Recently in Roles Category

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101018/ap_on_re_us/us_post_office_shooting

Here is a link to a shooting that happened Monday October 18, 2010 in Henning Tennessee. Two gunmen opened fire at a post office. No arrests were made and postal officials are pleading with anyone who may have information to come forward.  This article does go through how the police are investigating the shooting.

After reading through many of the blog posts on jury selection and jury duty I found a link on Luke's post "It's Your Duty" describing ways to avoid jury duty.  At the top of the list were the words "jury nullification" which linked to another website that I now have bookmarked and find absolutely amazing.

            http://fija.org/  This organization known as the Fully Informed Jury Association has a wealth of information that is very helpful to jurors, and anyone else interested in researching information relating to jury selection and duties.  On their homepage they offer a critical reminder of the true function of all jurors:

            "The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by the government.  The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury.  This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.  Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict."

Although this class is pretty much all about forensic psychology, I wanted to know what exactly forensic psychologists do with their job. I found a website that explains it well. Forensic psychologists can be employed and prisons, law enforcement agencies, or hospitals. They're job is to help out people in the law workforce that aren't specialized in psychology. Forensic psychologists can help to narrow down the suspect pool in a crime by figuring out their motives based on things involved in the crime. They do this by creating a personality profile. Forensic psychologists use their knowledge of human behavior and the law in their career. It's definitely an important and interesting job!

Here's the website for more information : http://helpingpsychology.com/criminal-profiling-the-job-of-a-forensic-psychologist

While looking for good things to make my post about, I found an article talking about a man who interviewed and wrote a book on executioners. Ivan Solotaroff was interested in knowing why these men choose this job. He discovered that there were a few motives. Some said that they liked the machinery of death. Some felt that they just need to do what society wants - get rid of the unwanted. Some executioners are distanced from the process, suggesting that they are denying the reality of the situation and rationalizing it to make it sound better. Solotaroff found only one man who quit his job of an executioner after it took an inmate 15 minutes to die of lethal injection. I thought this article was interesting because you never really think about the personality of an executioner. Their job suggest that they would most likely be authoritarian and like to have power (Solotaroff points out). I think it would be useful in the field of psychology to research more into this. Below is the article where I read about this information.

http://college.cengage.com/psychology/resources/students/shelves/shelves_20020504.html