Psychology and Law: Science and the Court

Week 1: Psychology and Law: Science and the Court

• Psychology is a newer field than law, emerging as a scientific discipline in the late 1800s.
• Psychology and Law as a field was founded in 1968-1969 by Jay Ziskin and Eric Dreikurs.
• Ziskin's 1970 book, "Coping with Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony," questioned the admissibility of psychiatric and psychological testimony in court.
• The first joint JD/Ph.D program was announced in 1973.
• Goals of Psychology and Law include understanding the effect of law on attitudes/behavior, people's influence on law's creation/enforcement, and legal system improvement through testing human behavior assumptions.
• Legal field focuses on history, norms, prescribing regulations, and assessing blame.
• Legal truth is based on what's legally provable in a specific case and relies on values/political beliefs.
• Psychology focuses on present/future, explaining/predicting, group-level facts, and uncertain data evolving through consensus.

Week 1: Key Concepts

• Psychology and law have different approaches to data and truth.
• Psychology uses empirical evidence while law focuses on precedent and legal precedent.

Week 1: How Social Science Informs Law

• Social Fact: Use of social science research to resolve disputes in court.
• Social Framework: Use of social science for factual background/context in court.
• Social Authority: Use of social science to create/modify legal rules.

Week 1: Roles of Psychologists in the Legal Process

• Advisors: Reduce bias, false confessions, inaccurate testimony, excessive force, suicides in jail.
• Evaluators: Suspect competence, trauma, psychopathy treatment, victim identification.
• Advocates: Support evidence-based practices & justice system reform.

Week 1: Landmark Cases

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Unanimous Supreme Court decision that segregated schools are unconstitutional; followed by Brown II (1955) for implementation.
• Brown v. Plata (2010): California prison overcrowding deemed cruel and unusual punishment, with social psychologist Craig Haney's testimony playing a role.

Week 2: Courts Decisions about Evidence: Probative & Valid or Prejudicial

Week 2: Types of Witnesses

• Lay witnesses can testify on perceptions/hearings, offering opinions clarifying perception.
• Expert witnesses have specialized knowledge that jurors lack, must be qualified and accepted by the judge.

Week 2: Expert Testimony Guidelines

• Experts cannot give opinions on defendant's mental state for a crime or defense, but can opine on other relevant issues with a rational basis supported by valid research.
• Trial judges decide on research validity and testimony admissibility.

Week 2: Expert Witness Models

• Adversarial (USA, Israel): Judge has limited role in expert admissibility.
• Court-appointed (Brazil): Inquisitorial model—all questioning through judge.
• Panel of Experts (Australia): "Hot Tubbing Technique"

Week 2: Problems with Expert Testimony

• Financial incentives: Experts may tailor testimony to benefit clients.
• Partisan experts: Lack of regulatory body for expertise.
• Exaggerated credentials/limitations: Experts might obscure research limitations.
• Example: Dr. Gene Morrison (2007) fraud conviction.

###Week 2: Expert Witness Immunity

• Varies across jurisdictions, with the UK (Jones v. Kaney, 2011) removing expert immunity from civil suits now allowing expert witness to be sued in civil case.
• Some jurisdictions allow lawsuits against experts for malpractice in US.
• Australia protects experts from civil suits, while some US states allow lawsuits for professional malpractice/contract breaches.

Week 2: Legal Standards for Expert Testimony

• Daubert Standard (federal system, many states) replaced Frye standard.
• Frye v. US (1923): established general acceptance within relevant scientific community as standard for expert testimony.
• Daubert's 4 criteria: Reliability/validity, error rate, peer review/publication, general acceptance.

Week 2: Judges' Role in Expert Testimony

• Judges assess relevance and validity of expert testimony (gatekeepers).

Week 2: Junk Science

• Junk science in court is a substantial problem.
• Issues arise in legal process, scientific community, and individual levels.
• Examples of junk science include forensic evidence, like bite-mark analysis with potential to wrongfully convict.
• Attorneys rarely challenge junk science.
• Judges lack specific scientific training to evaluate evidence.

Week 3: Racial Disparity and Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System

Week 3: Systemic Racism

• Systemic racism involves policies/laws that create unfair treatment/outcomes for racial minorities.
• Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff discusses racist behaviors as observable instead of focusing on the word racism.
• DOJ found racial bias in police behavior, leading to consent decrees for reform.
• Systemic racism affects both outcomes (distributive justice) and treatment (procedural justice), creating disparities.
• Procedural injustice includes disrespectful treatment, lack of listening, biased decision-making, lack of transparency, and insufficient explanation of decisions.

Week 3: Legal protections against Discrimination

• Title 7 (race) and Title 9 (gender, age) protect individuals from discrimination.

###Week 3: Police Practices and Racial Disparities

• Police practice studies show racial disparities in traffic stops, searches, and use of force, despite implicit racial bias tests not reliably measuring behavior.
• Black/Latino drivers face disproportionately higher rates of consent requests for searches compared to white drivers.
• Unarmed black individuals are significantly more likely to be shot by police than are unarmed white individuals.