Acquittal

Abstract: Some offenders are at very high risk to reoffend. Research conducted at the author's institution and elsewhere shows that psychopathic offenders are especially likely to be violent, that future violence can be predicted with considerable accuracy among men who have committed at least 1 violent offense, and that treatment programs to reduce dangerousness do not always have the intended effects (i.e., they may actually increase the dangerousness of some individuals). Implications for the criminal justice system pertain to release following insanity acquittal, offender sentencing and parole, preventive detention, offender treatment, and program evaluation.

Abstract: When a crime has been committed and a suspect (or suspects) apprehended, it is the purpose of the criminal justice system to dispose of the case in the socially optimal manner. Of course, how one should define optimal in this context is subject to debate; in this paper I consider three goals: (1) minimization of the social cost of legal errors; (2) punishment of the truly guilty; and (3) efficient use of the resources needed to operate the system. Considering the first of these, legal errors necessarily result from imperfect information on the part of courts and are generally of two types: incorrect conviction of innocent defendants (type I errors), and incorrect acquittal of guilty defendants (type II errors). Both are assumed to impose some cost on society. On the other hand, society presumably gains from correctly punishing the truly guilty. One reason, of course, is deterrence, although I abstract from this motive here. Additionally, however, I assume that society benefits by matching the punishment of criminals to the crime they have committed (one might call this "retribution").2 By the appropriate choice of the variables of the legal process-namely, prosecutorial effort in collecting evi-

Abstract: Public opinion data show that the most prevalent concern expressed regarding the insanity defense is that it is a loophole through which would-be criminals escape punishment for illegal acts. This article examines the extent to which the public's perceptions of the insanity defense are consistent with newly collected empirical data. Specifically, it compares perceptions of the use, success, and outcomes associated with the insanity defense to data derived from a large-scale study of insanity pleas in eight states. The analysis reveals that the public overestimates the use and success of an insanity defense and underestimates the extent to which insanity acquittees are confined upon acquittal. The role of selective media reporting in the formation of public perceptions is discussed.

Abstract: Beginning in 2002, popular media disseminated serious concerns that the integrity of the criminal trial was being compromised by the effects of television drama. Specifically, it was widely alleged that the popular CSI franchise, one of the most watched programs on television, was affecting jury deliberations and outcomes. It was claimed that jurors confused the idealized portrayal of the capabilities of forensic science on television with the actual capabilities of forensic science in the contemporary criminal justice system. Accordingly, jurors suffered from inflated expectations concerning the occurrence and probative value of forensic evidence. When forensic evidence failed to reach these expectations, it was suggested, juries acquitted. In short, it was argued that, in circumstantial evidence cases in which juries would have convicted before the advent of the CSI franchise, juries were now acquitting. As we have argued elsewhere, such charges, if true, would constitute a serious challenge to law's fundamental faith in the jury and thus raise serious questions about the integrity of the criminal justice system itself. However, the media perpetuated these claims in the absence of any convincing evidence that there was any such effect. Thus far, social science studies intended to detect the CSI effect have found little evidence of it. Unlike other studies that seek to test the CSI effect by thorough juror surveys and simulations, our approach has been to analyze actual acquittal rates in criminal trials. In an earlier analysis of federal trial data, we found no change in acquittal rates correlated with the advent of CSI. Although this finding does not itself disprove the CSI effect, it does suggest that the media claims that there is such an effect were premature. In the first part of this paper, we present additional data derived from state criminal trials that finds only equivocal evidence of a significant change in acquittal rates in response to CSI. We then present a content analysis of media claims about the CSI effect. This analysis shows that, contrary to the social science evidence, a consumer of popular media would have the impression that CSI is causing wrongful acquittals in our criminal justice system. In the final part of this paper, we draw parallels between the media storm concerning the CSI effect and another episode in which media claims about a severe social problem in the legal system were widely disseminated despite the absence of any convincing evidence that the problem was in fact occurring. The episode was the widespread concern about a supposed litigation explosion or hyperlexis during the 1970s and 80s. Echoing the legal scholarship concerning the litigation explosion, we explore the underlying anxieties that may generate media claims about social problems in the legal system.