Complete summary of all articles and chapters for 4.1 Introduction to forensic and legal psychology
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Course
Introduction To Forensic & Legal Psychology
Institution
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
Book
Legal psychology
complete summary of all articles and relevant chapters from the Rassin book on legal psychology. includes articles for all 8 lectures, plus relevant articles for the 6 assignments.
Intro to Forensic and Legal Psyc FULL LITERATURE SUMMARY: what I studied to get a 9.5/10
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Master Forensic & Legal Psychology
Introduction To Forensic & Legal Psychology
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Overview
Lecture 1:
Introductory information, notes on the video about false positives, notes lecture
Lecture 2: investigative psychology
Bond (2006) Accuracy of deception judgments
DePaulo (2003) Cues to deception
Vrij (2016) Which lie detection tools are ready for use in the criminal justice system?
Wisemand (1995) The megalab truth test
Geijsen (2018) The interrogation of vulnerable suspects in the Netherlands
Memon (2010) The cognitive interview
Schlesinger (2009) Psychological profiling: investigative implications from crime scene analysis
Rassin chapter 5: eyewitness evidence
Rassin chapter 6: confession evidence
Notes lecture 2
Lecture 3: evidence evaluation
Dodier (2018) The Griffiths question map
Kassin (1997) The psychology of confession evidence
Rassin (2018) Reducing tunnel vision with a pen-and-paper tool
Russano (2005) Investigating true and false confessions within a novel experimental paradigm
Wells (2020) Policy and procedure recommendations for the collection and preservation of eyewitness
identification evidence
Rassin chapter 7: legal fact finding
Lecture 4: likelihood ratios + literature for assignment 3
De Keijser (2002) From moral theory to penal attitudes and back
Thompson (1987) Interpretation of statistical evidence in criminal trials
Thompson (2018) After uniqueness: the evolution of forensic science opinions
Rassin (2005) Characteristics of true versus false allegations of sexual offences
Wagenaar (1988) The proper seat: A Bayesian discussion of the position of expert witnesses
Nahari (2013) The verifiability approach
Notes lecture 4
Lecture 5: Bayesian approach
Notes on lecture 5
Lecture 6: criminal irresponsibility
Cima (2008) Development of the supernormality scale-revised and its relationship with psychopathy
Fazel (2012) Use of risk assessment instruments to predict violence and antisocial behavior
Freckelton (2020) Obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder
Hare (2008) Psychopathy as a clinical and empirical construct
Lilienfeld (2007) Psychological treatments that cause harm
Rassin (2016) Defining forensic psychopathology
Vinkers (2011) The relationship between mental disorders and different types of crime
Notes lecture 6
Lecture 7: DID + literature for assignment 6
Goldberg (1999) The curious experiences survey, a revised version of the DES
Huntjes (2007) Memory transfer for emotionally valanced words between identities in DID
Lewis (1997) Objective documentation of child abuse and dissociation in 12 murderers with DID
Reinders (2003) One brain, two selves
Buss (1992) The aggression questionnaire
Eckblad (1983) Magical ideation as an indicator of schizotypy
Hare (1979) A research scale for the assessment of psychopathy in criminal populations
Jones (2014) Introducing the short dark triad (SD3)
Notes lecture 7
Lecture 8: bias
Boeschen (1998) Rape trauma experts in the courtroom
,Cooper (2019) Cognitive bias research in forensic science
Dror (2020) Cognitive and human factors in expert decision making
Greenberg (1997) Irreconcilable conflict between therapeutic and forensic roles
Kassin (2013) The forensic confirmation bias: problems, perspectives and proposed solutions
Meterko (2020) Cognitive biases in criminal case evaluation
Rassin (1999) The potential conflict between clinical and judicial decision-making heuristics
Saks (2005) The coming paradigm shift in forensic identification science
Shuman (1998) An immodest proposal: should treating mental health professionals be barred from
testifying about their patients?
Rassin chapter 3 and 7: basis psychological insights and fact finding
Notes lecture 8
,Introduction, information on Canvas
The judge must answer four main questions:
1. Did the suspect do what the D.A. thinks he did?
2. Does this behavior constitute a criminal act?
3. Is the suspect guilty of this crime (or are there any exception clauses)?
4. Which sanction is called for?
Legal psychologists come into play within the context of the first question. Standards for conviction are
generally considered to be quite high, ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Not all information can be used as
evidence. In the Netherlands, evidence can be found in the judge’s own perception, suspect
statements, witness statements, expert-witness statements, and written documents. Legal
psychologists give advice on the validity of statements, deception detection, and the psychology of
evidence.
Forensic psychologists work within the context of the third and fourth question. They give advice on
criminal responsibility of the suspect (toerekeningsvatbaarheid). Art. 39 Sr. (code of criminal law)
dictates that a suspect who suffers from psychiatric malfunction should not be sentenced to
imprisonment, but to treatment in a forensic clinic (terbeschikkingstelling; TBS). Hence, the forensic
psychologist is knowledgeable about the diagnostics of relevant psychopathology. Forensic
psychologists write reports on the psychiatric diagnoses, criminal responsibility, and risk assessment
of suspects.
Video false positives
Body was found, there were no eyewitnesses and no further evidence, only thing that was found was
bite marks all over the body. Notably, a front tooth seemed to be missing in the bite marks. A boy,
Robert Lee Stinson, lived close to the crime scene, missed a front tooth, and the police decided this
was their guy. The drawing of what the mouth of the perpetrator would look like, was not brought into
the courtroom, but it was said that ‘it resembles the drawing’, which was enough for the judge to order
a full dental examination. However, if they had seen the drawing, they would have seen that it did not
match up with Stinson’s mouth at all, a different tooth was missing.
Bite mark analysis is a ‘pattern matching’ discipline, just like fingerprints, shoe prints, tire marks, hand
writing and bullet casings. Even though they are used often, many of these lack scientific foundation. It
is more subjective about how similar two things seem, than it is objective evidence.
Forensic odontology is about identifying victims of crimes by their teeth, when no other identification is
available. This is a very established and accurate field; however, this bite mark analysis has become
part of their job, and is not even close to being scientifically proven.
Precedent; or conforming to past decisions, is when people in court refer to an earlier court case when
some kind of evidence or sanction was granted accurate. This is what happened with bite mark
analysis, one judge allowed it as evidence, and it became the precedent, while never being
scientifically tested.
Robert Lee Stinson was arrested, purely on the bite marks. Had the judge decided to not grant this
evidence, he would have gone free. To this day, no one has conducted an error rate study for bite
mark analysis. Because the courts admit it as evidence, there also is not any incentive to start doing
this research. It has been found that there is a lot of distortion when bitemarks are made in skin. The
same set of teeth can leave different marks, depending on skin type, the amount of force and the
orientation of the bite. Missing teeth can look like they’re there, teeth can look like they’re missing.
The Daubert ruling: trial judges must assess whether expert testimony is based on reasoning or
methodology that is ‘scientifically valid’. This contains reliability, validity, empirical data, error rates,
peer review. However, the judges can still offload that responsibility to expert witnesses. It is up to the
jury to decide if they believe what the experts are saying, because they are not required to accept
everything they say. However, the jury doesn’t have any previous knowledge about the forensic
methods of bite mark analysis and other of these sorts of analysis, because the studies simply do not
exist and the judge doesn’t require them to.
, When Stinson had been in prison for 18 years, he contacted the Innocence Project to ask them for
help. They reviewed the evidence and decided that the dentists that testified against Stinson had
made a series of errors that resulted in an incorrect determination. They concluded that Stinson can
be excluded from having made the bitemarks.
After scientific studies have finally been conducted, bite mark evidence is considered unreliable, and
dozens of wrongly convicted people were finally deemed innocent. Finally, the clothing of the victim in
Stinson’s case was examined, and the DNA did not match him, finally deeming him innocent. He had
spent 23 years in prison.
Figure about how DNA is very unique, and also quantifiable because we can examine it objectively
and compare within the population. Fingerprints however are considered unique, but we can’t really
examine them objectively, it is more of a subjective ‘see if they match’.
Lecture 1 – Introduction
When do psychologists get involved in the criminal justice system?
- Investigative: whodunit, profiling, CSA, threat assessment, interview support
- Legal: evidence evaluation
- Forensic: responsibility diagnostics, treatment, release
The case of Lucia de B.
Seven unexpected deaths of severely handicapped children occurred. Lucia de B was present for all
of the deaths. She turns out to have also been present at eight suspicious deaths in the hospital in
which she previously worked. There was no concrete evidence, but a lot of circumstantial evidence
and coincidences. Multiple experts said that all deaths were natural and non-suspicious, but because
of a few experts having their doubts, she remained a suspect. The statistical chance of her being
innocent and being present at all deaths, was so small, that this led to them really believing her to
have something to do with her. However, as the transposed conditional states, this does not mean it is
impossible for her to have been present at all the deaths while being innocent. The chance is just very
small, but chances are often very small. Lucia ended up being convicted to life in prison.
A couple of years later, another judge decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge her with
life in prison. She was finally released and now talks to others about her experiences.
The scientist-practitioner gap
In university, you learn about a lot of new techniques and theories, which often are not yet
implemented in the practical world.
The legal context of forensic and legal psychology
Nederlands Register van Gerechtelijk Deskundigen (NRGD).
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