the questions asked of the jurors become more specific.  I found this questionnaire that is used for New Jersey civil courts jury selection.  

A new study suggests that a hyper-reactive dopamine reward system may be a characteristic of a psychopath.  Up until this study, research studied what psychopaths lack (interpersonal skills, etc.), whereas the current study focuses on what psychopaths have excess of (impulsivity and risk-taking).

The participants initially filled out a personality test to measure the amount of psychopath traits they had.

In their first test, the researchers gave amphetamine to the participants and gave the a PET scan.  Because psychopathy is often times associated with substance abuse and substance abuse is associated with more dopamine release, the researchers hypothesized that participants who had more psychopathic traits would have greater rates of dopamine release than participants who had less psychopathic traits.  The researchers did find support for their hypothesis - when participants with psychopathic traits were given amphetamines, they released four times as much dopamine than did participants who did not have as many psychopathic traits.

In the second part of the study, participants were told they would be given a reward after finishing a simple task.  Researchers scanned the brains of the participants while they were completing the task and found that individuals with psychopathic traits would continue to do the task until they finished and received their reward. 

This website gives good "demonstrations that we live in a brain-constructed world."

You are given quite a few optical illusions and explanations as to why our brain tricks us into seeing or not seeing things.

Particularly important to this class are the light trick illusions.  The lighting of the crime is very important when determining the reliability of an eyewitness identification.  For example, if the crime happened in the middle of the night and there is very little light, an eyewitness may report that they saw every fine detail of the perpetrator when in fact this is likely untrue.  When sufficient light is not available and visibility is limited, the brain is given incomplete information.  Therefore, if the brain is given incomplete information, it is likely that the witness will fill in the gaps with previous experiences and information, making the identification less reliable.    

I'm not sure if the lighting is documented along with all of the other information that is initially document at the scene, but if it is not, it should be!

Read the transcript of the Sandoval trial emailed to you. It is a verbatim transcript of the trial (from the jury's perspective). It is long. Allow sufficient time to read it. This is one assignment where it may be most helpful to NOT read other's comments and just do this on your own.

Use these headings when commenting to this post.

What aspects of the trial procedures were you already familiar with?

What aspects of the trial procedures were new to you, or you learned something about?

What surprised you most about this trial?

What do you think would be going through the minds of the jurors as they sat there and listened to this trial?

What psychological terms or factors are operating in the defendant?

What psychological terms or factors are operating in the jurors?

What pieces of evidence are not disputed (ie, both sides, prosecution and defense agree to them)?

What pieces of evidence are in dispute (ie., the prosecution or defense disagree on some point)?

Describe how the prosecution OR the defense used the evidence to craft a story to support their viewpoint.

At this point, as a potential juror, which way are you leaning (guilty or not guilty) and why? This is predeliberation, so do not focus on or respond to other people's comments (for a later assignment, you will deliberate with the other 'jurors' in the class).

 

UPDATE:

Thursday 3/25 times are full.

These same times are now available for Thursday April 1.

Respond to this post as a comment, indicating which time you are taking on April 1. It's important that you put April 1 in your response so that people reviewing the comments can tell which times are still available. See original post (below) for times and other info.

------------------------

Please respond to this post choosing an appointment time on THURSDAY 3/25. You will need to look at other people's comments to see if the time you want is available.

Bring whatever you have of your portfolio to the meeting at my office Baker 348. The appts will be 15 min long....I have them spaced a half an hour apart because I have another class that will be making appointments with me at the other times.

10am

10:30am

11am

11:30am

12 noon

12:30

1pm

1:30

2:30

3pm

3:30pm

4pm

4:30pm

On Tuesday, April 20th, at 7:00 p.m. in the Maucker Union Ballroom Melissa Ohden will be coming to campus to speak. The event is called A Voice for the Voiceless: The Melissa Ohden Story. At about five months' gestation, Melissa Ohden survived a saline abortion and was placed in a neonatal unit, where her parents found her and adopted her. Melissa has experience working in a social welfare agency and is a member of the pro-woman organization Feminists for Life. She travels across the United States, speaking to college audiences. She says, " My biological mother was in college when she chose to abort me. I deserved better. My biological mother deserved better, too." This event is being sponsored by the Student Organization Speakers Fund and is being hosted by the student organization UNI Right to Life.

Think, if today you were called for a jury duty what would be going through your mind? Would it be how was I picked out of a whole county, city, or state? What will I even be doing? Will I get in trouble for leaving work or school? Is there any pay that comes with jury duty? If i go through the whole process, what happens in the deliberation? Am i able to talk about the case with others? Is this a criminal or civil case? These are all questions that you might ask yourself along with many others. It is not all that common that a person is called for Jury duty, so when they are it is like a whole new world for them. In most cases they have no idea that to do, how to go about things, and have a head full of so many questions. In that case it is important that a person be educated on what jury duty is, how it works, and what goes on during cases. They should also be educated on how you act while the trial is going on, and how to deliberate the verdict with other jury members.

     Jury duty is a responsibility we have as citizens of the United States of America to comply with. If looked at in a positive way, jury duty can be very educational and sometimes fun.

   This government website is very helpful with those questions. This web page will take you through three steps, 1) How jury service operates 2) The jury selection process 3) The trial process.

 

 

   http://www.utcourts.gov/courts/dist/jury/selserve.htm

 

Should bystanders of crime be convicted?  There is almost always something that a bystander can do to help stop crime against another human.  If the criminal is waving a weapon around, it is understandable that not many bystanders would step up to the plate.  However, there have been many cases lately that have shown how little bystanders do to help a person in need, when they are fully able to.  Some of these bystanders actually JOIN the perpetrator.  The links I have posted here show video of a woman being beaten in a subway, with subway officers there.  The officers say that it is not their job to step in, and they called for reinforcement.  Whoever said that stepping in is not permitting was obviously not there, and did not see how important it is that they DO step in.  The second video is a news report of a high school girl who was gang raped outside of her homecoming dance.  People watched and jeered, and some who had just been walking by joined in to rape her.  Some even recorded the event on their cell-phone cameras.  But no one helped these victims.  Last semester I took Social Psychology and learned about the Kitty Genovese case.  This woman was killed outside of her apartment complex as her neighbors watched and listened.  They were given ample time to go out and help her or call for police after the killer had left.  No one did anything.  This is known as the bystander effect, which is sometimes caused by diffusion of responsibility.  Bystanders think, "Someone else will surely help, someone else has probably already done something, yea, I don't have to do anything."  But often no one helps!  This cannot be used as an excuse.  These people are almost as guilty as the perpetrator and should be convicted too.

When thinking about jury selection and the jury process I got thinking about how these lawyers and attorneys use them to their advantage. With this idea in mind I came upon a website where it talks about the art and format of asking jurors questions and how it is important to not only ask well phrased Questions but to make sure these jurors have enough time to think and provide a good elaborate answer. This not only helps the thought process of the juror and gives them insight to what the case is about but also it allows the lawyer to gather information about the types of people that he is going to be presenting his case to. This information about the jurors is important because it unveils some underlying behaiors, attitudes, and  perspectives the jurors might have; and hoe they feel about this particular case.

 

Example: the defended is going to argue that his client was a victim of wrongful or mistaken identity. He asks jurors the question...have you ever been a victim of mistaken identity? This question does two things: it presents the defendants perspective on the case and it plants the idea in the jurors head a time they had been wrongfully convicted of a crime or another situation promoting empathy for the defendant. Another thing an interviewer needs to do in addition to asking thought provoking questions is to give them enough time to answer the questions.

 

The author of this website outlines seven steps to making sure you are giving the jurors enough time to think:

1. Ask the question of the entire panel (and tell them how they should respond): "By show of hands, has anyone here ever been wrongfully accused of something?"

2. Show them how to respond: While asking the question, raise your own hand in the air.  (Telling them how to respond and then showing them how to respond will encourage greater responses.)

3. Pause.  Don't rush it.  Mentally count to 10 or so before you even think about saying anything else or moving to another topic.

4. Look 'em in the eyes.  While you're pausing, make eye contact with several jurors and use the power of your eye contact to encourage responses.  Keep an eye out for the ones who look like they'd like to respond, but haven't made up their minds yet.

5. Nobody volunteered?  Pick on someone.  Actually, pick about 3-4 people, from different parts of the room, and ask them directly: "Mrs. Jones, have you ever been wrongfully accused of something?"  By asking them directly, sometimes you'll prompt a better response.  (A good place to start is with the people who looked like they wanted to respond, but didn't raise their hand.)

6. Ask the entire panel again.  Even if no one responds to your individual questions, it's not a waste of time, because you're giving the other jurors time to finish thinking their way through your question.  Now that they've had enough time to finish thinking, ask the entire panel once again, perhaps adding a bit of a challenge to your question: "Really?  No one here has ever been wrongfully accused of anything?"

7. Pause (again).  Look 'em in the eyes (again).  Hopefully, this will prompt any hold-outs into answering the question.  If not, consider rephrasing the question, or moving on to another topic.  At least you'll know that you didn't cut off anyone's thought process and prevent them from answering. 

If you are interested there are more links on this website that elaborate on information regarding questions and answer sessions with jurors and other variables in the process

http://www.trialtheater.com/wordpress/jury-selection/give-jurors-time-to-think-during-jury-selection/

Sleep walking is a common sleeping disorder. However, have you ever thought someone could actually commit a crime while sleeping? Parasomnia describes many different types of disorders, such as: nightmares, sleep terrors, sleep walking, confusion arousal, REM disorder, and sleep enuresis (aka bed wetting). The only one that is related with certain crimes is sleep walking. Can you imagine going to bed then waking up with the police knocking at your door and a dead body on your floor with no recollection of anything? It'd be pretty dang scary. And how would you, as a jury, come up with a verdict in a situation like this. Here are a few court cases dealing with sleep walking crimes.
http://www.usnews.com/health/family-health/sleep/articles/2009/05/08/7-criminal-cases-that-invoked-the-sleepwalking-defense.html

  The Agricultural High School in Mississsippi canceled a prom all because they did not want a student who happens to be a lesbian to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend.  McMillen (the student)  requested if she could wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to the school officials because in the past couples of the same sex were not welcomed in to the prom.  McMillen approached them before a memo went out saying from the school saying that, "School policy requires that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex."  The American Civil Liberties Union gave the school district a deadline for them to remove that policy because it violated McMillen rights.  The High School refused, so they did what they thought was the next best thing.  The High School canceled prom.

   Wehn I read this, I was really in disbelief.  You just can't cancel a prom all because you don't agree with someone elses beliefs.  What is that?  What kind of mature decision is that?  Out of the choices they had to either remove the policy so not to be brought into court or cancel prom and disappoint not just one person but a whole group of people who were looking forward to their prom.  So instead of using common sense, they decided not to let go of their pride and retaliate agains the one, 18 year old student.  Now some students are blaming McMillen for the prom cancelation, when realty the school decided to cancel it when they know they could have just let this thing go instead of blowing out of proportion.

  Unfortunately the school probably didn't think on how the consequence might affect McMillen.  Students might start hazing her, harrass her, and all kinds of negative things because of what a group of school officials have done.  The sad thing is that there are still small towns and even states that still think like this that don't think about the consequences.  I say deal with it, you can not change someone elses mine by force, have we not learned anything in our history books?  You can not think for others, others have different beliefs than you do.  Well there is a link at the bottom of this so you can put in on your opinions.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lesbian_prom_date

I thought this was a good video to watch. The person who talks is a criminal lawyer and tells about not only his experience going through jury selection but also his personal experience selecting his jury.

It's kind of a lengthy video but it still does a great job on how to make the possible jurors feel comfortable. Usually, jury selection is in the view of the lawyers but it is more focused on the actually jurors. Overall, I thought this was a good video and kind of interesting.

http://www.trialtheater.com/wordpress/jury-selection/video-two-tips-for-better-jury-selection/ 

He is another video (half way down the page) where he says about jury selection and what you should say during a jury selection. It kind of covers the same stuff as the one above but it goes into more detail. Also, it is a little longer than the other video.

http://www.trialtheater.com/wordpress/category/jury-selection/

 

crime of passion n. a defendant's excuse for committing a crime due to sudden anger or heartbreak, in order to eliminate the element of "premeditation." This usually arises in murder or attempted murder cases, when a spouse or sweetheart finds his/her "beloved" having sexual intercourse with another and shoots or stabs one or both of the coupled pair. To make this claim the defendant must have acted immediately upon the rise of passion, without the time for contemplation or allowing for "a cooling of the blood." It is sometimes called the "Law of Texas" since juries in that state are supposedly lenient to cuckolded lovers who wreak their own vengeance. The benefit of eliminating premeditation is to lessen the provable homicide to manslaughter with no death penalty and limited prison terms. An emotionally charged jury may even acquit the impassioned defendant. this definition can be found at http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/crime+of+passion 

Passion Crimes happen quite often. We've all had those moments in life where something effects us so strongly we ourselves can not control our actions caused by the situation. If one were to sit back and really look and think about a situation I'm sure a lot of these cases would never have came about, but that's not the case. Is a sudden heat of the moment decision a reason to get off? Did one not still do the crime at hand? So why do some juries sympathize and let a guilty man or woman walk free? I think its because we can all relate to the situation-- and all would have had thoughts of the same acts.

Brene Brown Ph.D disagrees with my theory. her thoughts on the subject can be found at http://www.brenebrown.com/crimes-of-passion/ 

 But whether right or wrong the fact is there, it still happens and happens often. Maybe in the heat of the moment we can't control our feelings, but maybe we can. Only time and extensive research will show that.

Since I have never been called up for jury duty I figured I should do a little research on the actual process of selecting a jury. One of my roommates had been called in for jury duty on a couple of occasions so I spoke with him in regards to how it went and how he felt about the process. To sum up his comments briefly, basically "it was a waste of my time." I found this to be amusing as well as somewhat discerning considering being evaluated by a "jury of your peers" is a large part of our legal system. Upon questioning why he felt that way he responded, "it costs you money when you have to miss out on work, just to be called in twice, and sent home twice." With that being said, I can understand his distaste for jury duty. This had me wondering if he had used any psychological cues that may have led to him being dismissed. Turns out there are actually web sites dedicated in helping you AVOID jury duty.

http://www.courtreporterschools.com/?page_id=7

I also found a web site that sells a book on how to avoid jury duty. Leave it to someone to find a way to make money off of tips on how to get out of the selection process.

http://www.avoidingjuryduty.com/

The process begins with jurors being selected at random from an already compiled list of people (examples: listing of licensed drivers, public utility service records, or even polling precinct lists). After people are selected at random they are called in and go through a basic question/answer screening. If a juror has "passed" they will then be examined by the prosecution and defense teams (this is known as voir dire). This consists of general questions posed to the possible jury as a group, as well as more in-depth questions on a individual level.

There are actually quite a few aspects of psychology that tie in with this process of law. Possible jurors perceptions are tested, in which each response is judged. The entire process falls within social psychology since jurors are questioned on areas such as: race, opinions on stereotyping, and other "hot topic" areas. If the perspective juror has any sort of psychological disorder (choose any that fall under abnormal psychology) chances are they are going to be excused from duty.

In my opinion I feel that jury duty, even though it doesn't pay well (and in some instances is a "waste" of time), is still a duty we should all have to complete at some point in our lives. This should especially hit home for victims of crimes that would want a good set of jurors in choosing their fate in the courtroom.

For further readings and information please visit the following sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection
http://www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com/jury-selection.html

I read a study (Found here) that looked into why people waive their Miranda Rights. The study found that 89% of the innocent participants  waived their rights regardless of the demeanor of the interrogator. This of course makes sense if you didn't commit the crime why would you think you need to keep your mouth shut and wait for your lawyer to show up. You should keep in mind the perspective of the police though even if they are truly putting all their effort into getting the right person for a crime if you are a witness they know that you were at least involved enough to have seen something. Further it would probably be very poor investigative technique to take people at their word that they didn't do something imagine that interrogation:
"Right Mr. Smith we found the hooker's head in your fridge did you kill her?"
"No I did not."
"Really?"
"I did not kill her."
"Alright your free to go, sorry for wasting your time."

Yeah that's not going to happen the message here is of course that if your going to talk to the police exercise those rights you have. It might make you look bad in the short run, but honestly years in prison for a crime you didn't commit is going to look a whole lot worse.

For my blog about juries, I decided to focus on the challenge rights that attorneys have when selecting a jury and specific cases related to those challenges.

voir dire: is the process of interviewing potential jurors in which judges and attorneys examine their backgrounds and possible biases.

Attorneys are allowed to challenge certain jurors when selecting a jury, which is simply a request to dismiss a potential juror.

peremptory challenge: an attorney can challenge a potential juror without providing a reason

challenge for cause: an attorney must provide a reason when challenging a potential juror, whether it be related to some bias towards the case, acquaintanceship with one of the parties, knowledge about the facts of the case, an obvious prejudice, or an inability to serve such as having a mental disorder. The judge then decides whether or not to dismiss the prospective juror.

I think it is a good idea to give attorneys these challenges.  I think both are necessary because it would not be fair for attorneys to eliminate an unlimited number of potential jurors for no reason.  The challenge for cause keeps attorneys in check and requires them to provide a reason to throw out a juror.  I think it is good that our courts allow attorneys to have these rights and that both exist to keep the attorneys fair and in check.   

 

Listed below are some cases related to jury selection...

Strauder v. West Virginia (1879): exclusion of potential jurors based solely on race is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause

Batson v. Kentucky (1986): peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race

J. E. B. v. Alabama ex rel. T. B. (1994): peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their sex

I agree with the verdicts of these cases.  I do not think jurors should be thrown out based solely on their sex or race.    These cases give everyone an equal opportunity to serve as a juror, or at least through voir dire.

http://www.criminalprofiling.ch/

 

This is a really neat site about the profiling of serial killers and other mass murders. A lot of it is based on information from the FBI, and it has some cool information about the killers, and how detectives can often determine a profile of a potential suspect just by looking at the crime. It is pretty coo, and worth a look, especially if you read Mind Hunter, and found it interesting

Now more than every, attorneys are relying on expert witnesses for their cases. An expert witness is used to provide the jury with a better understanding of a certain aspect of a case. As we've discussed in class, expert witnesses can be used to discuss the merits and disadvantages of memory evidence, motives, and other elements. Expert witnesses are expensive, yet effective. Juries tend to respond well to experts on the stand instead of biased bystanders or others directly tied to the case. 

Many people have probably heard about Jaycee Dugard, but if not, here is a little glimps into her life. Jaycee was kidnapped on June 10th, 1991. She was 11 years old at the time. She was abducted at her bus stop by Phillip Garrido. She was missing for over 18 years. She encountered several years of sexual assault and rape by Garrido and his wife Nancy. Garrido's unusual behavior at his parole meeting is what set a spark to the investigation. Jaycee was rescued after more then 18 years after her abduction. Convicted sex offender Garrido and Nancy, are awaiting trial on charges of kiddnapping and sexually assauting Jaycee for years while they keeping her hidden in a tent in their back yard. Jaycee also has two children; Garrido is the father.

This type of event shows the holes in our legal system as well as all the sick people we have out on the streets! On several occasions authorities failed to make a connection with Garrido and Jaycee Dugard. There were many missed opportunities. If you are interested in learning more follow the links I have provided:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32614326/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8426124

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/03/05/2010-03-05_jaycee_dugard_shows_home_movies_to_document_journey_toward_normal_life_after_18y.html#ixzz0ht6wZt4J

http://www.beavertonvalleytimes.com/news/story.php?story_id=126827936072322200
This article is about a man who was convicted of murdering a woman and her two sons on account of revenge. He found out that his wife was having an affair with another man and was pregnant with the other man's child. Serrano was upset and went to the other man's house to get him, but found his wife, 37, and his two sons who were 15 and 12. Serrano shot all three of them. The jury of 8 women and 4 men were to decide if Ricardo Serrano was to spend life in prison without parole or have the death penatly.

I found this disturbing because everyone on the defense side was trying to make it sound like Serrano was a good man. I understand that it is their job to defend the accused, but a good man doesn't go and shoot people out of revenge.
I also found another article that talks about the decision that the jury made and about how Serrano's wife wants to testify against him.
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2008/08/murder_suspect_wants_to_preven.html

"Alexis De Tocqueville got it right when he noted 150 years ago that America is a country where virtually every issue--the intimate, mundane, significant, complicated, and terrible--eventually makes its way into court. Once there, it is a strange system we have for resolving these problems. A collection of ordinary citizens, who appear to share very little in common, evaluate conflicting versions of historical events as presented by professionally trained, partisan adversaries in the stylized and artificial manner that is the jury trial.  Described this way, it is not difficult to see why so many people have come to question the effectiveness of the way we try cases".  This is the first paragraph from the website.  I think that it really sums up why some people think the jury system doesn't work. 

I found a website that lists the seven reasons why the jury system works.  The article on the website was posed by G. Christopher Ritter.  Ritter is a member of the case manager at the Focal Point.  The Focal Point is a company that develops trial strategies and courtroom presentations for the purpose of making cases easier for judges and jurors to understand. Ritter states that the jury system works for seven reasons and lawyers who understand this will do better in court than those who don't.  Ritter's seven reasons are:

1) The nature of all disputes

2) We have more in common with the jurors than we think

3) Attorney's use stories to educate jurors

4) At trail those stories are repeated three times

5) It requires the essential characters (people who witnessed the crime)

6) Layers can talk directly to the jurors

7) Jurors bring "collective intuition" to the jury process

This article is only one man's reasons for why the jury system work.  It gives you some good reasons why the jury system does work and from there you can make your own decision about it.  I found that this article gave me a new way to look at the jury system and made me think of other reasons why the jury system works and why it doens't work.  To read more on the seven reasons you will need to go to the website, which is:

http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/why-the-jury-system-works-642932.html

 

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty

While searching for something to post about juries for this week I was a little surprised with the results that came up. Regardless what I tied to the word jury, at least a quarter of the sites would be about getting out of jury duty. These sites ranged from the generally oriented wikihow entry I posted above, to forums and state specific entire websites devoted to figuring out ways to avoid this obligation.

While it is technically your civic duty to serve, citizens have no problem swapping secrets to rid themselves of what most people consider a burden. The amount of information available paints a picture that jury duty is something that is looked at with considerable disdain. What is there to motivate you to spend your time and resources to commit to it, especially when considering the only extrinsic motivator is a very small monetary fee? While it is the law you must attend your summons, from what I have heard from peers, and older adults, is that skipping out on it is not a big deal and often nothing will be done about it, regardless of the fines in place. How did these attitudes get put into place?

It seems to me that avoiding civic duty, and breaking the law would be detrimental to mental health, at least for anyone who has good morals and values. Though it is understandable that it is not possible for many people to meet this obligation, the pure hatred for the process is very evident in many of the get out of jury duty forums.  Here's an excerpt from a forum detailing how a candidate actually was directly aggressive about getting out of his obligation.

"After sitting through jury selection and finding myself being "ordered" to return the following day to serve on a jury I had this conversation with the judge:
"I believe it is wrong for you to hold me here against my will when I have committed no crime."
"You're not being held here, you're serving on a jury."
"Well it is against my will to do so if you're forcing me to do this then you are holding me here against my will."
"Juror number 12, you're excused.""

This brings up a couple of questions, would this happen with any judge? Is it not true that you can't be held against your will regardless of situation unless you are put under arrest?

There are also sites out there that have these exact same questions about why people avoid the duty and have a lot of interesting comments on the forum that really gives you some insight into the mindset of people.

http://www.squidoo.com/jurydutywithhonor

A man named Scott Roeder took the life of one Doctor George Tiller. Roeder said that he was saving the future lives of unborn babies. The court has put together a secret jury of 8 men and 6 women and a couple more are coming to put the jury team together. To know if the jury is biased or not is really difficult. This case has caused an uproar for both sides of the topic throughout the nation. Many want him dead while many are wanting him to be released. The court is trying to keep the general public and media out of this case because of the sensitivity of the situation the court is discussing. There is a lot psychological problems going on here with this guy. Personally I believe this is a touchy topic so I won't be commenting on it to avoid any disputes or arguments. But I agree on not allowing the media and public in because that could cause riot or a public frenzy in any which way the case goes.

More on the case is below.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583518,00.html

While looking for things to post concerning juries, I found this article discussing how important the role of the juror is in deciding whether someone is sentenced the death penalty. The authors, Raoul Cantero and Robert Kline, discussed how there are two phases the jury goes for: the trial phase and the penalty phase. The trial phase is when the jury decides if the defendant is guilty or innocent of a capital crime. If the defendant is found guilty, the jury must go through the penalty phase to decide if the defendant deserves the death penalty. Thinking about the reality of this situation, the jury must carefully be selected. It would be a very hard task to decide that someone does not deserve the right to live. Psychologically, the jury must be strong mentally and emotionally to be able to handle this. For the defendant, it would be hard to handle that they will be dying. Both sides are affected greatly which is why the death penalty is not legal in all states. The article I was looking at mostly focused on Florida because they're the only state that only requires a simple majority to rule in favor of the death penalty. Below are the links where I found this information at.


Full article
 Introduction to article

Three year old Wang Xiaoyi went outside to play around 5 p.m. on May 19th, 2009 and never returned home.  A thirteen year old boy (unnamed) saw her playing outside of his apartment building on his way back from school and took Xiaoyi to his apartment.  There, the boy tied her to the bed, drowned her, had sex with her corpse, and threw it out of his fifth-floor apartment window.

Abnormal psychology describes necrophilia as the sexual attraction to corpses.  As far as classification goes, necrophilia falls under Paraphilia NOS (not otherwise specified) according to the DSM-IV-TR.  The criteria includes the presences, over a period of at least six months, of recurrent and intense urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving corpses which are either acted upon or have been markedly distressing.

There are three main types of necrophilia: necrophiliac homicide, regular necrophilia, and necrophiliac fantasy.  Regular necrophilia is the use of corpses for sexual purposes after the person was already dead.  Necrophiliac fantasies are envisions of such acts, but not actually acting upon them.  The last type, necrophiliac homicide describes the case above.  This type is characterized by murdering to obtain a corpse for sexual pleasure.

Necrophilia is not the only type of paraphilia which can lead to problems with the law.  There are 8 main types of paraphilias (5-8 are especially likely to run into problems with the law):

1. Fetishisms
2. Sexual Masochism
3. Sexual Sadism
4. Transvetic fetishism
5. Exhibitionism
6. Frotteurism
7. Paedophilia
8. Voyeurism

All other paraphilias, such as necrophilia, telephone scatalogia, partialism, zoophilia, coprophilia, klismaphilia, urophilia, and emetophilia all fall under the not otherwise specified category.

We don't hear of very many cases of paraphilia as it is not frequently diagnosed in a clinical setting, but there is no doubt they exist.  Accurate prevalence rates are unavailable because people with paraphilias do not typically admit it or seek treatment unless they are required by law, but most cases of paraphilias are seen in males and some (exhibitionism especially) are considered exclusively a male disorder. 

For more information about the case above, visit here.

For more information about particular paraphilias, visit these sites:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-05/28/content_7950768.htm
http://web4health.info/en/answers/sex-paraphi-what.htm
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dsm-iv/content/article/10168/55266?pageNumber=1

I was surfing the web and ran across this website and thought it was pretty cool.

This site features biographies of notorious killers and mass murders, some of which include Ted Bundy, the Black Dahlia, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. 

If you get bored over spring break, there is some interesting information on this site!

This article points out the problems that are associated with jury deliberation and the unfortunate "hung jury." After becoming familiar with the fact that a few cases are retried because the jury members are unable to come to an agreed upon decision I decided to investigate more into it.  The first recorded time a mistrial occured because a jury could not come to an agreement occured in 1807, and ever since then researchers and scholars have worked to improve the system.  This article dives into the problems of coercing a jury to reach a verdict, and the history behind coercion of juries. The psychological part of coercion is the fact that persuasion is playing a role and may change others motivations.  It definitely deals with social psychology and how people react to those in power like a judge for example.  During a trial usually emotions run high for anyone involved.  That is why this article explains the negative aspects of conducting a mistrial.  That means that everything will have to be done over again.  Eye witnesses may have to testify again and bring themselves to cope with emotional memories.  The article then moves on to explain the history of unanimous votes by jury members and why the legal system requires unaniminity.  It would be wise for those of you who are interested in the deliberation process to read this.  Also because it answers the questions of how and why juries reach a verdict and how and why juries sometimes do not reach a verdict.  To me juries are an intriguing group to study because psychologically it is interesting how people's decisions change due to group influences.

http://www.georgetownlawjournal.com/issues/pdf/97-1/Bove.PDF

 

Psycholgy and sociology have a very strong influence on the origin of jury selection. There are jury selection consultants that use all kinds of tools for jury selection even astrology. There are a lot of problems with the regulation and ethics behind some jury selsction techniques even the "scientific" approaches this article gives a lot of information all about the whole system of jury selection it is a little bit on the long side but is easy to navigate by topic. http://www.publications.villanova.edu/Concept/2005/jury_selection.pdf 

http://www.dcba.org/brief/octissue/1999/art21099.htm

 

I found this article written by lawyer Patricia F. Kuehn, J.D., discussing various tips that she believes are helpful for a trial lawyer to select a jury. She argues that the jury selection process is one of the most crucial components of winning or losing the case. She says that since Voir Dire is the only time a lawyer is able to interact with the jury, a lawyer should take advantage of this opportunity.

The first thing that Kuehn suggests is that you take in as much information about the potential jurors the moment they walk in the door. It is during this time to take in mannerisms and how they present themselves. Also notice things such as clothing, demeanor, and how they interact with other jurors.  It is also important to control your own mannerisms and speech, as the jurors will also be watching you.

The next step that Kuehn suggests is to be very careful with what type of questions you ask the jurors. You have to craft your questions in a way that you get the response you want without coming off as threatening She suggests starting out with open-ended questions about demographics, jobs, and things of that nature. This leads the jurors into feeling comfortable with you.

The last thing that Kuehn suggests is to use the court case of Batson vs Kentucky to your advantage. This court case found that using a peremptory challenge to discriminate against minorities was against the 14^th Amendments and that lawyers should raise a Batson objection if they feel that their opponent is challenging minorities.

She wraps up her article by again stating that the jury selection process should be paid as much detail as any other part of the trial.

 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9906EEDC143FE433A25752C0A9649C946097D6CF

(abstract of the article)

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9906EEDC143FE433A25752C0A9649C946097D6CF

(the entire article)

The above article is from 1901, but I thought it was interesting to see the types of problems they were having in the legal system in the past. It discusses the opposition by a former judge concerning jury selection for trials in New Jersey. Former Judge Thomas Henry, challenged the jury selection during the Quarter Sessions. His challenge was overturned by Judge Skinner, so he took his challenge to the Court of Error and Appeals.

"Mr. Henry says the Constables about the court have friends whom they desire to have placed on the jury list, and the Sheriff, to be accomodating, uses the names of these friends. Some of these constables are attached to the Prosecutor's office..."

Mr. Henry argued that the chosen jurors were possibly inclined to favor the prosecution's side, because that's how they were chosen, and resulted in the money received for their services to society.

Mr. Henry asked the judge in the current case he was defending, if he would allow a jury to be selected from a list of the defense's friends, and of course the judge denied this request. Mr. Henry made a valid point that many other attorneys and judges began to agree with-the method for jury selection needed to be reformed.

"We're really getting an opportunity to find out where the skeletons are hidden."

 - Marshall Hennington, clinical psychologist

The follow short article comes from a newser,com online article source (it was short so I just pasted into onto here). It explains how technology is now influencing the selection of jurors. This indeed isn't shocking to me, but instead shows how our world demands that one keeps up with technology. The article reads...

"Get called for jury duty these days, and you can expect attorneys to know a lot more about you than they let on. Trial consultants who used to specialize in legwork--visiting neighbors and friends to gather clues to potential jurors' views--are now expert Web surfers, tracing things like spending habits, campaign contributions, letters to the editor--not to speak of the personal info on your Facebook page, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"If a juror has an attitude about something, I want to know what that is," says one veteran jury researcher. Both sides can be counted on to be doing the research, says the head of a Dallas-based research firm: Anyone who neglects Internet searches "is bordering on malpractice." "

 

I personally think that this technology could be dangerous when selectiong jurors. I want to point out that I think it is a smart move to gather information from sources like blogs and facebook. However, I would like to look into the psychological aspect of it. I can remember back when I was really young and the "cool" thing to was to write blog posts on your msn profile after a day at school. You would ramble about things you did. However, half of these things were half as awesome as I made them sound. I would even lie about doing certain things or having certain things. Like self-report data, I feel like people on the internet have the ability to portray themselves to the world as they wish to be seen. Like self report data, this can be very influenced by social desirability bias. I feel that facebook even has a strong push to portray yourself in a socially acceptable way. So as lawyers look into jury selection through the eyes of the internet I feel that they must be careful that how a person may portray themselves online may or may not be a very good judgment of the type of person they really are. I feel like technology can be a great thing, but can also cause some trouble some days too. The following link brings you to a trial that was delayed due to a facebook message.

 

http://www.digtriad.com/news/local_state/article.aspx?storyid=138378

I enjoyed doing research on jury selection because I've never been asked to serve on a jury, so I was always curious about the process you have to go through. As it turns out, it's pretty time consuming. I've provided a link that has information on the jury selection process.

Also, when one of my friends was called to jury duty, she asked me how to get out of it. Just in case any of you decide you want to get out of jury duty, I also found a website that gives 20 effective ways to avoid jury duty. Some of them are humorous, other ones are more serious. So have fun reading those!

"Basically, jury consulting is applied psychology" - Thomas Diamante

Behind jury selection lies a jury consultant.  There has been an increasing demand for jury consultation, but what is it and is it actually effective?

Jury consultants use their backgrounds in psychology to help lawyers pick jurors who are most likely to side with their client.  During jury questioning, if lawyers suspect any bias in any of the potential jurors, they can challenge them and may eventually be excused by the judge, but the catch is, this is only allowed so many times.  After those times are used, lawyers may turn to consultants (who may come from many different areas of study, but primarily psychology) to help pick jurors.

Trial consultants start the process of jury selection months prior to trial.  Random people are selected to take part in focus groups where the are exposed to the lawyers arguments.  Consultants look to their reactions and deliberation to see what characteristics are important in a particular trial.  Based on these findings, consultants develop questionaires and strategies to select jurors most appropriate for the side they are working on.

Jurors are usually scrutinized based on their personalities, past experiences, and attitudes toward certain situations.  Other characteristics such as leadership potential and how likely they are to conform also get examined.  Consultants also judge the potential jurors by their voice (confident, passive, etc.), how they interact with others during break periods, as well as body language.  

Consultants also work to weed out the potential jurors that may have a bias toward the situation.  For example, the website talks about a potential juror sitting on a case of medical malpractice who has been a victim of one and how it would be difficult for them to just be reminded of the law and not make judgment based on prior experiences. 

Lastly, the website talks about whether or not jury selection even works.  Since it is difficult to really assess the success of jury selection, some may doubt its effectiveness.  Whether or not it is effective, the industry of trial consultation is a thriving business. 


Here is a link to the source of the above information.     

 

http://www.uscourts.gov/jury/qualifications.html

Have you ever been called for Jury Duty? Have you ever wondered what qualifications are present in order to select a Jury?  Have you ever wondered what the qualifications are to be on a Jury? How about what qualifications it takes to become exempt from Jury duty or even the excuses to get out of jury duty?  I know I have always wondered this.  I myself have never been called for Jury duty, but I have a relative that is called once a year it seems. 

While thinking about this I looked online for the qualifications to be on a jury and came upon this website.  It lists the Juror qualifications, the three groups that are exempt from Jury duty, excuses, and temporary deferrals. 

The website also goes through the Jury selection and service act, the selection of jurors, and what a trial (petite) jury is and how many people are to serve on this type of jury. This website also goes through what a grand jury is and how many people serve on this type of jury.

Take a look around the website and see  just how important the qualifications and duties of a jury are.   

A very highly debated subject across the United States has been the use of cell phones while driving. Talking on a phone was always seen as dangerous, but now that the world of texting has taken over there is a large concern about safety on the road. The new phones such as the blackberry, the I-phone, and other smart phones have so many activities that can be done while driving it has cause a problem to the safety of others on the road. It has even been said that texting while driving is as bad as driving drunk. When I person text they do not have any of their attention on the road or concerned about the safety of other on the road. Because of this there has been a bill presented to Iowa's legislature about banning texting while driving. This bill has passed and is law HF 2456. This law prohibits texting and emailing while driving, but not reading the messages or doing anything else on the phone. This is just the start. Iowa legislatures are hoping to ban such things as surfing the internet and playing games while driving. Below is a link to an article on the law. This is just a short article, but it is a starting point to read about if you have any interest in this law. But, do not worry they are only passing out warning during the first year that this law is in effect so you have a while to get used to the restriction. But, then again how many people still speed?...

 

http://www.wcfcourier.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_878a5cce-217a-11df-8632-001cc4c03286.html

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124452969&ps=cprs

"The Supreme Court is getting involved in the legal fight over the anti-gay protesters who show up at military funerals with inflammatory messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers."..."

These church-based protestors are not looked at by most with kind eyes. A lot of people consider their picketing at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as rude, wrong, insensitive, and mean, but is their protest protected under the First Amendment?

Albert Snyder, father of a deceased marine, was awarded damages by a Baltimore Jury for the emotional distress the picketers caused him at his son's funeral. The verdict was thrown out by an appeals court, though. "...The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained "imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric" protected by the First Amendment."

The Snyder v. Phelps case will begin this fall.

Hope Steffey called the police as a victim of assault and endured even more when the police took her into custody.  It all started when Steffey's cousin called the police over Hope being assaulted, when the police arrived and asked for her license she accidentally gave them her deceased sisters, which she kept as a memento.   When the police refused to return it to her Steffey began to panic and beg for it to be returned.  They eventually arrested her for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.  Once she arrived at the police station Steffey was denied her phone call and was then taken into a cell, handcuffed to the ground and stripped searched.  Not only was she forcibly strip searched by female police officers but also by men, which is against policy.  I've posted some information on the case and the video of the search, so be ware it's a bit graphic.

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=82447

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Oqa-oHoOo

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124357844

"Newspapers are full of apologies these days, from Toyota to Tiger Woods. But papers in the Boston area are also running a growing number of "mea culpas" that are ordered by the courts.

Increasingly, companies that plead guilty to crimes that harm the community -- polluting, for example -- are being required to publish an apology as part of their punishment."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/05psychic.html?emc=eta1

Here is a New York Times article about a "highly reputable" psychic trained by Nepalese monks in the art of time travel, precognition, and remote viewing.  Claiming to be able to predict the stock market Sean David Morgan and his wife took in millions of dollars from investors, funneling the money through a number of religious and spiritual businesses owned by Morgan.

 

Where's the psychology?  First, why do people continue to buy into these things?  Even in the face of no evidence for anything the least bit psychic a vast majority of people still believe that these abilities are possible and that some people already do possess these skills.  Credulity?  Faith?  Ignorance? 

Second, isn't it amazing that even Morgan himself refuses to admit he's wrong?  I believe that he truly does believe that he can predict the future, and his inability to predict this lawsuit and the impending fines, jail-time, etc. are not viewed as counter-evidence, or failures in his mind.  Instead he explains these away as being malicious attacks on his person, such that he could not have predicted them, etc. etc.  This is a common tactic used by psychics, when they are right it's proof, when they are wrong (and this is frequent) it's because of other people or some flaw in the universe and not seen as a counterexample or possible evidence against their viewpoint.

Thirdly, what if he really is seeing into the future and he made a mistake in interpretation?  It does seem like purposefully manipulating people is a far worse crime than trying to help, and simply making a mistake.  Which is going on here?  And how do we know that?  Given the large number of people who believe in this type of thing why ought we assume he's a fraud?  Is he any different than any other investor who makes a mistake? 

Does this article call into question all psychics and their claims, or merely the claims of this one man?  Do claims regarding the success of one psychic demonstrate the existence of psychic phenomena in general, or are they merely a statistical oddity to be explained in light of other evidence?

http://www.justiceforkurt.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kurt_Cobain

 

 

As a grunge-junkie, I have had a long time interest in the alleged suicide of famous musician Kurt Cobain. For those of you who do not know who Kurt Cobain is, he is the lead singer of popular 90's grunge rock band Nirvana. Nirvana is considered by many to be the anthem band for the generation growing up during this time period. Kurt Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home on April 8^th, 1994. Investigators ruled the death a suicide by gunshot blast coming from his jaw then exiting through the top of his head. Much controversy surrounds Kurt Cobain's death leaving many speculators to wonder if Cobain actually did commit suicide. These two websites highlight some of the controversy surrounding the death. Cobain's death is still largely considered a suicide. Those who advocate that his death was in fact a suicide site Cobain's alcohol and drug abuse, his history of depression, and a suicide note left behind. Despite the enormous amount of evidence, there is still a collective group of people who believe that Cobain was murdered. The main advocator that Cobain's death was indeed homicide is Thomas Grant, a private investigator that was under the employment of Cobain's wife prior to his death. Grant's main arguments are so strong that they have led many others to believe his theory. Some of Grant's main arguments are

-          According to the toxicology report, Cobain had an enormous amount of heroin in his blood at the time of his death. Cobain had so much heroin in his system that it would have been impossible to steady a shotgun and pull the trigger. The amount of heroin in Cobain's system would have left him completely incapacitated and unconscious  

-          There are complications with the suicide note including so irregularities in the handwriting

-          Inconsistency in the police reports including: failure to take finger prints off the shotgun trigger, inconstancies with the discharged shell in relation to his body, no finger prints were found on the suicide note yet Cobain was not wearing gloves at the time of the murder

-          Evidence that came out after Cobain's death that Courtney Love (Cobain's wife at the time of his death) attempted to pay someone to murder Cobain

Those who still feel Cobain's death was a suicide believe this evidence to be circumstantial.

I personally feel that there were many signs in this case that indicate foul play but due to Cobain's history of drug abuse and depression they were all overlooked by police officials. If the police had investigated further into the theory of murder then there might be a lot more evidence out there that was not "circumstantial."

 

Why on earth would somebody falsely confess to a crime they didn't commit, especially since they are aware of its consequences?  This website highlights some of the reasons why an individual may falsely confess.

This article points out some of the characteristics which make individuals vulnerable to interrogation and more likely to falsely confess.  Individuals with low IQs, suggestible personalities, anxiety problems, drug addictions, and children are more likely to confess for numerous reasons. 

Why are individuals who fit these categories more likely to confess?  It is suggested that when police bring about false evidence, vulnerable individuals may doubt their memories, fill in the gaps with the false evidence, and internalize the idea that they did indeed commit the crime.

Why would police departments purposefully introduce false evidence, offer compensation for telling the "truth," etc. when they know what they are doing isn't right?  Maybe some departments feel pressure to solve a case to put the public at ease and regain/maintain trust; however, I feel that it is very possible that the opposite can happen.  For example, after the department successfully gets somebody to falsely confess, they close the case leaving the actual perpetrator on the loose in society.  Let's say for instance that the real perpetrator commits another crime after the previous case has been closed, he is eventually convicted, and later admits to the crime that somebody was coerced into falsely confessing.  If I lived in that community, I would definitely lose respect for the department, especially if I found out that the police played a part in the confession.

Personally, I think that police shouldn't be given all the freedoms that we talked about in class (e.g. providing false information, interrogating for long hours, offering compensation) because I don't think it benefits anyone.  Hopefully someday psychology can do something to help put an end to police coercion!

 

   

After our class discussion on false confession during Tuesday's class I have been noticing the integration techniques we discussed is class. One news report on the E channel stood out above the rest. Kevin Fox's 3 year old girl was said to be missing on the morning of June 6^th 2004. Kevin's wife Melissa was in Chicago for the weekend therefore he was home by himself with Tyler and the later missing daughter Riley. Police investigated the crime scene however, when police continued the investigation they ignored a lot of the evidence indicated there was an intruder. Instead investigators went after father Kevin Fox. The interrogation of Kevin Fox lasted 14 ½ hours. Over this time Kevin had asked to speech to his brother and a lawyer. Police told him that he did not need to speech to anyone and just needed to confess that he killed and sexually assaulted his daughter Riley. Police used tactics such as telling Kevin that if he didn't confess then there were some inmates in jail that would make him pay for what he did. They even went as far as to lie by stating that Melissa was going to divorce him if he did not cooperate with them. The interesting this about this statement is that Melissa stayed by Kevin's side throughout the entire investigation and police never said she would divorce him if he didn't tell the truth, they said she would divorce him if he did "cooperate" with them.  Eventually after this horrible interrogation Kevin admitted to killing his daughter using the information authorities gave him during his interrelation to make up his story.

 

After the confession investigator told the FBI to stop DNA testing. Kevin spent 8 months in jail before he would be cleared through the DNA testing that the FBI stopped.  Interestingly enough this is also the same procedure that was used during the interrogation of JonBenet Ramsey. Both fathers in this cases we told the killing of their daughter was an accident and they were trying to cover it up, and both fathers were exonerated by DNA evidence that in both cases were originally never carried out.

 

 

Below are a couple of links to some highlights of the ABC broadcast of the situation. The whole hour version of the episode in the links below because they were presented in parts and I was unable to find all the video clips. However, if you are interested there is a lot of information about the case on the ABC website if you search for either Kevin Fox or Riley Fox.

 

Introduction to the Case and the 911 phone call

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6210664

 

News article:Kevin Fox and his statements on the integration process.

http://www.truthinjustice.org/kevin-fox.htm

 

Video Clip about DNA exoneration of Kevin Fox

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6210784

Here are some articles about the case. I've specifically chosen ones that do not discuss the trial itself or outcome (you can look that up later!). For this assignment, read the information and then make some decisions about how you will develop the case.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/30/national/main658296.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_Vang (only if you have enough self control not to read the trial and verdict sections!)

http://graphics2.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/nov04/statement112304edits01.pdf

•Decide who you are: prosecution or defense

•What investigatory steps will you take next?

By Thursday of every week, you should have completed the activities associated with 1 project. You should blog about your experience as a comment to the blog posting of that particular project. Your blog comment can be largely experiential--tell us what it was like to do the project and what you learned. Products associated with the project and a more detailed analysis of the project will go in your portfolio (see the Portfolio blog post).

Project #14 - Your Experience

You may choose to document your own personal experience with crime or the legal system for this project.

 

While writing a comment recently I realized how terribly lying can mess up a case.  Sure, some people stretch or omit some of the truth- but how many out there are straight up liars?  On the blog I was commenting on, a young boy lied about his identity to, in his words, "see Hollywood".  This may only apply to widely publicized cases, but there are some crazy people out there- how do we keep these liars out of the courtroom?  This statement may seem obvious, but a liar can't be trusted.  That being said, even if an attorney finds a liar that supports their case, how can they trust that this liar won't lie to them and ruin their case?  Perjury (the crime of a witness lying in court) is only a crime if the lie was a complete lie that pertained to the case.  If a witness lied about their birthday, for instance, they did not commit perjury.  But isn't this a prerequisite to lying about something pertinent to the case?  We have basic ideas (watch this it's pretty entertaining) to tell if someone is lying, but if those ideas are out there a person can fight back those instinctive lying actions and lie even better than before.  Like someone asked in class one day, in reference to attorneys who know their client is guilty, "Don't these people ever feel guilty?"  We can't rely on all people having a conscience.  This fact is the reason for most crimes and for many exhausting trials.   

Gary Ridgway is what we would call an expert serial killer. He was the best of the best and killing was his "forte". During the late 70's and all throughout the 80's he was killing. Police were never able to solve the homicides of 50 plus women of the Green River murders. It was a chase that lasted over 20 years. It takes a certain person to become a serial killer. They have to have a certain and different psychological state of mind. In the case of Gary Ridgway, he underwent a psychological profile done my John Douglas of the FBI.

In the psychological profile it lists out what kind of person would do this. What there manner was, what they looked like, what kind of job they held etc. Once Ridgway was caught, he fit the profile almost to a tee. Take a look at this profile and see if you can get in the mind of Gary Ridgway, then watch the video clip on 60 Minutes

It wasn't until 2001 that something came up for detectives. DNA testing was at a peak and had excelled greatly since those 20 years. He was linked to seven of those murders through DNA, but detectives cut a deal with him. They would spare him the death penalty in exchange for the truth, facts and answers as to why he did this. They wanted to know his motive for why he did this and how he did this. They spent the next 6 months living with this killer and finding out answers. The show 60 Minutes was there to catch the action.

This website gives the interview by 60 Minutes; it also has a page giving somewhat of an overview of this.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/10/60II/main599266.shtml

http://karisable.com/grprofile.htm

In this article Bill O'Rielly interviews Dr. Russell from the University of Kansas on why college aged students act the way they do on spring break.  I being a college student has attended spring break in PCB Florida found this an interesting headline.  For most of us, spring break is the time to completely let loose and put our worries behind us for a few days.  Being on a beach is an even easier way to forget our sorrows.  Realistically, it's also a good excuse to consume a lot of alcohol and have the excuse "I'm on spring break, it's what you do".  So why do we do this?  Dr. Russell seems to think that it's because we have an excess of self esteem.  Everything we do we view as cool and as though we're invincible.  He also says that we have very little shame for the things we do.  We don't see shame as a feeling, because when you start to feel shame, you know you're doing something wrong.  Which in turn he begins to place blame on our parents for accepting our behavior.  However, being young adults we don't always quite understand the repercussions of events on spring break since many of the idiotic things that happen end up on the internet, and 10 years down the road from now a future employer could find this and you could lose your position. 

A lot of the things Dr. Russell has said, have me questioning him, but I will agree with the fact that being inebriated on spring break definitely lowers one inhibitions and that people do a lot of stupid things.  People also need to be aware that these actions can come back and affect your life in the future! 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,340373,00.html

In my last class, Crime and Punishment, we watched a documentary that explained how prison life is in the U.S.  The documentary was entitled, "The Gladiator Days, The Anatomy of Prison Murder." It gave the story of a teenager, Troy Kell, who shot a man to death and consequently landed in prison for life with the option of parole.  Later in life Troy along with an accomplice ends up stabbing another prisoner 67 times until he finally dies.  What is most interesting in this documentary is focused on Troy's accomplice.  His name is Eric Daniels and he was put into a maximum security prison where he met Troy on the basis of forging a check.  So in perspective Eric was less of a dangerous man than Troy was.  Yet, they both came together to severely murder a man in prison.  This is where I think psychology comes into play.  Eric came into prison not being very violent at all but as time went on it was like being in an institution psychologically changed him into a man full of anger and hate.  The man who was stabbed by Eric and Troy was an African American and Eric and Troy were strong white supremacists.  After years had gone by Eric stated that he had found God and that he was no longer the person he used to be.  It is interesting that when interviewed Troy stated that mental problems arise while in prison because every day you are fighting for scarce resources that inmates share causing anxiety and even depression.  This documentary was very informative and it is made on the angle of both psychology and law.  Here is a website to explain more:

http://groups.google.co.ls/group/alt.gossip.celebrities/msg/41ee9c00900445ad

 

This article talks about how lying tendies can actually be genitic even though they are more dependent on the situiation. There are many types of lies and reasons people lie. Is it ever ok to lie? effects of lying. There is even a new show on spike tv called 1,000 ways to lie (spin off of 1,000 ways to die). How should the law punish liars is what i have always wanted to know. Everyone probably wants to know how to tell when someone is lying, but some people are so good it is crazy think off all the ways law enforcement agencies try to detect lying. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A996942 

At a homicide investigators conference in Las Vegas this week, there are several displays of many high-profile crimes.  For instance, there are exhibits on the OJ Simpson case, Marilyn Monroe's death, Robert Kennedy's assassination, Sharon Tate's murder (and the other Manson family's crimes), the Black Dahlia murder, and a few notable shootouts.  Included in these exhibits are actual evidence (a rope from Sharon Tate's murder, gloves from OJ Simpson's trial, etc), video footage and photographs.
This all sounds interesting; however, it is quite the opposite according to the victims' families.  Maxwell Kennedy, Robert's son, calls the display of his father's assassination "part of a macabre publicity stunt" and "a cheap bid for attention" because they were displaying the suit that was worn by Kennedy at the time of his death.  Debra Tate, Sharon's sister, says "A little warning would have been nice so we could prepare ourselves emotionally, ...It's part of the insensitivity the department shows toward victims. We're being victimized over and over again."
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and District Attorney Steve Cooley say they never intended to compound the grief of murder victims' families. They say they sought to depict the horror of homicide in hopes of deterring violence.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_oMgmSp4WdDuvbkginjpqkNb-3wD9E80TMG0

The Kennedy family complained about the clothing being on display, and the LAPD have since removed items that the family does not  want to be displayed.  Debra Tate plans on filing a complaint, but doesn't seem to expect anything to come of it.

The Movie takes place in Mexico City, it starts off with a rich man having to pay for his son's ransom, and that is what the whole movie is about, it is about money and kidnapping.  A Body Guard is hired and is being payed very low because of his alcohol problem.  He is hired to escort a daughter named Pita by a Wealthy man.  His wife took a liking to the Body Guard immediately all because he was an American.  The Body Guard had many related skills relating to being a Body Guard, however he had never protected children before.  At first the Body Guard does not want to develop a friendship with the little girl but later on he does anyway.  The Pita (the little girl/daughter of the rich guy) informs the Body Guard that there has been 24 kidnappings in the last six days, four each day.  He is some how psychologically damaged from his past, he dislikes his job so much, he tries to fit in God into his life and wonders if God would ever forgive him (because of his psychological damage I can see why he has a drinking problem). Later on both the Boday Guard and Pita take notice of a car behind them, they both write down the license plate number.  Pita is at her piano classes, the Boday Guard is waiting outside, a dog is let loose the Body Guard puts it back in the car from where it came from and all of a sudden he sees the familiar car pull up where Pita was coming out tries to kidnap her but the Body Guard pulls out his gun unfortunately cops get in the way, Boday Guard shoots and kills two, kidnappers kidnapped Pita.  Turns out the cops were not on duty and yet still had their uniform on and exactly at the scene of the crime so they were crooked cops.  A ransom was offered but no successful, later on turns out the head of the dapartment of anti-kidnapping stole half of the ransom money which was 5 million in total 10 million, but the head stole 5 million of paper not money, the other million went to the Pita's father's lawyer and the kidnappers and in a way he got some money back to help him out of debt but everything was placed on hold because the other half was fake. Of course the Body Guard discovered all of this by going back to the scene of the crimes going around asking questions to witnessess or suspects like a detective.  He builds an alliance with a newsreporter named Maria and his old partner during his lasts jobs.  The Father committed suicide and he made a deal with the kidnappers, "A life for a life."  In exchanged the main Kidnapper's brother and the BodyGuard for Pita, Pita returned safely.  Can you actually imagine going through all of that?  Of course the movie is a bit exagerated, you just wouldn't be blowing off anyone's head off out of anger.  Kidnapping happens every where in this world at any time and any place but rich people are the ultimate targets all because of the economic issues that a person faces that or because of greed.

False confessions are one way that innocent individuals find themselves behind bars, or even on death row. False confessions are even more reliable than eyewitness identification, so if someone makes the mistake of "confessing" they may be in for a long haul. The innocence project is striving to get more knowledge out about false confessions and also has ways in which the problem can be fixed. Below are a few links to their website. The first talks about false confessions, the second is a page dedicated to ways to fix the problem and the last link is to a video clip of a Texas man named Chris Ochoa who was exonerated after being in prison for a false confession!

 

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php

 

http://www.innocenceproject.org/fix/False-Confessions.php

 

http://www.innocenceproject.org/news/playvideo.php?file=/Images/748/ochoa_c.wmv&title=&time=04:25

 

http://www.wcfcourier.com/news/local/article_ec7cd760-279c-11df-9b88-001cc4c03286.html

This is a link to the Becker trial. It has some neat things about the jury and their deliberation. I thought it was a good follow up to the other article I posted

Some people may not know about this case and others may have heard a little about it. I had never heard anything that I can remember about this case until we were talking about domestic abuse in my night class.  My professor then talked about the Tracy Thurman case. What we were told was that she had previously gotten a restraining order on her abusive husband. However he broke the contract several times. She had repeatedly called the Torrington, Connecticut police to inform them of her husband's acts and they still ignored her. On one particular day June 10^th of 1983 he stabbed Tracy repeatedly around her chest, neck, and throat, I believe it was close to 17 stab wounds all together.

A police arrived 25 minutes later but did not arrest her husband even after her husband threw their son on top of her and then repeatedly kicked her in the stomach and head.

Because of this Tracy Thurman sued the city of Torrington claiming she was denied equal protection under the law. She won the battle and was awarded 2.3 million. Also because of this it lead to actions such as during domestic abuse disputes a person that is seen as the abuser is taken into custody for the night.

The first website is a cite that has some details about the case on it and is where most of this information was received from. The second one is a clip of a video that was created after the case as a true story. The third is a synopsis of what the movie was about.

http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2074/Domestic-Violence-Laws-Courts-LANDMARK-LEGAL-DECISIONS.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UzpxcbBqe4 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097132/plotsummary

For my book report due in class, I read the book Active Liberty which is all about our government. I decided to look for things relating to government and psychology for my blog. I found this article http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hidden-motives/201002/our-broken-government talking about how many feel that our government is "broken". It seems that many politicians are only worried about how much power they have rather than worrying about everyone's rights as an American. The article talks about how a week or so ago, a Texan slammed his plan into a building where the IRS was at. He had left a suicide note saying that Islamic terrorists are not the only ones who hate our government. What does the government need to do in order to install more faith in the people in this country?

I found this article interesting because it kind of shows what goes through a juror's head when trying to figure out if a person is guilty or innocent.  This juror was involved in the Mark Becker case.  Mark Becker was accused of murdering Ed Thomas of Parkersburg.   The juror talked about how the jury debated over five days whether or not Becker was not sane at the time of the murder.  He said how everyone had their opinions on the case and that eventually the evidence showed no proof that Becker was insane.  Becker was then charged with first degree murder.

http://www.kwwl.com/Global/story.asp?S=12079656

Talking Tuesday in class I realized how uneducated I am when it comes to police officers. I didn't know that they could lie to no end just to get a confession or anything else we really learned Tuesday. I decided to do some research on the topic. The site I found-- i'm not sure how credible-- reinstated a lot of the things we were told in class. For the record, I LOVE police officers! In the end they do accomplish a LOT of good through their jobs. They protect those who need protecting and uphold a lot of good in the world. So keep in mind while reading this= they are doing their jobs as they were taught to do. They don't know who is truly guilty or innocent and part of their job is to decipher the differance, through whatever means.

I do NOT agree however with the sites "golden rule:" Don't trust cops. Cops are there for the better of society as a whole and we should keep that in mind. At the end of the day, cops are the good guys. Good guys that just want answers. So while this site is informative I'm choosing not to believe everything in it because it seems very opinion based to me.

I was not aware that cops do not have to read you your Miranda Rights- I was under the impression that your rights were there for you regardless, yet they can still use whatever you say against you in court. From class I know that during interrogation they can lie to get any confession possible. I had never really thought about the lie they tell when they're going to charge someone for... who knows what. They can't charge us with anything! So why have we not learned this earlier? We wait until we're 20 years old to find this stuff out. What about those who still have no idea!?

But how fair is it for a police officer to trick an innocent citizen? A citizen who believes that he or she is in good hands. A citizen who believes they are being protected, not tricked. So it should be common sense to any judge or jury that any confession given should be looked at critically because people will say anything to "help" those who are supposed to "help" us.

http://www.rense.com/general72/howto.htm

I was reading this news story and found it rather comical. There was a man who was trying to burglarize a woman at 2am. He tried to unlock the door with keys, but when that didn't work he just kicked the door down. Turns out the champ of a woman was prepared. She was waiting by the door with a knife. She stabbed the man in the shoulder, and then the man took off running. The victim chased after the man (suspect) with the knife. The cops then said that they had to 'save the suspect from the victim'. I bet the thief didn't know what he had in store for him that night!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2010100041_burglar_rescued_by_police_afte.html

This is an interesting story I found regarding the arrest of two 10 year old boys that brutally beat and killed another 2 year old child. This happened in Liverpool in 1993. After serving eight years in prison, Jon Venables, (who is 27 now) has just been returned to prison for violating conditions of his release. The re-surfacing of this case has brought about outrage amongst the British public (once again) because of the fact that Jon was released but is now being re-called into custody - reasons for which are uncertain (although law enforcement did mention that these details will be released in the future). This outrage stems from the seemingly lenient government not keeping both gentlemen locked up for a longer amount of time (and rightfully so if you are family of the victim).

I found this interesting because this case happened many years ago but still has the power (via peoples memory and knowledge) to bring out anger and despise even though the case was completed over a decade ago. Both mens whereabouts have been kept secret because of the fear of death threats towards them.


http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/03/uk.bulger.venables/index.html

I was interested after talking about mock witnessing in class and other forms of eyewitness accounts, about what to do if you do witness a crime. I researched some websites to see what they might say about what someone should do if they do see and know that a crime is being committed.

We all might think now that if a crime was going on then, yeah, we know exactly what to do, but when an actual crime is happening in front of our eyes the question is what would we really do in that situation. In example, I thought the first time I was going to get pulled over by the police I would be calm and not panic, but the truth was I cried, and this wasn't how I pictured myself reacting to that situation. I know that people give tips on doing things, and that is what the websites are for below, tips, and whether they are helpful tips to any situation, they are better than not having anything at all. I just thought that it would be interesting to know what the tips were to witnessing a crime, and even though they are common sense it always nice to be reminded just in case something happens in front of your eyes that was extremely quick. So here are some websites with tips for if you ever witness a crime of any kind happening in front of you! Plus they are kinda interesting!!

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/YoungPeople/CrimeAndJustice/GoingToThePolice/DG_10027687

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-to-do-if-you-witness-a-crime.html

http://crime.suite101.com/article.cfm/witnessing_a_crime

 

 

I found a website that discusses fiber and hair evidence analysis.  This article has six different chapters.  The articles are very interesting, it talks about the first time in 1936 that trace evidence was used such as hair and fiber.  It goes on to talk about different cases were hair and fiber evidence were used as evidence.  This article is very insightful.  It gives a lot of detail and information about this topic.  It is also an easy read, which sometimes articles on this topic can be hard to follow.  Towards the end of the article it also talks about different trace evidence that police also can use like glass, dirt, dust seeds and paint.  It goes on to tell the reader how these particular items can lead police to the suspect. My favorite chapter is caught by a hair.  This chapter shows how one piece of hair can make the difference between a case going cold and it going in a new direction.  With this particular case, the hair evidence let police to the killer and a conviction. 

I find it very interesting how such a piece of hair or some dirt can provide so much information for police.  Most killers try to clean up any trace of themselves, but it's hard to notice if a hair fall out or something came off your clothes or shoes.  Without cleaning the room inch for inch, criminals will almost always live some evidence that they were there.  Lucky for us, we can use this trace evidence to find the criminal. 

Here is the website:

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/trace/1.html

 

One woman heard a loud noise and went outside her bathroom to stand face to face with a man. He took off and sprinted out of the house. About five months later this man along with his wife and another man were arrested and charged with burglarizing Fairfax and Loudoun homes owned by South Asians. The two men and woman were breaking into homes looking for gold because Asian families usually have 22-karat gold items in their homes being passed down generation after generation. The Asian families worked together and now keep their priceless belongings in the bank.

The burglars had 10 counts thrown out because the police had not conclusively linked them to incriminating evidence found in their rental car and hotel room. After that more charges were dropped and only a few remained on the three. More on the story can be found at the link below.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022405137.html

While I am working on my Blogs for this week I have the TV turned to an episode of "Criminal Minds". This is a TV show about a FBI team of Profilers. They are out of Quantico, VA and called to different cases based on the severity of the case. What there job is to analyze the information collected and create a profile for what the suspect looks and acts like. This usually happens when there is trouble coming us with a suspect.

 

The episode tonight was about kidnapping that had been going on for eight years. This couple would cry wolf that they were looking for their child and while the parents helped the wife the husband would take the child. What I found interesting about this case is that they got all of the parents together from the children that had been kidnapped in the eight years and they were there to help. In the end they found the kidnappers, but not all of the children were returned to the parents. Some of the children were killed while being held captive. This drew my interested because of the negative psychological impact this can have on the parents. They were brought in after many had already accepted the fact that their child was gone and given false hope. Then they had to watch as other parents were reunited with their children. I know this is a TV show, but I wonder how many times something like this happens in the real world and what the government does to help these families cope if it does.

 

Here is a link to the page where you can watch episodes of "Criminal Minds"

 

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/criminal_minds/ 

 

This link will take you to a story featured in FRONTLINE, as a result of a mistaken identification from an eyewitness.  In the story, Jennifer Thompson was trying to identify her rapist, but because of faulty lineups, she chose an innocent man instead of her actual rapist. It really is an interesting story because they give you the lineup with the mistaken rapist and they also show you the real rapist. It also gives the composite, and how the two relate to it. 

You should check out the website and click around on some of the links about the case and what Thompson saw in the lineup. 

This link will take you to an article that went along with this story and goes along with what we've been covering in class about constructing lineups. 

The article is written by Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University.  He, like Dr. Maclin, believes that there are faults in our legal system because of the methods of eyewitness identification.

As this case and prior data and findings suggest, several people are wrongfully convicted based on wrong eyewitness identification and faulty lineups.  The two play off each other as well.  For example, say a witness believes they can identify their attacker, however the police constructed a lineup where one suspect completely stands out from the rest, therefore the witness is more compelled to pick the person who stands out more, not realizing that this is actually not the man who attacked her. 

The witness's perception could also bias their pick out of a lineup.  If a guy looks meaner than the rest, or has more tatoos, the witness may associate this person with being more aggressive and therefore, more likely to be the offender.  As this area of research continues to grow and collect more results, better methods of obtaining eyewitness information and constucting lineups are being developed in hopes of improving of our justice system.  The growth of DNA testing and its use as evidence is also becoming more widespread and accurate to put the right people behind bars. 

 

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/02/thousands-of-sex-offenders-unlisted/ 

In this article it states that there are 63,000 sex offenders that are not registered and 22,000 of those are in California alone. Some of those the state defends are "low risk in general" yet there are innocent people killed by those low risk offenders. And the main one I want to talk about is Chelsea King whose body they found yesterday.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/TheLaw/accused-killer-chelsea-king-john-albert-gardner-pleads/story?id=10002541 

This article goes more into detail about the case it self and explains that this may be a capital punishment case because it was a rape and murder case. If the DA decides to take the death penalty off the table then it is still 25 to life in prison. The reason for his arrest was due to DNA evidence found on his clothing.

The psychiatrist for the case wants the offender to be put in prison for as long as possible because of his previous charge that he served 6 years in prison for before paroled in 2008.

To those that take the time to read the article I would love to get your opinion on what should be done about our system the allows sex offenders to slip through the cracks and commit worse crimes then before and also I question if a person has show to be capable of such evil once if they should be allowed back into society without strict supervision?

 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/14/ny.hate.crime/index.html

While looking up hate crimes, I found this article about a gay man who was beaten nearly to death by two men who were against homosexuals. I have not found out if these men were convicted of their crime, but it sure looked like they were going to be in prison for about 25 years.

What really shocked me was that this man had done nothing wrong to these two men. All he did was go to a store to buy cigarettes and when he was leaving, they yelled profanities at him, called him vicious names, robbed him, and severely beat him. Another fact that I couldn't believe was that this man was almost 50 years old. The two men who beat him were in their 20s. Why would someone want to beat up a middle aged man that did nothing wrong? That really upsets me, because young people are always supposed to look up to the people that are older than us. I hope these young men do go to prison just so they can see and feel the torture that they did to an innocent man.

I also found a statement that was made from the victim himself. It tells about what he remembers and how he felt now that he has become a victim of a hate crime.

http://www.towleroad.com/2009/10/reminder-vigil-today-for-nyc-hate-crime-victim.html

 

 

http://www.keysso.net/commrelations/crimepreprograms/suspect_id.pdf

Monroe County Sheriff's Office in the Florida Keys has a big population with few Sheriff's to cover all of the people. On their web page it states, "the Sheriff's Office employs 578 people. 187 of those are road patrol officers and detectives, 144 are Corrections Officers, 182 serve as support 65 people are employed by the Sheriff's Office-managed HIDTA Group (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area)."  They have this many people for as many as 150,000 people in their population and that does not count the tourists that can reach as many as 2,000,000 people.  With so many people in their population, and a high turn-over rate the department needs something to help catch suspects.

To help identify a suspect of a crime, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office has a document that allows the witness to fill in details of the perpetrator they saw. The document has the witness fill out the physical appearance of the suspect (with a drawing of a blank suspect to the right), the clothing they were wearing, what weapon was used and there is a drawing of weapons at the bottom of the drawing of the person, and anything about the vehicle used in the crime (if one was used).  It is a very detailed outline asking anything from the scar marks, speech, or physical defects of the perpetrator,  to the license plate number of the vehicle used. 

I believe this would really help local law enforcement agencies around Iowa to catch the correct people, instead of mistakenly persecuting innocent people.  This document can come in very handy if someone gets victimized and needs to write down anything they can remember of the perpetrator, the weapon, or the vehicle used in the crime.  I believe having this handy will allow anyone to keep their memory less contaminated if they write all of these facts down right away before talking to anyone.

I'm a huge fan of the tv series, Bones. I wanted to research a little about the techniques I see used on the show and how realistic they were. Forensic anthropology is usually used when the victim is so beyond normal means of recognition. This could mean anything from bones to severally disfigurement or severe mutilation of the body. Forensic anthropologist usually work with these remains to identify the victim, cause of death, and any other helpful pieces of information for law enforcement.

Much information can be gathered about the victim, even just from their bones. This includes gender, age, medical conditions, activity, past injuries, weight, and many other things.

This is a great site with fantastic information and pictures: (Don't worry, nothing gory for those who don't like blood & guts.)

http://www.anthro4n6.net/forensics/

Also, if anyone wants to watch episodes of Bones, here's a link:

http://tvgorge.com/shows/bones/

"One in five college women will be raped, or experience an attempted rape, before graduation."

"Less than 5 percent will report these crimes to officials..."

 (image from CNN.com)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/15/sexual.assaults.college.campuses/index.html

This article from CNN shows a very shocking statistic. The article goes on to talk about the problem at universities today. I agree with the article in that this is something that seems to be not talked about often and even ignored. It's so scary to think of how many cases of rape go unreported.

Last year I had the privilege of working with the UNI's Interpreter's Theater to put on a show called, "Until Someone Wakes Up". This play directly addresses the problem of rape. Before being cast as a role in this play I was informed very little about the problem of rape. But through this play I learned a lot about how much of a problem this is even today. Many of the scenes were extremely uncomfortable and hard to get into character for. Let's face it, it isn't the easiest or most fun to act out a scene of a girl telling her parents she was raped. Many times I didn't want to get into character. I didn't want to think about what it would be like to be a victim of rape. Many of the actors involved would somewhat break down emotionally when really getting into these roles. One of the scenes that most sticks out in my mind was a scene about the shame that comes from being raped. Many girls don't report it simply because they feel such shame in what has happened. As a college woman I strive to not put myself in those bad situations, but I feel like as a college student I need to address that this is a problem, and not to pretend like this problem doesn't exist.  

http://www.wcupa.edu/_academics/sch_cas.psy/career_paths/forensic/career08.htm

image from: http://www.jaydeehypnotist.com/wp-content/gallery/misc/hypnosis.jpg

 

I always thought it was interesting how some people used the concept of hypnosis to get unknown information out of people. Hypnosis relaxes your mind, and makes you more at ease with your surroundings.  But there is a problem with using hypnosis within the medical field.

Hypnosis can create false repressed memories. The courts have decided to refrain from using hypnosis as a possible way to convict people of certain crimes, because of it's high rate of inaccuracy.  Below is an article from WebMD that talks about the process of hypnosis and hypnotherapy.  Sometimes hypnosis CAN be helpful in getting people to stop smoking, stop drinking, and can also treat phobias.  But hypnosis can also be bad, as suggested in it can create false memories. I have always been interested in the concept of hypnosis, and find it an interesting topic.

Here is a Penn & Teller Episode about polygraph tests.  They talk a little about the history of polygraph tests, talk a lot about skepticisms of the test, as well as ways to fool a polygraph. 

They use a lot of profanity, especially the f bomb, so if you are offended by this, please don't watch!

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9NSXy176oA&NR=1
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bScv6kfxRyE&feature=related