Psychopathy and the Death Penalty: Can the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Identify Offenders Who Represent “A Continuing Threat to Society”?

Abstract

Psychopathy has gained increasing importance in the field of risk assessment in the last decade, in large part because of the established association between this construct and future violence and criminality. Situations in which the prediction of “future dangerousness” is at issue appear to be logical areas in which the assessment of psychopathic traits would be relevant to decision-making. One recent application of psychopathy has been its inclusion in death penalty cases, wherein Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) scores have been introduced to support the position that a defendant will represent a “continuing threat” to society—even if serving a life sentence in prison. Despite such claims, a review of the relevant research indicates that the empirical basis for these conclusions is minimal at present. This article summarizes what is known about the relationship between psychopathy and violence, and reviews the legal and professional implications of this research in relation to the use of the PCL-R in the penalty phase of capital cases.

A prospective comparison of two measures of psychopathy in the prediction of institutional misconduct

“…Such testimony has appeared in capital murder trials in the U.S. to support prosecution arguments that defendants are ''continuing threats to society'' who-if not executed-will be likely to engage in violent behavior in institutional settings (Edens, Petrila, & Buffington-Vollum, 2001. Our findings, along with other recent studies (e.g.…”

“…In addition to the prediction of community crime and violence noted earlier, some researchers have argued that the PCL-R is a potent correlate of institutional misconduct, with early studies in this area (Hare & McPherson, 1984;Hill, Rogers, & Bickford, 1996) reporting relatively large effect sizes. Subsequent research on the relationship between psychopathy and institutional misbehavior has been much more equivocal, however, especially in relation to the prediction of violent acts in institutional settings (for reviews, see Edens, Petrila, & Buffington-Vollum, 2001;Guy, Edens, Anthony, & Douglas, 2005;Walters, 2003b). The ''old'' Factor 1 of the PCL-R (affective and interpersonal features) in particular has been only weakly associated with misconduct in these settings.…”

Trials and Tribulations: Psychopathic Traits, Emotion, and Decision-Making in an Ambiguous Case of Sexual Assault

“…Research has established that information processing is highly relevant to judicial biases (e.g., Gunnell & Ceci, 2010). Further, while the construct of psychopathy is highly related to courtroom decisions concerning defendant guilt and the death penalty (e.g., Blais & Forth, 2014;Edens, Petrila, & Buffington-Vollum, 2001), little is known about how psychopathic traits in jurors influence their processing of information. Given that 1% -3% of the general population may contain high levels of psychopathic traits (Hare, 1996), determining the influence of this construct on courtroom decisions is relevant and warranted.…”

The effects of rational and experiential information processing of expert testimony in death penalty cases

“…Kansas v. Hendricks, 1997;Kansas v. Crane, 2002). Critics within the legal and psychological fields have questioned the ethics (Faust & Ziskin, 1988;Lavin & Sales, 1998), the validity (Cunningham & Reidy, 1999, 2002Edens, Petrila, & Buffington-Vollum, 2001), and the biasing effects that these potentially unreliable expert predictions might have on jury decisions (Guy & Edens, 2003;Krauss & Lee, 2003;Krauss & Sales, 2001). Although considerable advances have been made in the area of dangerousness prediction or risk assessment validity (see, e.g., Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 1998;Webster, Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, 1997), there still remains considerable doubt whether these new procedures are being used in actual practice (see, e.g., Melton, Petrila, Poythress, & Slobogin, 1997).…”