The defense of extreme emotional disturbance: A qualitative analysis of cases in New York County.

Excusing murder? Conservative jurors’ acceptance of the gay-panic defense.

“…Thus, provocation defenses are successful if jurors perceive the provocation as sufficient to cause a person to lose self-control and commit the offense, and, as a result, decide the defendant is less culpable than he or she would be otherwise (Kirschner, Litwack, & Galperin, 2004; Mison, 1992). The gay-panic defense is a specific type of provocation defense in which the defendant claims that the crime in question was the result of a sudden and intense passion provoked by the victim’s unwanted same-gender sexual advance.…”

The psychology and law of voluntary manslaughter: what can psychology research teach us about the “heat of passion” defense?

“…Moreover, voluntary manslaughter law remains inextricably linked with notions of male pride-every year, it seems, a state judge somewhere in America gains notoriety for giving a ''slap on the wrist'' punishment to an outraged husband who kills his wife and/or her lover. In fact, some have argued that the MPC's approach may even magnify the sexist impact of the voluntary manslaughter doctrine, by allowing a wider range of relationship killings (most of which are perpetrated by men) to qualify for the doctrine (Nourse, 1997; but see Kirschner, Litwack, & Galperin, 2004).…”

Integrative themes: Prospects for developing a "psycholegal lexis".

“…Of the 24 complete cases, 9 resulted in a verdict or accepted plea of manslaughter or attempted manslaughter (the "successful" cases), and 15 were ultimately found guilty of, or pleaded guilty to, the top charge of murder (the "unsuccessful" cases). Kirschner et al (2004) focus on finding factors that differentiate the two groups of cases, to better understand how in fact EDD has functioned in one court jurisdiction, and how the accumulated knowledge of this multiple case analysis can inform present policy concerning EDD. To aid in the reader's understanding of their case analyses, the authors present summaries of eight of the nine successful cases and four of the 15 unsuccessful cases.…”

“…The first would include individual case studies-what Yinn (1989) calls "single-case" research designs-of criminal defendants, such as those in the articles by Witt, Dyer, and Schlesinger. The second would consist of groups of case studies that are all related to the same issue, such as those in the articles by Kirschner et al (2004), Kinsler et al (2004), and Lederman and Osofsky (2004). Yin (1989) calls these "embedded" case designs, because they examine three aspects of a case: subunits of the overall case (e.g., Linda Brown, Katrina Brown, and her son Charles in Lederman and Osofsky's article); the case as a whole (e.g., the overall system for dealing with infant-parent problems in the Miami-Dade Juvenile Court); and how the subunits are related to one another and to the larger case.…”

“…The last three articles use two or more interrelated case studies to embody issues for program and policy development. Kirschner, Litwak, and Galperin (2004) analyze a population of 24 complete New York County cases in which a plea Extreme Emotional Disturbance (EED) was put forth as a partial defense to charges of actual or attempted intentional murder, with 9 of the defenses being “successful” in generating reduced charges, and 15, being unsuccessful. The authors performed a cross-case analysis to identify factors that consistently differentiated the two outcomes and discuss the implications of their findings for policy implications about the EED defense.…”