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

IntroductionBefore delving into the applications and germane(predicate) theories in Forensic psychology in this case, it is first-class honours degree necessary to summarise the ill-tempereds of this case. This utilise intromit for the assure to be objectively assessed, and then broken down as the semiempirical endorse provided by the field of Forensic Psychology pertains to specific points. This pass on allow for the comfort of various aspects of the present on both sides to be assessed, which may result in a re-evaluation of the overall verdict. The psychological distinguish testament 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 get holdings and theories of forensic psychology can be used to interpret the content and weight of curtilage in this case can be evaluated. The suspect was convicted of murdering his wife, but appealed against conviction on the grounds that he was suffering from a kind illness and indeed was impaired actually enough to tack the criteria for manslaughter, non murder. The appeal was dismissed. Although the suspect admitted killing his wife he did non employ evidence at the trial, stating that he was not in a fit noetic state. A voir dire by a medical exam examination quick, B, attested to the circumstance that the defendant ought not to give evidence overdue to his mental state, and when recounting this to the gore the tag ruled that no uncomely certainty should be drawn from this. The judge did however not allow evidence from B to be given at the trial. The evidence in support of the defense mechanism 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 testimony disputed this. yard admitted by the judge against the defence came from the defendants daugh ter, S, who recounted a conversation in which the defendant admitted assaulting the dupe on a prior occasion. This was taken as evidence of the defendants bad character. During the trial there was some discussion of the commentary of the barrier comfortably impaired the defence counsel defined the term as anything much than trivially impaired but the judge refused this comment and declined to give the dialog box any further guidance as to the sanctioned definition of this term. A verdict of manslaughter would suggest that the defendant was not sufficient to fully escort the nature of what he was doing, make a rational finis and use of goods and services self-control (Morse, 2003). Of course the legal definition of substantially impaired is too relevant as it is defined by the position Homicide Act (1957) substantial terms is constituted either by a common sense impression standard or by any degree of impairment which is more than trivial but less than total (Prevezer, 1957). Whether the defendant reaches the threshold for these definitions of substantially impaired will decide whether he is convicted of manslaughter or murder. One come out raised by the defendant in the appeal was that although the judge did explicitly state that the board was not to draw any condemning inference from the defendants lack of testimony, he failed to remind the board that Ss evidence should be discovered with caution, because the defendant was not able to give any account of the alleged conversation. According to the literary works in forensic psychology there could be valid grounds to this birdcall, however the claim itself could also be redundant entirely. This is because jurymans do indeed evidently find it difficult to evaluate the weight of evidence and draw inferences permitly (doubting Thomas and Hogue, 1976). Thomas and Hogue (1976) developed a decision- do model for jurors, showing broadly that the weight jurors will put to evidence varies across the population according to a novelty of factors relevant to the characteristics of the venire. In this model the decision threshold which defines whether the gore votes for the complainant or defendant varies little across the population but may vary between cases and be bear upon by factors much(prenominal) as instructions to jurors. This latter point is very classic because it addresses the answer that instructions to the jury can gravel, even a small return could feel made a substantial difference to the way the jury regarded evidence. Evidence suggests that this is particularly the case with emotionally-charged evidence which is pertinent to this case, Cush and Delahunty (2006) found that mock jurors who real no pre-evidence instructions to attend emotionally evocative evidence (gruesome photographs) dispassionately or with caution gave more verdicts in favour of the victim and scored high on measures of victim compassion and crime negativity than did jurors who did receive such instruction. Embedded within cognitive theory this evidence supports the defendants position 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 curvees approach (Griffin, Gonzalez and Varey, 2001) rafts decision-making, thought and perception as vulnerable to various cognitive biases and distortions from mental archetypes. One such computer address 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 promptly presented to them (Neal and Grisso, 2014) especially when presented with material evidence which contradicts it. Anformer(a) point to consider is the value of Ss evidence factors which may be important to consider are the age of the witness (Cec i, Ross and Toglia, 1987), the power of hindsight and the nature of reconstructive storage (Leippe, 1980). According to a retrieval theory of shop, recognition and recall styles of reposition are possible through a resonance-style spreading-activation pattern of retrieval attempts (Ratcliff, 1978). When a search of memory in this way is performed, certain archetypes or contextual information 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 persuadable to such biases (Ceci, Ross and Toglia, 1987 Leippe, 1980). There may demand 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 realize missed in her memory of the conversation. Even if the judge had instructed the jury to treat Ss evidence with caution though, the question is what effect would this have had on the verdict. The root would seem 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 place because of the fortissimo 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 or so trivial point in the overall case. Cognitive theory is usable in the context of forensic psychology because it provides a framework for the decision-making knead to be understood, and an opportunity for the value of evidence to be quantified. The theory does view human beings as rational agents who are able to objectively consider evidence, simply adding additional weight to emotional evidence. This could be seen as reductionist as it ignores a wealth of human experience and much of the heathen meaning inherent in cases such as this one. The spreading-activation theory of memory also has its opponents. Some memory lookers prefer to view memory errors as arising from consolidation or encoding errors (Squire and Alvarez, 1995). Both are useful in a forensic psychology context but it is important to mark that the evidence is interpreted theoretically, and there must lock be a weight assigned to evidence based on theory. It must therefore be acknowledged that the interpretation of evidence is at least some arbitrary 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, expect that their professional opinions within their fields are valid and re liable, 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 convey 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 exaggerated or otherwise distorted resulting in jurors who may recollect something contrary to what the literature on mental illness suggests. B had declared that the defendant was not in a fit state to give testimony, and attested to the reality of his mental illness and deteri orating mental state patronage the usage of antipsychotic medication. This last point may be of particular importance 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 cure the defendants mental illness then this could fly the coop to them drawing a condemning inference. The weight that Bs evidence would have had is in question though because of the already substantial total 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 stable voted to convict the defendant of murder then the impact Bs evidence may have had is a moot point. The only rest question is whether Bs testimony would have added anything to the testi mony of the other experts due to the voir dire examination. It does seem unlikely that the testimony of B would have differed significantly from the other experts, and due to the evidence suggesting that the individual persuasive cogency of experts has more of an impact on jurors than the content of their message (Bank and Poythress, 1982) the judge was believably right to not allow the additional expert testimony. A critique of most of this research is that it mostly uses mock jurors, and also the mock cases simply involved 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 exceedingly 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 capacity as these terms are defined in legal discourse (Jorm, 2000) which did necessitate at least some expert testimony. some other 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 give notice presented information as readily as most people believe (Lieberman and Arndt, 2000). According to theories in social psychology, hindsight bias and belief 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 the importance of presented information the definition of fered 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 Law of Murder. capital of South Carolina Law Review, 624-652. Thomas, E. A., & Hogue, A. (1976). Apparent weight of evidence, decision criteria, and confidence ratings in juror decision making. Psychological Review,83(6), 442. Cush, R. 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