1
Q
What is a criminal case?
A
Those in which act was allegedly committed as found in the Criminal Code of Canada
2
Q
What is a civil case?
A
Those that involve a breach of contract or other claims of harm
3
Q
Does Canada require all cases to involve a jury?
A
No
4
Q
In Canada, are juries involved with murder cases?
A
Yes
5
Q
What is the process of jury selection?
A
- eligibility criteria
- prospective jurors are randomly drawn from telephone or voter lists
- selected people receive a jury summons asking them to report for jury duty
- commonalities include: minimum age requirements (18-19 years of age) and exempt professions
6
Q
What are the three types of offenses in Canada?
A
1) Summary
2) Indictable
3) Hybrid
7
Q
What type of offence is typically lower risk, less than 6 months and $2000 fine?
A
Summary
8
Q
What is a hybrid offence?
A
Cross between indictable and summary offence. The maximum sentence is 5 or more years in prison
9
Q
What is the maximum sentence typically in summary cases?
A
18 months
10
Q
Which type of case is always tried by judges alone?
A
Summary
11
Q
What type of offence always must be tried with a judge and jury?
A
Murder
12
Q
What type of case consists of the less serious being heard by judges, and the more serious are tried by judge and jury?
A
Indictable
13
Q
If an individual is summoned to jury, does that guarantee they’ll serve on a jury?
A
No
14
Q
What is a peremptory challenge?
A
Lawyers are able to challenge potential jurors without providing a reason
15
Q
How many peremptory challenges do murder cases have?
A
20
16
Q
How many peremptory challenges are allowed for typical crime cases?
A
12
17
Q
What goes into jury composition in Canada?
A
Representativeness and impartiality
18
Q
What does representativeness in jury composition consist of?
A
Composition of jury similar to community where crime occurred
19
Q
What goes into impartiality in jury composition in Canada?
A
Unbiased juror is able to set aside prejudices and render a verdict based on admissible evidence. Has no connection to the defendant
20
Q
What are the functions of the jury?
A
Juries are fact finders. They apply the law to evidence in a case and make a decision as to the guilt of the defendant
21
Q
What are some specific jobs of a jury? What do they apply the wisdom of 12 in order to do?
A
Act as the conscience of community, protect against out of date laws and increase knowledge about judicial system
22
Q
What is jury nullification?
A
Juries choose to ignore laws and render verdict based on different criteria (they believe the law is unfair given circumstances of case)
23
Q
How do juries reach a verdict?
A
After evidence has all been heard, the closing arguments are made and judges provide juries with instructions regarding the law that is to be applied in the case. The jury deliberates and reaches a verdict
24
Q
What happens when juries are told by the judge to disregard certain evidence?
A
Backfire effect - evidence becomes more memorable after judge tells them to disregard it
25
In Canada, how many people are typically involved in a jury?
12 people and can continue as long as no more than 2 people drop out
26
When are juries sequestered?
Once deliberations begin until verdict is reached
27
Are jurors allowed to speak with anyone outside or court-appointed officers?
No
28
What are 2 factors that can influence a juror’s position on the case?
Polarization and leniency bias
29
What is required for the jury to reach a verdict in Canada?
Must be unanimous
30
When is the jury said to be hung or deadlocked?
When jury can’t reach unanimous verdict
31
What are common variables that can predict the verdict of a jury?
Demographic, personality, attitude, defendant characteristics, victim characteristics and expert testimony
32
When were the tape shield laws enacted to protect victims of sexual assault from being questioned about their sexual history?
1985
33
When were the laws amended allowing trial judges to decide if questions into victims sexual history are relevant and allowed?
1992
34
According to the recent Supreme Court ruling, who is the onus on to show if victim’s sexual history is relevant to the case?
Defendant
35
What has research shown about the outcome when victim’s sexual history involves sexual intercourse in the last year?
Jurors are more likely to doubt the victim’s credibility and find her blameworthy. Sexual history of the victim also does not impact the assessment of the defendant
36
In simulation research, when were the participants more convinced by expert’s testimony?
When experts had high credentials and a complex testimony
37
How many lies do the average north American’s tell a day?
1-2
38
When will behavioural cues to deception likely not be present?
If liar is not excited, scared or guilty, or if lie is easy to fabricate
39
Can you detect lying by focusing on eye contact?
The number one stereotype is that liars avoid eye contact but there is no scientific evidence to support that eye behaviours are a reliable way to detect it
40
Is it easy to detect a liar?
No, people are accurate 55% of the time, police are accurate 55.5% of the time
41
Can you detect a liar by fidgeting?
No, fidgeting is unrelated
42
What are verbal indicators of deception?
Liars tend to speak in a higher pitched voice than those telling the truth
43
What are three somatic disorders?
1) Malingering
2) Factitious disorder
3) Factitious disorder imposed on another
44
What is intentionally faking psychological or physical symptoms for some type of external gain?
Malingering
45
What type of somatic disorder would involve seeking hospital admission to obtain food and room?
Malingering
46
When does malingering occur?
When there is perceived adverbial context, personal stakes are very high, no other viable alternatives
47
What are some cues of malingered psychosis?
Understandable motive for committing crime, presence of a partner in the crime, current crime fits pattern of previous criminal activity, suspicious hallucinations and delusions, marked discrepancies in interview vs non interview Behavior, sudden emergence of psychotic symptoms to explain criminal act, absence of any subtle signs of psychosis
48
What does the interview based method for detecting malingered psychosis involve?
172 items, 8 scales that represent strategies a person might employ when malingering (rare symptoms that true patients endorse infrequently)
49
What disorder involves a person’s symptoms under voluntary control but person has no obvious reason for voluntarily producing the symptom?
Factitious disorder
50
When a person produces the symptoms in another member of the family what is Factitious disorder called?
Factitious disorder imposed on another
51
What is a device for recording an individual’s automatic nervous system responses?
Polygraph technique
52
What did the Floyd Fay case show about polygraphs?
Results don’t always show the truth
53
What are the applications of a polygraph?
Police may use the polygraph to resolve a case, verify a crime has occurred, insurance companies use them to verify claims, and in the US they use them to assess and monitor sex offenders
54
What is a potential source of inaccuracy with the polygraph?
Doesn’t measure lying, only measures emotional reactivity
55
What are the two techniques used with polygraphs?
1) Comparison Question Test
| 2) Concealed Information Test
56
What does the comparison question test include?
Irrelevant questions that are unrelated to the crime, relevant questions concerning the crime being investigated and comparison questions concerning the person’s honesty and past history to the event being investigated
57
What does the concealed information test include?
Doesn’t detect deception, seeks to determine whether the suspect knows details about the crime that only the person who committed the crime would know, multiple choice format. The idea is that individuals will react more strongly to information they recognize
58
What are problems with the polygraph?
- Interpretation or physiological responses to decide on credibility, examiner may simply look at the chart and make conclusions.
- creation of control questions
59
What is the polygraph accuracy?
84%-94% of guilty subjects judged to be lying
55%-78% of innocent subjects judged to be truthful
9%-24% innocent subjects were falsely identified as guilty
BIASED AGAINST TRUTHFUL SUBJECTS
60
How can you beat the polygraph?
Countermeasures (physical - biting tongue, mental - count backwards from 200 by 7)
Results were that 50% of guilty subjects beat the polygraph test
61
What is Lykken’s critique of the polygraph?
Polygraph is stressful and intrusive, examiners use deceit to convince the subject that it’s inaccurate, biased against truthful subjects
62
What is the polygraph’s current legal status in Canada?
Limited to the police investigation stage in formulating suspects
63
What is involved in the new brain-based deception research?
Event-related brain potentials, fMRIs
64
What brain based deception research measures brain activity in the cerebral cortex by using electrodes, records electrical patterns related to presentation of a stimulus and is resistant to manipulation
Event-related brain potentials
65
What brain based deception research measures cerebral blood flow and focuses on areas of the brain associated with deception?
fMRI
66
What are some of the roles of memory?
- Perception/attention stage
- encoding
- short term memory
- long term memory
- storage-retrieval
67
Is memory like a videotape?
No
68
Does the wording of a question influence an eyewitness response?
Yes
69
Does greater stress improve eyewitness memory?
No
70
Does the race of an eye witness and perpetrator have an impact on ID accuracy?
Yes
71
Does the presence of a weapon have an impact on eyewitness’ memory?
Yes
72
In the 1979 car experiment by Elizabeth Loftus, what did results find?
When the word “smashed” was used, witnesses said car was going faster
73
What role does recall memory play in forensic psychology?
Reporting details of a previously witnessed event or person
74
What memory is involved in determine whether a previously seen item or person is the same as what is currently being viewed?
Recognition memory
75
What did Justice Peter De C. Cory say about eyewitnesses?
Trial judges need to stress that Tragedies have occurred as a result of mistakes made by honest, right-thinking eyewitnesses. The vast majority of wrongful convictions of innocent persons arise as a result of faulty eyewitness ID
76
What happened in the mistaken conviction of Thomas Sophonow?
Charged with murder in Winnipeg and underwent three trials, and the case hinged on eyewitness testimony of John Doerksen. John Doerksen’s poor memory and ill-advised police procedures led to a wrongful conviction
77
What were some problems with interviewing eyewitnesses?
Police often interrupted witness when providing open-ended recall report, they used very short, specific questions, and asked questions in a predetermined or random order that was inconsistent with information witnesses were providing at the time
78
What is memory conformity?
When what one witness reports influences what another witness reports
79
What can the misinformation effect be triggered by?
Leading questions
80
What occurs when incorrect information is provided because witness guesses what the officer or experimenter wants the response to be?
Misinformation acceptance hypothesis
81
What occurs when a witness has two memories, original and misinformation, and cannot remember where each memory originated?
Misattribution hypothesis
82
What happens when original memory is replaced with the new incorrect information?
Memory impairment hypothesis
83
How does misinformation happen in real life?
- someone makes assumptions about what occurred or what was witnessed
- witnesses overhear one another’s statements
- incorporating an erroneous detail form a previous witnesses interview
84
What is a trance like state characterized by extreme suggestibility/relaxation and heightened imagination?
Hypnosis
85
What state are you in when fully conscious but tune out most of the stimuli around you?
Hypnosis
86
What techniques are used in hypnosis to help witnesses remember crime details?
Age regression and television technique
87
Is hypnosis beneficial in crime investigations?
Some reviews show that they are and some don’t
88
What does the court say about hypnosis?
They don’t typically allow information gained through hypnosis to be evidence, and hypnotically refreshed memories are admitted on a case-to-case basis
89
What factors that a judge should consider about hypnosis were established by R.V. Taillefer and Duguay?
- Competence of the expert
- reliability of hypnosis as a technique and safeguards required
- whether the interview conditions met the safeguards
90
Why was the cognitive interview developed?
Because of concerns with hypnosis to retrieve memories (based on principles of memory storage and retrieval)
91
What are the 4 elements of a cognitive interview?
1) recreate the crime scene mentally
2) exhaustive
3) adopt a different perspective
4) recall the events in reverse order
92
What does the enhanced cognitive interview include?
Use social dynamics and memory retrieval principles
- rapport building
- supportive interviewer Behavior
- transfer of control
- focused retrieval
- witness-compatible questioning
93
What are common errors with a lineup?
- Imply presence of the offender
- pressure witness to make a choice
- ask witness about specific person
- encourage a loose recognition threshold
- leak the officer’s hunch
- tell the eyewitness that the selection was “correct”
94
What are 4 operational rules to reduce witness errors?
1) person conducting the line-up should be unaware of the suspect’s identity
2) witnesses should be told that the perpetrator may not be present
3) suspect should not stand out as being different from other distractors
4) statement of confidence should be taken from witness prior to feedback
95
What were some variables found in research on recognition memory?
Age - older adults make fewer correct IDs
| Race - cross-race effect - one remembers faces of their own race better than another race
96
What occurs when a witness’ attention is focused on the perpetrator’s weapon rather than on the perpetrator?
Emotional arousal decreases and attentional capacity decreases
97
What do expert testimony’s say about eyewitnesses?
They don’t agree on reliability of research finding and whether we can apply findings to the real world
98
Do young children remember what they witness?
Yes
99
Do people forget child abuse?
Yes
100
Is child abuse rare?
No
101
Are anatomically correct dolls a good way of determining if a young child has been sexually abused?
Yes they can be
102
Do children usually tell someone if they’re being abused?
No
103
Do the same types of lineup procedures that work for adults work for children?
No
104
Do the same types of interview procedures that work for adults work for children?
No
105
When is child abuse traced back to?
Salem witch trials in 1962. The children told falsehoods and claimed that the defendants performed supernatural feats. Defendants were executed for witchcraft and some children recanted statements. This resulted in skepticism over children’s testimonies for 300 years
106
What happened with the 1970’s flurry of research on children’s testimonies?
Psychological testimony was more acceptable in court room, social scientists interested in research on real world problems, studies adult eyewitness testimony increasing, legal community interested in child witnesses
107
What were emerging concerns with the psychology of child sexual assault victims?
- 1/8 of males and 1/4 of females report having been sexually assaulted in childhood
- touching of genitals is most common form of substantiated child sexual abuse
- 93% of alleged CSA perpetrators are related to their child victims (usually parents)
108
In the Martensville case, what happened that led to rumours of satanism and wrongful convictions?
Suggestive interviewing techniques with the children
109
What is the role of a psychologist in child victims and witnesses?
- research and assessment of sexual offenders
- evaluating the child
- assessing competency to testify
- preparing the child to testify
- testifying as an expert
110
What is the advantage of free recall in interviewing children?
Increases accuracy in children comparable to that of adults
111
What is the disadvantage of directed questioning with children?
Decreases probability of accuracy, children ages 5-9 tend to answer yes or no even if they don’t know the answer, need to use how questions
112
What are three components of interviewing techniques?
1) under optimal circumstances, children can provide detailed, accurate accounts of experiences
2) young children are more susceptible to procedures that induce false memories
3) investigators and counsellors must use no leading interview techniques with children whenever possible
113
What affects a child’s testimony?
Social compliance or pressure
| Children misinterpret where info came from
114
What is used to assess allegations by a child?
1) using anatomically detailed dolls
2) interviewing techniques
3) criterion-based content analysis technique
4) suggestions for improving procedures
115
What was introduced in the 1970’s and eventually became a preferred assessment tool?
Anatomically detailed dolls
116
What can permit abused children to reveal aspects of abuse that they wouldn’t reveal verbally by manifesting “inappropriate” sexual behaviour when playing with it?
Anatomically detailed dolls
117
What are problems with anatomically detailed dolls?
Research shows mixed results, there is no standardized method and great caution needs to be employed if they’re used
118
What are 4 guidelines when using anatomically detailed dolls?
1) dolls should not be used to make initial diagnosis of abuse
2) professionals who use dolls should be properly trained
3) investigators should be aware of interpersonal factors
4) interview should be videotaped
119
What can have problems similar to anatomically detailed dolls?
Human figure drawings
120
What are questionable procedures for interviewing potential CSA victims?
- use of suggestive questions
- implication of confirmation by other people
- use of positive and negative consequences
- repetitious questioning
- inviting speculation
121
What categories do children learn to organize stories in with narrative elaboration interview?
- participants
- settings
- actions
- conversation/affective state
- consequences
122
What type of interview involves a series of steps designed to start the interview with the least leading and directive type of questioning, then proceeds to more specific questioning forms if necessary?
Step-Wise interview
123
What analysis uses criteria to distinguish truthful from false statements made by children?
Criterion-based content analysis technique
124
What technique has 3 parts including:
1) structured interview with the child witness
2) analysis of the verbal content of the victim’s statement using (CBCA)
3) application of the statement validity checklist
Criterion-based content analysis technique
125
What are 3 suggestions made for improving interviewing procedures?
1) interviewers should talk to children in a language they understand
2) interviews should be documented
3) questioning should begin with general, open-ended questions and avoid highly leading questions
126
With the expert witnesses, can both the defence or the crown use a psychologist as an expert witness?
Yes
127
Who can the crown employ to testify about the validity of children’s memories?
Psychologist
128
Who could use an expert to testify about the suggestibility of children?
Defense
129
What are procedures that help child victims when testifying against offender?
- child sized witness chairs
- dolls/drawings to supplement testimony or closed circuit television monitor
- using screens to shield child from defendant or closed courtroom
- having support person with him or her while providing testimony
- previous statements made to a witness can be brought into court (hearsay) mom talks about child’s disclosure of abuse
130
What are 4 forms of child maltreatment?
1) physical abuse
2) sexual abuse
3) neglect/failure to provide
4) emotional maltreatment
131
What are 3 things looked at with maltreatment?
1) in need of protection
2) incidence -new cases
3) prevalence - amount of children at a specific time that were maltreated
132
What are the highest categories of child maltreatment?
Neglect and exposure to intimate partner violence
133
What are the risk factors for abuse?
Male and physical abuse:
Young maternal age, single parent status, history of childhood physical abuse, spousal assault
Female and sexual abuse:
Living in a family without a biological parent, poor relationship between parents, presence of a stepfather, poor child-parent relations
134
What are short term effects of physical abuse?
- greater perceptual-motor deficits
- lowered measured intellectual functioning
- lower academic achievement
- externalizing behavior
- mental health difficulties
135
What are 3 repercussions of CSA?
1) ranges in severity from nonviolent touching to murder
2) traumatizing event may affect the child for the rest of his or her life
3) likely to end in trauma-related symptoms (directly related to type of abuse and age of victimization among other factors)
136
What are short term effects of sexual abuse?
- behavior problems
- lowered self-esteem
- inappropriate sexuality
- symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder
- physical difficulties
137
What are long term effects of sexual abuse?
- psychiatric disorders
- dysfunctional behaviours
- neurobiological disregulation
138
What are repercussions of CSA?
Physical and cognitive brain effects, academic and social difficulties, affective and somatic disturbances, continually high stress levels and difficulty controlling anger, antisocial behaviour and delinquency.
Later in life - mental health issues, substance abuse and suicide
Forensic Psych
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