Witness

A blog about forensic psychology.

by Karen Franklin, Ph.D.

Research: Romney's Anti-Gay Assault Fits Typical Pattern

Romney's claims are precisely what most gay-bashers think and say, according to research on the motivations of antigay violence perpetrators. Read More

Homicidal Triad: Predictor of Violence or Urban Myth?

Legend tells of three behaviors common to serial killers: Firesetting, enuresis and cruelty to animals. But is the legend true? Read More

Damning Reconstruction of Notorious False Confession Case

As it turned out, this wasn't just one more rape in the Big Apple. Read More

No Other Country Condemns Children to Life Behind Bars

In locking up children for life, the U.S. is far out of step with the global community Read More

Internet stings: Does the fantasy defense hold water?

The former weapons inspector testified he thought he was chatting with a bored housewife, not a 15-year-old girl. The defense didn't work, but a new study suggests it may hold some truth. Read More

Why Does the United States Lock Up So Many People?

The statistics are shocking: One out of every 99 adults is quarantined behind bars in the United States, with larger and larger swaths of the civilian work force deployed as a captor class. Read More

Civil Commitment Petition Against Butner, NC Prisoner Dismissed

Sex offenses are upsetting, and their perpetrators creepy. Understandably, it's easy for jurors and even judges to brush aside legal technicalities and burdens of proof in the interest of keeping women and children safe. Read More

Appellate Court Upholds Exclusion of SPECT Evidence

On May 22, 2002, the body of Juliette Williamson was found washed up on Yerba Buena Island in the San Francisco Bay. Williamson and her long-time partner Bruce Brooks were well-known street performers known as the Chicago Brother and Sister Blues Band. For years, they had lived together in a purple school bus parked under a freeway. Read More

Good Tidings: Violence at an All-Time Low

Your date asks you out to the theater to watch a live cat slowly lowered into a fire and burned to death, howling with pain as it is singed, roasted, and finally carbonized. Sound like fun? Read More

Psychology Rife with Inaccurate Research Findings

The case of a Dutch psychologist who fabricated experiments out of whole cloth for at least a decade is shining a spotlight on systemic flaws in the reporting of psychological research.

Diederik Stapel, a well-known and widely published psychologist in the Netherlands, routinely falsified data and made up entire experiments, according to an investigative committee. Read More

Predicting Behavior: The Case of the Missing Militant

There is an oft-repeated axiom in our field that the most reliable predictor of future behavior is what a person has done in the past.

But this axiom valid?

Let's take the example of Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth, featured on America's Most Wanted. Read More

Psychologists' DSM5 Petition Catching like Wildfire

An online petition by psychologists concerned about the lack of science underlying proposed changes in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is taking off like wildfire, with more than 1,100 signatures as of this morning. Read More

Multiple Personality Excluded in Twilight Rapist Insanity Case

As the battle over dissociative identity disorder's existence heats up, a serial rapist's attempt to claim insanity based on that condition fell flat in Texas. Read More

Russell Banks' New Novel Explores Sex Offender Banishment

The Kid is all alone in the world, hiding in the shadows under the freeway, part of an ever-growing mass of exiles electronically shackled to a society that despises and shuns them. Read More

What Does It Take to Prove One's Innocence?

A Kafkaesque story from a land whose criminal justice system has gone totally berserk Read More

At Long Last: New Forensic Specialty Guidelines Approved

The long-awaited ethical guidelines issued for forensic psychology practice. Read More

Brick Wall Blocking Progress on Sexual Violence Prevention

Forty years after the women's rights movement brought attention to the widespread nature of sexual violence, the overwhelming majority of offenses still go unreported. Even when a brave victim does come forward, prosecution is rare and conviction even rarer. Read More

Loughner case shines spotlight on forced meds practices

Under what circumstances may the U.S. government drug a captive against his will?

A round of high-profile court skirmishes over the forcible medication of attempted assassination suspect Jared Loughner may help resolve legal ambiguities on this issue. Read More

Psychopathy: A Rorschach test for psychologists?

Evaluators who score low in compassion and thrill-seeking are more likely than others to label criminals as psychopathic. Read More

Paint brushes and soap: The slippery slope of unfettered power

In detention sites across the United States, objects like soap and paint brushes are wielded as weapons against captive sex offenders who decline to enroll in treatment programs they view as a humiliating sham. Read More

The Arizona rampage: Analyzing the analyzers

Would media coverage use a macro lens if Abdul had shot U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords? Read More

Martin Luther King to psychologists: We need creative maladjustment

Martin Luther King exhorted psychologists to take a stand for justice, whether or not it was safe or popular. Read More

Supermax prisons: Hell on earth or . . . not so bad after all?

I naively thought everyone knew that being locked up alone in a tiny cell -- sometimes for years at a stretch -- is bad for one's psyche. Read More

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche

A successful virus is adaptive. It evolves as needed to survive and colonize new hosts. By this definition, contemporary American psychiatry is a very successful virus. Exploiting cracks that emerge in times of cultural transition, it exports DSM depression to Japan and posttraumatic stress disorder to Sri Lanka. Read More

How the Black man became schizophrenic

Once upon a time, a strange thing happened at the Ionia State Hospital in Michigan: A diagnosis of schizophrenia exited the body of a white housewife, flew across the hospital, and landed on a young Black man from the housing projects of Detroit, burrowing into his body and stubbornly refusing to leave. Read More

No reliable method to determine pedophilia, study finds

Lest you think that TSA's employment gurus can protect passengers by weeding out the sexual deviants from the "normal," they cannot. There's no accurate way to know, a new study finds. Read More

Rape victim should cheer rapist, court says

First, she was raped.

Then, she was told she must cheer for her rapist.

Now, a federal appeals court ruling that she had no grounds to protest is putting the tiny town of Silsbee, Texas on the map. Read More

Halloween a night of security theater for sex offenders

For many, Halloween is a blast. For convicted sex offenders, it is the most dreaded night of the year. Read More

Delusional campaign for a world without risk

Convicted sex offender Anthony Sowell seemed run-of-the-mill. He scored a low "1" on the Static-99, the popular actuarial tool designed to quantify risk for sexual recidivism. Now, he is suspected in the murders of 11 women whose remains were found at his Cleveland, Ohio home. Read More