How jurors construe “insanity”

Historically and currently, jurors who have rendered verdicts in insanity cases have themselves been criticized and maligned-accused of being simplistic and biased, of lacking understanding, and of disregarding or nullifying the judge's instructions. Are the critics right? In this study, 263 mock jurors (141 adults and 122 students) were asked to decide four insanity cases without instructions, using their own best judgment, and to identify the determinative facts for them, and the meaning of those facts. Those determinative factors were then categorized, using a seven construct schema for NGRI and guilty verdicts. The results show that jurors do make discriminations among cases in terms of constructs, and that these constructs are relevant, complex, and flexible; furthermore, the jurors' lay constructs of insanity are more complex than the legal constructs of insanity. The “simplism,” it seems, lies not with the jurors but with the insanity tests.     

Criminal personality profiling

In this work we examine outcome and process differences in criminal personality profiling among groups of profilers, detectives, psychologists, and students, using closed police cases—one sex offense and one homicide. Two major questions guide this research: (1) Are professional profilers more accurate than nonprofilers in generating personality profiles and correctly identifying offender features from crime scene details? and (2) Is the process that the profilers use qualitatively different from that of the nonprofilers? In the written profile task, the task that is most representative of what profilers actually do, profilers write richer, more detailed, and more valid profiles than the nonprofilers for both the sex offense case and homicide case. An analysis of correct responses concerning the known offender for the sex offense case revealed that the profilers scored significantly better than the other three groups in a variety of measures; similar results were not revealed for the homicide case. Profilers, however, do not appear to process this material in a way qualitatively different from any other group.     

De facto departures from insanity instructions

De facto departures form the law (de jure) have been noted in such areas as jury revolts, jury nullification, extralegal concerns, and insanity. The thesis developed here is that (a) when such departures have occurred in insanity cases, acritical rather thaninstructive view of jurors has prevailed; (b) this critical view impedes efforts to empirically understand jurors' constructs of insanity and thereby restricts considered legal changes; (c) the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 is illustrative of such narrowly considered changes, and, based on empirical findings, this act fails to instruct jurors or produce verdicts different from its predecessors; and (d) based on empirical findings, the common sense construals ofsane andinsane do emerge, complex though they be. Suggestions toward an empirically derived common law test of insanity, one that harmonizes legal, psychological, and common sense perspectives, are offered.This article is based in part on a paper, De Jure and De Facto Insanity Tests, presented at the American Psychological Association's Annual Convention, August 14, 1988, Atlanta, Georgia.     

Judicial Reform as Insurance Policy: Mexico in the 1990s

After seven decades of Mexican judicial subordination, President Ernesto Zedillo in 1994 introduced judicial reforms that increased the independence and judicial review powers of the judicial branch. The willful creation of a judiciary capable of checking the power of the president and the ruling PRI appears to counter political logic; but it makes sense as a political "insurance policy" to protect the ruling party from its rivals. PRI politicians, newly unable to control political outcomes at state and local levels and unsure if they would continue to dominate the national government in the future, opted to empower the Mexican Supreme Court as a hedge against the loss of office. This article argues that the likelihood of the reforms' producing an empowered judiciary increases as the ruling party's probability of reelection declines.     

The self-defense defense and community sentiment

It has been asserted (e.g., Gillespie, 1989) that the self-defense defense, with its objectivereasonable man standard, is unfairly biased against certain female defendants who kill a male and plead not guilty by reason of self-defense (NGRSD), and that jurors, who represent community sentiment, share that bias. Using three cases where a woman kills and pleads self-defense (a battered woman case, aGoetz-like subway case, and an alleged rape case), whereseriousness of the harm, equal or unequal force, retreat/escape possibility, imminence, and thepresence and type of expert testimony were varied, 269 mock jurors (students and adults) rendered verdicts and ratings. Broad but variable support for the NGRSD was found (e.g., 63%, 27%, and 23% NGRSD verdicts in the battered woman, subway, and rape cases, respectively), along with evidence that subjects use a wider context and, at times, a subjective perspective to decide culpability. Implications for a self-defense defense are suggested.     

Candidates and issues in the 1980 campaign: The ideological connection

The notion that ideological perceptions in the mass public are shaped to some extent by elites and political candidates is widespread in the public opinion literature. However, there has been a lack of empirical research directly demonstrating the links between elites and the masses whose thinking they supposedly cue and structure. This paper attempts to show, through magnitude scale data collected over time in the 1980 campaign, the significant impact of political candidates in altering ideological perceptions of political stimuli. The chief carrier of ideology in 1980 is shown to be Ronald Reagan, whose strong issue stands and ideological label influenced perceptions of specific issues' ideological content. The findings are discussed in terms of both measurement problems in the ideology literature and more general theories of elite and environmental influences on mass political thought.     

Toward the usable recognition of individual benefits and costs in regulatory analysis and governance

Regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have well‐deserved reputations for fixating on the total benefits and costs of proposed and final regulatory actions, without doing any more than anecdotally mentioning the subpopulations and individuals who may bear disproportionate costs or reap disproportionate benefits. This is especially true on the “cost” side of the cost–benefit ledger, where analysts exert little effort to even inform decisionmakers and the public that the costs of regulations might be distributed either regressively or progressively. Many scholars and advocates have observed that regulation can increase the efficiency of market outcomes, but caution about its untoward (or suboptimal) effects on equity. Here, we argue that without considering distributional information about costs and benefits, regulatory policies in fact can also cause violence to notions of efficiency, for two reasons: (i) society cannot hope to approach Pareto‐efficient outcomes without identifying those who must lose so that others can gain more; and (ii) because the harm experienced by involuntary risks and by imposed regulatory costs is likely non‐linear in its magnitude (at the individual level), efficiency is, in fact, a strong function of the shape of the distribution of these effects. This article reviews evidence about the distribution of regulatory costs and benefits, describes how agencies fail to incorporate readily available distributional information, and sketches a vision for how they could analyze costs and benefits to promote more efficient regulatory choices and outcomes.     

Fatal complications related to diagnostic barium enema

Thousands of barium enemas are performed in the United States each year without incident. Occasionally complications arise, only a few of which are fatal. Perforation is the most frequent serious complication of this procedure. Two instances of fatal perforation, one colonic and the other vaginal, are described, and the relevant literature is reviewed.