Application of Forensic Psychology within a trial: R vs. Golds

IntroductionBefore delving into the applications and relevant theories in Forensic Psychology in this incident, it is first necessary to summarise the particulars of this case. This willing accept for the rise to be objectively assessed, and then broken down as the empirical rise provided by the field of Forensic Psychology pertains to specific heightens. This will whollyow for the value of various aspects of the cause on both sides to be assessed, which may result in a re-evaluation of the overall generateing of fact. The psychological secernate will then be evaluated within the relevant theoretical framework, and these theories will in turn be critically analysed so that the degree to which the relevant findings and theories of forensic psychological science can be used to interpret the meaning and exercising burden of establish in this case can be evaluated. The suspect was inpatiented of murdering his wife, entirely bring uped against conviction on the ground s that he was suffering from a intellectual illness and therefore was impaired substantially enough to meet the criteria for manslaughter, non murder. The appeal was dismissed. Although the suspect admitted killing his wife he did not send render at the trial, stating that he was not in a hold kind submit. A voir dire by a aesculapian expert, B, bear witness to the fact that the suspect ought not to give read ascribable to his mental state, and when recounting this to the gore the judge ruled that no adverse demonstration should be drawn from this. The judge did however not consent to tell from B to be given at the trial. The examine in backup man of the defence was given by three expert medical witnesses all attesting to the deteriorating mental state of the defence and that the criteria for diminished responsibility were satisfied. No medical testimonial disputed this. Evidence admitted by the judge against the defence came from the defendants daughter, S, who r ecounted a conversation in which the defendant admitted assaulting the victim on a prior occasion. This was taken as evidence of the defendants bad character. During the trial there was some discussion of the definition of the barrier substantially impaired the defence instruction defined the end point as boththing to a greater extent than unprofitablely impaired just the judge refused this definition and declined to give the jury whatsoever further guidance as to the legal definition of this term. A finding of fact of manslaughter would suggest that the defendant was not able to in fully understand the nature of what he was doing, make a rational finality and exercise abnegation (Morse, 2003). Of course the legal definition of substantially impaired is similarly relevant as it is defined by the English Homicide act (1957) substantial check is constituted either by a common sense standardised or by any degree of impairment which is more(prenominal) than fruitless b ut less than total (Prevezer, 1957). Whether the defendant gaines the threshold for these definitions of substantially impaired will decide whether he is convicted of manslaughter or murder. One issue embossed by the defendant in the appeal was that although the judge did explicitly state that the jury was not to draw any condemning inference from the defendants lack of testimonial, he failed to remind the jury that Ss evidence should be considered with caution, because the defendant was not able to give any account of the aver conversation. harmonize to the literature in forensic psychology there could be valid grounds to this claim, however the claim itself could to a fault be redundant entirely. This is because jurymans do thusly evidently find it effortful to evaluate the weight of evidence and draw inferences appropriately (Thomas and Hogue, 1976). Thomas and Hogue (1976) create a decision-making model for jurors, showing broadly that the weight jurors will designate to evidence varies across the population according to a variety of factors relevant to the characteristics of the jury. In this model the decision threshold which defines whether the jury votes for the plaintiff or defendant varies little across the population but may shift between cases and be affected by factors such as send wordion manual to jurors. This latter point is very important because it addresses the effect that instructions to the jury can chip in, even a small effect could have make a substantial difference to the way the jury regarded evidence. Evidence suggests that this is in particular the case with emotionally-charged evidence which is pertinent to this case, Cush and Delahunty (2006) found that mock jurors who received no pre-evidence instructions to consider emotionally evocative evidence (gruesome photographs) dispassionately or with caution gave more verdicts in choose of the victim and scored higher on measures of victim compassion and crime negativity t han did jurors who did receive such instruction. implant within cognitive theory this evidence supports the defendants posture on this point without all of the pertinent evidence with the appropriate weights the juror as a sense-making machine would not be able to reach an informed decision (Pennington and Hastie, 1991). The heuristics and inclinees approach (Griffin, Gonzalez and Vargony, 2001) views decision-making, thought and knowledge as unprotected to various cognitive biases and distortions from mental archetypes. One such source of bias has been dubbed WYSIATI, or what you see is all there is. This notion is important in a forensic context because the jury will naturally find it difficult to take into account evidence that is not readily presented to them (Neal and Grisso, 2014) peculiarly when presented with material evidence which contradicts it. Another point to consider is the value of Ss evidence factors which may be important to consider ar the age of the witness (Ceci, Ross and Toglia, 1987), the power of hindsight and the nature of reconstructive storage (Leippe, 1980). According to a retrieval theory of holding, recognition and recall styles of memory are possible through a resonance-style spreading-activation pattern of retrieval attempts (Ratcliff, 1978). When a expect of memory in this way is performed, certain archetypes or contextual randomness and assumptions about the objects in memory may fill in gaps or add meaning depending on the age of the witness this may be even more important, because young children are more susceptible to such biases (Ceci, Ross and Toglia, 1987 Leippe, 1980). There may have been subtleties in the alleged conversation with the defendant which would reinterpret the meaning, especially in light of the defendants alleged mental illness which S could have missed in her memory of the conversation. Even if the judge had instructed the jury to treat Ss evidence with caution though, the principal is what eff ect would this have had on the verdict. The answer would expect to be that even though it may have changed the jurys perception of the evidence (Cush and Delahunty, 2006), this would not have substantially affected the verdict because the evidence of S was of limited significance in the first adjust because of the strength of other evidence that the defendant had abused the victim. A cognitive decision-makin framework would see people evaluating this evidence overall in favour of the victim (Pennington and Hastie, 1991). In addition to this it was made clear to the jury that the case of the defendant was that he had not abused the victim. This makes it a somewhat trivial point in the overall case. Cognitive theory is useful in the context of forensic psychology because it provides a framework for the decision-making process to be understood, and an opportunity for the value of evidence to be quantified. The theory does view world beings as rational agents who are able to objectiv ely consider evidence, only if adding additional weight to emotional evidence. This could be seen as reductionist as it ignores a wealth of human experience and much of the cultural meaning inherent in cases such as this one. The spreading-activation theory of memory also has its opponents. Some memory researchers prefer to view memory errors as arising from desegregation or encoding errors (Squire and Alvarez, 1995). Both are useful in a forensic psychology context but it is important to remember that the evidence is interpreted theoretically, and there must still be a weight assigned to evidence based on theory. It must therefore be acknowledged that the interpretation of evidence is at least somewhat irresponsible based on these theories. A second point in the appeal was that the judge was supposedly wrong to not allow the evidence of B to go before the jury. The value of expert witnesses is debateable in the literature, assuming that their headmaster opinions within their fi elds are valid and reliable, the problem arises with the effect their testimony has on the jury. Expert testimony usually affects the credence that the jury gives to the testimony or stance of the individuals being evaluated, and in this case the evidence of B may well have contributed to the judges decision to instruct the jury to draw no condemning inference from the defendants lack of testimony. Due to certain cognitive biases, the message an expert tries to pass on may not be received by the jury as intended, which may vindicate the judges decision to not allow Bs testimony. Jury members will often ascribe disproportionate impact to expert testimony (Krafka, Dunn, Johnson, Cecil et al., 2002), meaning the intended message is blown-up or otherwise distorted resulting in jurors who may believe something unrepentant to what the literature on mental illness suggests. B had stated that the defendant was not in a fit state to give testimony, and documented to the reality of his men tal illness and deteriorating mental state despite the workout of antipsychotic medication. This last point may be of particular impressiveness because members of the general public may not have a full understanding of the research into the effects of antipsychotics (Jorm, Korten, Rodgers, Pollitt et al., 1997) which B presumably did have. If the jury believed that antipsychotics could remedy the defendants mental illness then this could lead to them sketch a condemning inference. The weight that Bs evidence would have had is in question though because of the already substantial amount of evidence in support of the existence and chronic worsening of the defendants mental illness. This is an issue because if the jury was already convinced that the defendant was indeed mentally ill at the time of the killing and still voted to convict the defendant of murder then the impact Bs evidence may have had is a moot point. The only remaining question is whether Bs testimony would have add ed anything to the testimony of the other experts due to the voir dire examination. It does seem un possible that the testimony of B would have differed importantly from the other experts, and due to the evidence suggesting that the individual persuasive ability of experts has more of an impact on jurors than the content of their message (Bank and Poythress, 1982) the judge was probably in force(p) to not allow the additional expert testimony. A criticism of virtually of this research is that it closelyly uses mock jurors, and also the mock cases obviously have-to doe with different experts and circumstances to the one in question. This means that the effect may be more or less pronounced in this scenario, but the evidence is from a very relevant context and is extremely likely to still be useful. The only potential problem lies in the participants not taking the mock case as seriously as they would a real case. The general population may not have a good understanding of mental illness or mental subject matter as these terms are defined in legal intervention (Jorm, 2000) which did necessitate at least some expert testimony. Another point is that the judge did not give any contrasting definition for the term substantially impaired when the defence counsel offered the definition of anything impairment more than trivial. Although this was submitted as grounds for appeal, the evidence suggests that if anything this point would have resulted in the jurors adopting a standard of impairment that was too liberal by legal standards. This is because jurors and indeed people in general are not as able to disregard presented information as readily as most people believe (Lieberman and Arndt, 2000). According to theories in amicable psychology, hindsight bias and teaching perseverance can lead to jurors actually relying on inadmissible evidence more than other evidence (Lieberman and Arndt, 2000). This is very useful research in this context because it highlights t he importance of presented information the definition offered by the defence counsel will be given inappropriate attention. Since the verdict was still to convict, this suggests strongly that the court was right to dismiss the appeal. In light of the strength of the evidence and theory reviewed and the applications in this case, it is clear that the second and third points submitted by the defendant in the appeal were properly rebuffed by the judge, in fact the evidence suggests that these issues would have worked in the defendants favour if the judge had responded differently. As for the first point, it appears from the research that any effect on jury perception would be negligible, although there is some conflict in the literature as to the effect of instructions of limitation from the judge.ReferencesMorse, S. J. (2003). Diminished rationality, diminished responsibility. Ohio St. J. Crim. L., 1, 289. Prevezer, S. (1957). The English Homicide Act A New Attempt to Revise the rec titude of Murder. Columbia right Review, 624-652. Thomas, E. A., &038 Hogue, A. (1976). Apparent weight of evidence, decision criteria, and confidence ratings in juror decision making. Psychological Review,83(6), 442. Cush, R. K., &038 Delahunty, J. G. (2006). The influence of limiting instructions on processing and judgments of emotionally evocative evidence. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 13(1), 110-123. Griffin, D., Gonzalez, R., &038 Varey, C. (2001). The heuristics and biases approach to judgment under uncertainty. Blackwell handbook of social psychology Intraindividual processes, 1, 207-235. Neal, T., &038 Grisso, T. (2014). The cognitive underpinnings of bias in forensic mental wellness evaluations. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20(2), 200. Pennington, N., &038 Hastie, R. (1991). Cognitive theory of juror decision making The tale model, A. Cardozo L. Rev., 13, 519. Ceci, S. J., Ross, D. F., &038 Toglia, M. P. (1987). Suggestibility of childrens memory Psycholegal imp lications. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 116(1), 38. Leippe, M. R. (1980). Effects of collective memorial and cognitive processes on the correspondence of eyewitness accuracy and confidence. Law and Human behavior, 4(4), 261. Ratcliff, R. (1978). A theory of memory retrieval. Psychological review, 85(2), 59. Alba, J. W., &038 Hasher, L. (1983). Is memory nonrepresentational?. Psychological Bulletin, 93(2), 203. Bank, S. C., &038 Poythress Jr, N. G. (1982). Elements of Persuasion in Expert Testimony, The. J. Psychiatry &038 L., 10, 173. Jorm, A. F. (2000). Mental health literacy Public knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 177(5), 396-401. Lieberman, J. D., &038 Arndt, J. (2000). ground the limits of limiting instructions Social psychological explanations for the failures of instructions to disregard pretrial publicity and other inadmissible evidence. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 6(3), 677. Squire, L. R., &038 Alvare z, P. (1995). Retrograde amnesia and memory consolidation a neurobiological perspective. Current opinion in neurobiology,5(2), 169-177. Jorm, A. F., Korten, A. E., Rodgers, B., Pollitt, P., Jacomb, P. A., Christensen, H., &038 Jiao, Z. (1997). whimsey systems of the general public concerning the appropriate treatments for mental disorders. Social psychiatry and psychiatrical epidemiology, 32(8), 468-473.