Quick links from around the web and blogosphere:
Investigations and courtroom :
The Sunday Times (25 Nov) reports on a new facial morphing technique called EvoFIT “that transforms the Photofit faces of criminal suspects into animated caricatures up to seven times more likely to be recognised than standard likenesses”. The system was developed by UK psychologists, [...]
Filed in Child abuse, Courtroom, Expert testimony, Hate crime, Juries, Juvenile offending, Mental health, Miscellaneous, Profiling, Serial and mass killing, Victims and treatment, Witness testimony, Witnesses
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Having neglected this blog somewhat in recent weeks I find myself now overwhelmed with interesting snippets from around the web and blogosphere. Here are just a few that caught my eye:
The Eyewitness Reform Blog reports on a conviction “overturned for failure to “seriously consider” expert testimony on eyewitness factors”: “The court didn’t go as [...]
Filed in Academia, Confessions, Courtroom, Cybercrime, Disputed convictions, Expert testimony, Homicide, Military and war, Policing, Rape, Sexual offences, Victims and treatment, Web resources, Witness testimony, Witnesses
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Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology 18(3) is now online. Follow the link to the publisher’s website for abstracts and access to full text articles.
Contents include:
Theory of mind function, motor empathy, emotional empathy and schizophrenia: A single case study – Karen Addy; Karen Shannon; Kevin Brookfield
The development of a scale for measuring offence-related feelings [...]
Filed in Aggression, Courtroom, Criminal behaviour, Expert testimony, Homicide, Mental health, Prison, Prisoners and punishment, Suicide, Tables of contents, Witness testimony
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The Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 30(1) is now online. Follow the link to the publisher’s website for abstracts and access to full text articles.
Contents include:
Police detectives’ perceptions of giving evidence in court – Mark R. Kebbell, Caitriona M.E. O’Kelly
What makes a good investigative interviewer of children?: [...]
The March 2007 issue of Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 35(1) is now online. Follow the link to the publisher’s website for abstracts and access to full text articles.
Some of the contents are listed below the fold, but I particularly like the sound of this article: The Problem of Evasive [...]
The always-interesting Trends in Cognitive Sciences carries a review article this month on Cognitive science and the law by Thomas Busey and Geoffrey Loftus. From the abstract:
Numerous innocent people have been sent to jail based directly or indirectly on normal, but flawed, human perception, memory and decision making. Current cognitive-science research addresses the issues [...]
The latest edition of Scientific American Mind (Dec 06/Jan 07) has a cover story entitled “The Violent Brain”:
[...] what drives one person to kill, maim or abuse another, sometimes for little or no obvious reason–and why do so many violent offenders return to crime after serving time in prison? Are these individuals incapable of any [...]
An update to the earlier story about the use of expert evidence on memory in the trial of Scooter Libby (MSNBC, 2 Nov):
A key defense witness – a proposed memory expert – in the CIA/Leak trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Cheney, will not be allowed to testify at [...]
A few sources are reporting on what sounds like a horrible few hours in the witness stand for renowned psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, called as an expert witness in a pre-trial hearing in the case of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Libby will be on trial for allegedly obstructing the investigation [...]
On 22 August the Rocky Mountain News reported that “a well-known national handwriting expert [...] is 99.9 percent certain John Mark Karr wrote the ransom note found near the scene of JonBenet Ramsey’s murder.”
“Most guys are riding the fence,” said Curt Baggett, the Texas-based co-founder of the School of Forensic Document Examination. “But there are [...]
