Charles Patrick Ewing

Battered woman and public opinion: Some realities about the myths

Expert testimony regarding the battered woman syndrome is often presented at trial on behalf of women charged with killing their batterers. Where courts have admitted such testimony into evidence, they have done so on the theory that the testimony is needed to dispel common myths regarding battered women—e.g., erroneous beliefs that battered women are masochists, who are somehow responsible for the battering they suffer and could avoid being battered by simply leaving their batterers. To date, however, there is no published empirical evidence that either jurors or members of the public at large hold such erroneous beliefs. The results of this study provide empirical support for the judicial hypothesis. These results suggest that many members of the general public eligible for jury duty do, in fact, hold erroneous, stereotyped beliefs about battered women.

Ultimate opinion proscriptions: A cosmetic fix and a plea for empiricism

In recent years, ultimate opinion testimony given by mental health experts in insanity trials has come under strident criticism as an unwarranted incursion into the legal arena. This article examines the merits of such criticism and concludes that attempts to eliminate such testimony will not achieve their intended goals but will obscure more substantive issues inherent in insanity evaluations and subsequent testimony. The article then recasts problems in expert testimony in a broader conceptual basis buttressed with empiricism.

Psychological self-defense

A small but increasingly visible number of battered women eventually kill their batterers. While most of these women plead self-defense, they are generally convicted of murder or manslaughter because their homicidal acts rarely fit the narrow legal definition of self-defense. This article (a) explains who battered women are and why they kill; (b) suggests that many, perhaps most, battered women who kill their batterers do so in “psychological self-defense”; and (c) argues that current self-defense law should be expanded to justify such killings.

Preventive detention and execution

In a series of cases decided over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that laws providing for both preventive detention and preventive execution do not violate Constitutional guarantees. Preventive detention and preventive execution share a common method and goal: Determine which individuals pose a threat to society and then remove those persons from society (i.e., incarcerate them) or-if they have also been convicted of first degree murder-execute them. In each of these cases, the Court has been presented with behavioral science data indicating that most predictions of dangerousness-anywhere from 51% to 95%-prove to be wrong. This article describes the relevant data and the Courts response to those data, then considers why the Court has responded as it has, what the Courts response may mean with regard to the future role of behavioral science data in Constitutional litigation regarding the rights of those accused or convicted of crimes, and what, if anything, behavioral scientists might do to enhance the utility and influence of empirical data in such litigation.

The prohibition of ultimate opinions: A misguided enterprise

ABSTRACT During the 1980s, a coterie of scholars attempted to limit the scope of expert testimony by curtailing ultimate opinions. As its foremost proponent, Melton continues to champion this prohibition. This brief commentary attempts to understand the Meltonian perspective and its intolerance of ultimate and penultimate opinions. Issues include the ad populum thesis, the non-expert exclusion, and a usurpation hypothesis. Beyond Melton, the legal landscape of ultimate opinions is considered. Finally, we examine the untoward effects of categorically prohibiting ultimate opinion testimony.

Student and Voter Subjects: Differences in Attitudes Toward Battered Women

A scenario describing an incident of wife abuse was presented to 106 volunteer undergraduate psychology students. Subjects indicated agreement or disagreement with eight statements regarding attitudes toward the battering of women. Results were compared with the results obtained when the same stimulus materials were presented to 206 registered voters who were paid for their participation. Differences in responses of the two groups of subjects suggest that students hold fewer stereotypes regarding battered women, and that the student sample was not as subject to gender influences as was the voter sample. The conclusion is that undergraduate subjects may hold different beliefs and attitudes from those of registered voters, and may therefore not be an appropriate analog for the study of juror attitudes.

Crisis Intervention as Brief Psychotherapy

A telephone “hotline” worker takes a call from a depressed teenager contemplating suicide. A social services caseworker follows up on a teacher’s complaint that a father has been abusing his 5-year-old son. An emergency room nurse counsels a rape victim. A police officer calms the disputants in a domestic violence call. A hospital chaplain consoles the grief-stricken wife of a man who just died on the operating table. A psychologist in a child guidance clinic advises the parents of a preschool child who has suddenly begun having nightmares. A psychiatrist evaluates a patient with chronic schizophrenia who has stopped taking his medications, decompensated, and may need to be hospitalized against his will.

The measurement of insanity: debating the merits of the R-CRAS and its alternatives

With the emergence of psycholegal scales, the Rogers Criminal Responsibility assessment scales (R-CRAS) was developed as the first standardized measure of criminal responsibility. Initially constructed as a research protocol in 1979, validation studies were conducted during the early 1980s’ and resulted in its publication as a clinical measure in 1984.’ The first generation of R-CRAS critiques have ranged from sharply critical3 to laudatory.4 An important question which can not and should not be ignored is simply, “What is the R-CRAS?” Much of the vigorous debate found in the literature involves whether it is a test, measure, instrument, or structured guide. Certainly, it was never intended to be a test in the traditional sense,5 although it clearly has psychometric properties. Rather, the R-CRAS was constructed to standardize and organize insanity evaluations. While there are normative data available and “scores” could be generated, the risks of misuse outweigh any advantage. The everpresent danger is that clinicians and legal professionals