Criminal Profiling

Advanced Criminal Profiling Workshop

2014-04-19T18:53:00.006-07:00

Advanced Criminal Profiling: Investigative and Forensic Applications

Location:

EDUCATION SERVICE CENTER – REGION 19

6611 Boeing Drive

El Paso, Texas

Instructors:
Stan Crowder, PhD and Brent Turvey, PhD

Dates:

December 15-18, 2014; 8am - 5:30pm, (M-Th)
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Objective

The objective of this four (4) day course is to provide advanced instruction in the application of evidence based criminal profiling techniques (aka Behavioral Evidence Analysis) to unsolved criminal cases, with the anticipation of eventual courtroom testimony. Students will gain experience examining case material, interpreting behavioral evidence, and preparing written investigative and forensic reports.

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Goals

1. Students will bring their own active or otherwise unresolved cases to the course and apply what they learn in order to complete a written threshold assessment or criminal profile. (Note: A case will be provided to those students unable to bring their own. Advanced instructor notification required.)

2. Students will be expected to complete a written exam on the final day of the course (the ABP Board Examination, which is a comprehensive examination covering advanced forensic science, victimology, crime scene analysis, and offender character inference issues).

3. Successful completion of either written assessment and the exam will meet related requirements as described in the IAFC Criminal Profiling Certification Act. Those students that otherwise meet additional CPCA requirements will be eligible for IAFC Certification.

Students will be provided with a workbook containing an explanation of key concepts, a glossary of key terms and written forms for use in the completion of daily assignments. Students will be allowed to work in groups, on a single case, of no greater than three.

The course text is Criminal Profiling, 4th ed. It can be purchased at Amazon.com.

Registration Costs & Information

- Students and IAFC Members:
$275.00
- Attorney General/ Law Enforcement/ Military (register as students):
$275.00

- Non-Student/ Non-IAFC Member (U.S.):
$475.00

Click above links to register online, or contact bturvey@forensic-science.com for other rates that may apply.
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COURSE OUTLINE

Day 1 - Applied Crime Scene Investigation and Forensic Victimology

Crime Scene Investigation

-Investigator Reports

-Witness statements

-Medico-legal reports (e.g., autopsy)

-Toxicology report

-Crime lab reports (e.g., firearms, bloodstains, DNA)

-Photos

Goal 1 - Establish threshold reconstruction of key events

Goal 2 - Establish what has been collected and tested

Goal 3 - Establish what is missing investigatively and forensically

Forensic Victimology

-Investigator Reports

-Witness statements

-Medico-legal reports (e.g., autopsy)

-Toxicology report

-Crime lab reports (e.g., firearms, bloodstains, DNA)

-Photos

Goal 1 - Establish victim profile

Goal 2 - Establish victims lifestyle exposure

Goal 3 - Establish victim incident / situational exposure

Day 2 - Applied Crime Scene Analysis

Inputs

-Investigator Reports

-Witness statements

-Medico-legal reports (e.g., autopsy)

-Toxicology report

-Crime lab reports (e.g., firearms, bloodstains, DNA)

-Photos

Goal 1 - Establish offender modus operandi behavior

Goal 2 - Establish offender signature behavior

Day 3 - Applied Offender Profiling

Inputs

- Results of Crime Scene Investigation

- Results of Forensic Victimological Analysis

- Results of Crime Analysis

Goal 1 - Establish primary/ secondary offender motives

Goal 2 - Establish offender knowledge, skills, and abilities re offense

Goal 3 - Establish offender knowledge, skills, and abilities re victim

Goal 4 - Establish offender knowledge, skills, and abilities re crime scene(s)

Day 4 - Assessments

1. Complete written Threshold Assessment or Criminal Profile (morning)

2. Complete Certification Exam (afternoon)

Criminal Profiling: Behavioral Evidence Analysis

2013-07-05T15:47:00.001-07:00

Excerpt from: Criminal Profiling: Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 4th Ed., by Brent E. Turvey, PhD.

Behavioral Evidence Analysis: Goals and Purpose
Perhaps the most common misconception about criminal profiling is that its main purpose is to achieve a static, inflexible result, not unlike a clinical diagnosis. The result is then presumably applied to a crime or series of crimes and can then be used to suggest precisely whodunit. This is evidenced by the persistent yet inaccurate belief that there is an average psychological or behavioral pattern or profile that describes a typical serial murderer, a typical rapist, or even a typical crime scene.

This clinical view of profiling regards clusters of offender behavior, and subsequent penal classifications, as potential mental health disorders that can be diagnosed for the purposes of recommending treatment or delineating cause. It is a highly desirable position to take if one is a mental health practitioner. However, the goals of offender assessment and treatment are unrelated to the goals of criminal profiling. Clinicians have treatment goals—profilers have explicit investigative and forensic goals.

Humans learn, change, and grow. Humans are also affected by time, place, and each other. Therefore a deductively rendered criminal profile cannot be regarded as a static, fixed result that will hold true for all time. It must evolve and must become more refined as it is checked against new evidence and related cases over time. That is to say, when a new offense is committed, when a new attack occurs or a new body is located, and when new evidence is collected and analyzed, the integrity of the criminal profile must be reassessed.

A deductively rendered profile learns. New information is not used to support the old profile, or to pigeonhole the offender, or to rationalize investigative assumptions. It is used to make a more complete and more accurate profile of the offender responsible for the crime(s) at hand.

Behavioral evidence analysis, therefore, should be viewed not as a process aimed at a fixed result, but as an ongoing, dynamic, critical, analytical process that examines offender behavior as it changes over time. It is a criminological effort, not a clinical one.

The first responsibility of the criminal profiler, as opposed to the treatment-oriented clinician, is fact finding in a criminal investigation for the purpose of serving justice.

Note: It is worth noting that the process of criminal investigation starts from the moment that law enforcement responds to a crime scene, and does not end until that case is completely out of the criminal justice system. For some cases, especially those involving homicide, this may never happen. It must also be noted that there are criminal investigators working hard for both sides of the courtroom in any legal proceedings, civil or criminal.

The profiler serves the justice system. The clinician serves the client/patient. This is an important difference in terms of ethical obligations when considering the potential goals and purposes of behavioral evidence analysis.

With that onus in mind, a criminal investigation of any kind should start with the assumption that every human on the planet is a suspect. That is to say, the suspect set is universal. One of the purposes of BEA is to assist an investigation, at any phase, in moving from that universal set of suspect characteristics to a more discrete set of suspect characteristics. It cannot typically point to a specific person, or individuate one suspect from all others. It can, however, give insight into the general characteristics of the offender(s) responsible.

This type of insight can be used to educate an investigative effort, as well as attorneys, judges, and juries in a forensic context (e.g., criminal proceedings, civil proceedings, and public hearings).

Behavioral Evidence Analysis: Contexts

Behavioral evidence analysis has two separate but equal contexts, divided not by the method that is employed to arrive at conclusions, but rather by their divergent goals and priorities. Goals and priorities are dictated by a necessity that is dependent upon when, in a given case, a profiler’s skills are requested. The two time frames typically include the investigative phase, before a suspect has been arrested (or before a defendant is taken to court with a lawsuit), and and the trial phase, while a suspect is being tried for a crime (or put on trial for damages).

The investigative phase of a criminal case gets a lot of the media attention and is the primary focus of popular fiction on the subject of criminal profiling. When we think of a criminal profiler, we have been conditioned to think of unsolved serial murder cases, and of remote locations where teams of forensic scientists work to recover decaying human remains. Profilers are often characterized as being socially alienated individuals, deeply troubled by their own selfless insights into the minds of the unknown offenders that they are hunting.

This view presented by fiction and the media not only is completely skewed but also is only the first half of the equation.

The trial phase is the second half of the equation, and has received much less explicit attention not only in the media but in the published literature. Although it is equally important, it often lacks the romance and drama associated with high-profile serial cases, making it less marketable.

Investigative Phase
The investigative phase involves behavioral evidence analysis of the patterns of unknown perpetrators of known crimes. Criminal profilers tend to be called in to extremely violent, sexual and/or predatory cases when witness testimony, confessions, and/or physical evidence have not been enough to move the investigation forward. The decision to call a profiler into an investigation is typically reactive, with agencies waiting months or even years (if at all) due to a lack of access to a profiler, or to a lack of understanding of what criminal profiling is and how it can aid an investigation.

Primary Goals

-Evaluating the nature and value of forensic and behavioral evidence in a particular crime or series of related crimes;

- Reducing the viable suspect pool in a criminal investigation;

- Prioritizing the investigation into remaining suspects;

- Linkage of potentially related crimes by identifying crime scene indicators and behavior patterns (i.e., modus operandi and signature);

- Assessment of the potential for escalation of nuisance criminal behavior to more serious or more violent crimes (i.e., harassment, stalking, voyeurism);

- Providing investigators with investigatively relevant leads and strategies;

- Helping keep the overall investigation on track and undistracted by offering fresh and unbiased insights;

- Developing communication, interview, or interrogation strategies when dealing with suspects

Trial Phase
The trial phase of criminal profiling involves behavioral evidence analysis of known crimes for which there is a suspect or a defendant (sometimes a convicted defendant). It takes place in the preparation for hearings, trials, and post-conviction proceedings. Guilt, penalty, and appeal phases of trial are all appropriate times to use profiling techniques, depending on the evidence at issue.

Primary Goals

- Evaluating the nature and value of forensic and behavioral evidence to a particular crime or series of related crimes;

- Helping to develop insight into offender fantasy and motivations;

- Developing insight into offender motive and intent before, during, and after the commission of a crime (i.e., levels of planning, evidence of remorse, precautionary acts, etc.);

- Linkage of potentially related crimes by identifying crime scene indicators and behavior patterns (i.e., modus operandi and signature)

Brent E. Turvey, MS - Forensic Science; PhD - Criminology

Author of:

Turvey, B. (2011) Criminal Profiling, 4th Ed., London: Elsevier Science

Turvey B. (2013) Forensic Fraud, San Diego: Elsevier Science
http://forensicfraud.blogspot.com

Savino, J. & Turvey, B. (2011) Rape Investigation Handbook, 2nd Ed., San Diego: Elsevier Science
http://forensicvictimology.blogspot.com/

IAFC Board of Directors: Criminal Profiling Professional Certification Act ratified

2013-06-27T00:04:00.002-07:00

Modern criminal profiling owes itself to a diverse history. Researchers have determined that is grounded in the study of crime and criminal behavior (criminology); the study of mental health and illness (psychology and psychiatry); and the examination of physical evidence (the forensic sciences). However, despite its many forms, it has always involved the inference of criminal characteristics for investigative and judicial purposes.

One of the first published texts that

offered explicit instruction on the

subject and practice of profiling

criminal behavior is the Malleus

Maleficarum.

The reasoning used to support a given profile, however, has not always been consistent. It has ranged from a basis in statistical argumentation, to examining specific criminal behaviors, to subjective intuitive opinions based on personal belief and experience. In other words, profiling methods have only ever been as informed and accurate as the professionals behind them.

The variety of profiling methods used around the world, across agencies and analysts, has resulted in a state of professional confusion. Profilers are often poorly educated in the forensic and behavioral sciences (if at all), and consequently they are confused about who they are and where they fit within the criminal justice system. Other criminal justice professionals recognize and are confused about the same things, resulting in more than a little skepticism and even animosity. The media adds to myth by portraying profilers as supercops; and the general public often views profilers as a more specialized form of psychic. Ultimately, many inept and uneducated profilers are benefiting from this lack of professional cohesion and the ignorant misperceptions it allows to persist - and the justice system is being duped.

If criminal profilers are to be taken seriously in the twenty-first century, as professional operatives with substantive contributions to offer the justice system, then there are areas in which reforms need to be made. Education and training must be the first.

The ABP / IAFC

The IAFC

In 1998, The Academy of Behavioral Profiling (ABP) was formed to address this concern. It’s first meeting was held in March of 1999, in Monterey, California. In 2009, the ABP became The International Association of Forensic Criminologists (IAFC). Those who participate in this organization are determined to build something meaningful and legitimate within the profiling community. A multi-disciplinary effort comprised of forensic, behavioral, and investigative professionals, it has developed the first professional code of ethics for criminal profilers, the first written criminal profiling guidelines, and the first profiling general knowledge exam (PGKE).

The CPPCA

Earlier this month, the IAFC also passed the Criminal Profiler Professional Certification Act (CPPCA) of 2013. It is based on the body of literature developed by IAFC members since 1999, and is intended to facilitate training integrity across agencies and jurisdictions.

As explained by Det. John J. Baeza, a retired sex crimes investigator formerly with the NYPD’s Manhattan Special Victim Squad, and also a founding member of the ABP: “The new certification act developed and ratified by the IAFC is a much needed and welcome development in the field of Forensic Criminology. Upon completing the process successfully, IAFC members will be conferred by the ABP Board of Examiners with the designation of Diplomate-ABP, the highest credential for criminal profilers within the organization, the United States, and internationally.”

Criminal Profiling, 4th Ed.

Another founding member is Brent Turvey. He holds an MS in Forensic Science, a PhD in Criminology, and is the author of Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, currently in its 4th edition. He makes the following observations: “From news coverage of major cases to court proceedings, criminal profilers can be found giving their opinions. Often these are accepted based on trust and even a little ignorance, without any real scrutiny of professional credentials. But a close look at even those from federal agencies reveals an absence of relevant education. Profilers can often be found with no formal education, online degrees from diploma mills, or degrees in subjects such as music and animal physiology. Many will outright lie about their degrees and experience. Frankly, it’s professionally embarrassing, or at least it should be.” The CPPCA, Dr. Turvey argues, is necessary to cleave the qualified professional from those without actual credentials, those who simply hold a job title, and those who perform research without doing any casework.

Dr. Shawn Mikulay, a PhD level psychologist and the current Vice-President of the IAFC, is in agreement. He warns that: “As the field of forensic criminology and criminal profiling becomes increasingly accepted by the courts, it is critical a standard be put forth to identify those individuals who have been appropriately trained, educated, and mentored. With an increasing awareness of wrongful conviction, practitioners need to demonstrate that they have the ability to do their job competently. They also need to demonstrate that they understand and maintain the ethical standards to do it correctly.” The CPPA, Dr. Mikulay argues, is a major step towards accomplishing this.

Dr. Stan Crowder, a retired U.S. Army Military Police Colonel and former Chief of Investigations for the Inspector General of Georgia, is the current President of the IAFC. He made the following statement: “The Diplomate status afforded to IAFC members by the CPPA is designed to reveal the knowledge, skills, and abilities of hard working, evidence-based investigators. Not only does the credential require higher education, experience, and tenacity of purpose, it requires proofs of ability, an understanding of the scientific method, and a peer-reviewed process that rivals intensive academic gauntlets.” Dr. Crowder, unimpressed with the phony credentials and weak training requirements that mark many of those in government service, went on to observe: “The bottom line is: this credential cannot be purchased; it must be earned via intensive learning, proven ability, and peer approved reviews.”

For More Info...

The Diplomate credential ratified in Criminal Profiler Professional Certification Act is exclusively available to members of the IAFC. The entire Act can be found online at: http://profiling.org/CPPCA-2013.pdf. Currently their are profilers hard at work towards earning this credential in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Portugal.

For more information, visit The International Association of Forensic Criminologists website at: www.profiling.org.

ECC - Crime Scene Analysis & Criminal Profiling Seminar, May 2013

2013-05-15T12:45:00.002-07:00

Forensic Solutions, LLC and the International Association of Forensic Criminologists are pleased to sponsor this two day training event, in conjunction with Elgin Community College, next week.

This is a two (2) day session where students will learn theory and practice through the structured examination of case study material. The first day will involve the theory and practice of an holistic approach to crime reconstruction. The second day will involve the theory and practice of crime scene analysis. Each day will culminate in group work with actual case material.

This workshop is open to the public, and is strongly recommended for students and professionals who are working or studying in areas related to:

Criminology

Criminal Investigation

Criminal Justice

Forensic Nursing

Forensic Science

Law Enforcement

Legal studies

Mental Health/ Counseling

Psychology

Sociology

Women's Studies
Victimology

REGISTER NOW!

LOCATION
Elgin Community College
B-182
1700 Spartan Drive
Elgin, Illinois 60134

REGISTRATION COSTS
ECC Students:
$35 USD

Non-ECC Students:
$60 USD

Law Enforcement/
Government:
$95 USD

Non-Student/ Public:
$115 USD

SEMINAR DATES/ TIMES
May 23-24, 2013
9:00AM - 5:00PM Daily

CONTACT
Brent Turvey, PhD
Email: bturvey@forensic-science.comPhone: 907-738-5121

Shawn Mikulay, PhD
Email: smikulay@elgin.edu
Phone: 847-214-7963

REGISTRATION
Those interested in registering for this workshop may pay by check, money order, or Visa/ MC. ECC students can concurrently enroll in PSY220.100 for course credit. Seehttp://accessecc.elgin.edu or contact Shawn Mikulay (smikulay@elgin.edu) for more information.

Check or Money Order
Make all checks or international money orders payable to Forensic Solutions, LLC in US Dollars. Also, provide your name, employment/ student information, and contact information including phone and email so that we can contact you and send updates.

Mail to:
ECC Seminar c/o
Forensic Solutions, LLC
P.O. Box 2175
Sitka, Alaska 99835

Visa/ MC
Click on the appropriate link below.

ECC Students:                 $35 USD REGISTER NOW!

Non-ECC Students:                       $60 USD REGISTER NOW!

Law Enforcement/ Government: $95 USD REGISTER NOW!

Non-Student/ Public:                     $115 USD REGISTER NOW!

Web Page: http://www.forensic-science.com/ECC_Seminar_2013.html

INSTRUCTORS

Brent E. Turvey, Ph.D.
Forensic Scientist/ Criminal Profiler

Brent E. Turvey holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, with an emphasis on Forensic Psychology, and an additional Bachelor of Science in History. He went on to receive his Masters of Science in Forensic Science after studying at the University of New Haven, in West Haven, Connecticut. He also holds a Ph.D. in Criminology from Bond University.

Since graduating in 1996, Brent has consulted with many government agencies, law enforcement agencies, and private attorneys in the United States, Australia, China, Canada, Barbados, Korea and Scotland on a range of rapes, homicides, and serial/ multiple rape/ death cases, as a forensic scientist and criminal profiler. This includes cases under investigation, as well as those going to trial. He has also been court qualified as a forensic expert in the areas of criminal profiling, forensic science, victimology, and crime reconstruction, providing expert examinations and courtroom testimony in legal jurisdictions throughout the United states for the last 17 years.

He is the author of Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 1st, 2nd , 3rd, and 4th Ed. (1999, 2002, 2008, 2011); and co-author of Rape Investigation Handbook, 1st and 2nd Ed. (2004, 2011); Crime Reconstruction, 1st and 2nd Ed. (2006, 2011); and Forensic Victimology (2009) - all with Elsevier Science.

Brent is currently a full partner, Forensic Scientist, Criminal Profiler, and Instructor with Forensic Solutions, LLC (http://www.forensic-science.com), as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Justice Studies at Oklahoma City University. He is also the Secretary of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling, as well as a member of their board of directors.

Shawn Mikulay, PhD
Professor of Psychology

Dr. Shawn Mikulay (pictured right) is a Professor of Psychology at Elgin Community College in Elgin, Illinois where he teaches coursework in general, forensic, developmental, and experimental psychology, human sexuality, and criminal profiling. Dr. Mikulay has been with Elgin Community College since 1995.

Dr. Mikulay received his Doctorate of Philosophy in Psychology from Northern Illinois University (1998). He received his Master of Arts in Psychology (1995) and Master of Science in Industrial Management (1996). During graduate school, he taught as an adjunct instructor at Concordia University, Kishwaukee College, Waubonsee Community College, and Elgin Community College.

His research has been published in Genetic, Social, & General Psychology Monographs, Educational & Psychological Measurement, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

He is currently the vice-president of the International Association of Forensic Criminologists.

Dr. Mikulay's areas of research and expertise include workplace deviance, forensic victimology, behavioral analysis, offender modus operandi, and offender signature behavior.

Devil’s Deal: (Mis)Understanding the Alford Pleas from the ‘West Memphis 3’

2011-08-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

In 1994, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. (known as the West Memphis 3), were convicted of murdering three 8-year-old boys: Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers. Damien, tried separately from the other two defendants, received the death penalty. Jessie received life plus 20 years and Jason received life. Throughout the trials, they maintained their absolute innocence.

However, this was not a typical investigation and prosecution. There was sparse funding for the defense during the original trials, and the evidence against the defendants was not just circumstantial but deeply flawed. Other compounding factors included: ignorant/ untrained law enforcement investigators, a phony set of false confessions achieved by dubious means and immediately recanted, inflammatory pretrial publicity against the defendants regarding phony and contrived evidence of satanic rituals, a hostile community (with a lack of venue change), and inappropriately close relationships between prosecutors, the trial judge, and defense attorneys. To say nothing of the observation that the defense attorneys were not truly murder experienced or death qualified to the level that one would expect (if at all).

Disclosure

This author became involved in the case during post-conviction review. By a twist of fate, I was the first forensic scientist to be hired by the defense to examine the evidence, evaluate the investigation, and reconstruct the crime – ultimately going so far as to offer a profile of the offender responsible (in response to under-informed and generally inaccurate profile prepared by the FBI’s BAU, which was at the time supervised by John Douglas). I found some pertinent things that had been missed and pointed the defense in some important new directions. This won me few friends in Arkansas, where the West Memphis Police still keep a special fire of hatred alive for me (and others that have exposed their lack of competence and professionalism, I expect). This, however, comes with working the evidence objectively instead of being governed by ones emotions. And it’s why forensic experts, with no dog in the fight, are necessary in every legal proceeding that requires evidence interpretation.

In late October of 1998, I testified under oath to my findings regarding the biased and inept investigation conducted by the police, the flawed conclusions that had been reached about the evidence, and uninformed theories of the case that had been allowed to be put before the jury without competent refutation. This along with other forensic experts for the defense (a forensic pathologist and a forensic Odontologist), as part of a Rule 37 hearing to establish that the West Memphis 3 had suffered from Ineffective Assistance of Counsel (IAC), and therefore should be given a new trial with more adequate representation.

This attempt at a new trial quickly failed. None of us on the ground in West Memphis back in 1998 were surprised. The same judge who appointed defense attorneys, denied funding, and presided over the original trials (David Burnett), also made a point of presiding over every post-conviction hearing. In grading the quality of his own work, it was a foregone conclusion that Judge Burnett would never agree that he had acted improperly, denied vital funding to the defense, or appointed unqualified defense attorneys to represent the defendants.

It’s also worth noting that this 1998 post-conviction hearing, and the events leading up to it, were partially documented in the second of two documentary films about the case by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky – Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (both films are being re-aired by HBO next week [August 29^th and 30^th, 2011, respectivel], and third film is soon to be released). An overview of the case and the evidence can be found at wm3.org and Salon.com. My report in the case was also published in the first edition of my textbook, Criminal Profiling, now it it’s 4th edition.

New Evidence, New Judge, and a Devil’s Deal

After 10 years of investigation, with multiple state’s witnesses having recanted, with new DNA testing that points to other suspects, and with a completely new legal team at work, the West Memphis 3 were set free on August 19, 2011. The circumstances that lead up to their release, and the devil’s deal that was struck with prosecutors to gain their freedom, were a sudden shock to the system for all of those caught unprepared. Myself included.

This deal came about because a new judge, David Laser, was presiding over a hearing set for this coming December regarding all of the newly discovered evidence in the case. Scott Ellington (pictured), prosecuting attorney for the 2nd Judicial District, has made clear that he believes Judge Laser would have overturned the convictions and granted the West Memphis 3 new trials. Moreover, that those trials would likely result in acquittals for all of the defendants (Jared, 2011). The fear of this eventuality, and the cost of wrongful conviction lawsuits, weighed heavily in the decision to make a plea deal before the December hearing, Ellington explained (Jared, 2011).

The devil’s deal was this: all three defendants would have their convictions vacated so long as they each agreed to immediately enter an “Alford Plea”, at which point they would be sentenced to time served and released after 18 years of imprisonment.

This unorthodox development has many asking an important question – what’s an Alford Plea? It also has some ignoring this difficult legal concept and merely stating that the West Memphis 3 have pleaded guilty in exchange for release. Makes for a better sound-byte, though wholly misleading. Having worked as a forensic scientist and testified in courtrooms around the United States for the last 15 years, I’ve encountered them only a few times. Each use was different. Some discussion is warranted, without which it is difficult to understand the kind of justice that has been achieved in this case, if any.

Alford Plea

A useful history of the Alford plea is offered in Redlich and Ozdogru (2009; pp.468-469):

In brief, Alford pleas allow defendants who do not wish to risk their fates at trial to plead guilty while simultaneously asserting their innocence.

In 1963, Henry C. Alford was accused of first-degree murder in North Carolina. Alford was an African American man in the South at the height of the civil rights movement. His lawyer, who was just a few years out of law school at the time, recently stated it was a case fraught with racial overtones (Barksdale, 2007).

Alford went to visit a prostitute at a drink house and allegedly got into a fight with Nathaniel Young. Young was later killed from a shotgun blast. Despite Alford’s claims of innocence, there was seemingly strong evidence of his guilt. Specifically, although there was no eyewitness to the crime, there were witnesses who claimed that shortly before the murder, Alford returned home to get his gun, stated he was going to kill the victim, and then upon returning home, stated that he carried out the killing. Alford also had a lengthy criminal history, including a prior conviction for murder.

At his arraignment, Alford was expected to plead guilty but then testified that he did not kill Young and was pleading guilty only to avoid the death penalty. Specifically, Alford stated, ‘‘I pleaded guilty on second degree murder because they said there is too much evidence, but I ain’t shot no man, but I take the fault for the other man. We never had an argument in our life and I just pleaded guilty because they said if I didn’t they would gas me for it, and that is all.’’

After some discussion that Alford indeed spoke with his attorney and family members about his decision to plead and that he had been informed of his rights, the following exchange occurred between Alford and his attorney:

Attorney: ‘‘And you authorized me to tender a plea of guilty to second degree murder before the court?’’

Alford: ‘‘Yes, sir.’’

Attorney: ‘‘And in doing that, that you have again affirmed your decision on that point?’’

Alford: ‘‘Well, I’m still pleading that you all got me to plead guilty. I plead the other way, circumstantial evidence; that the jury will prosecute me on - on the second. You told me to plead guilty, right. I don’t - I’m not guilty but I plead guilty.’’

According to published news reports at the time, Alford was unable to read or write (Barksdale, 2007). Despite his claims of innocence, the trial judge allowed Alford to enter a guilty plea and sentenced him to the maximum 30 years for second degree murder. Alford then repeatedly sought relief. Alford’s conviction was eventually overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but then re-affirmed in the now famous Supreme Court decision, North Carolina v. Alford, U.S. 400 25 (1970). In this six to three decision, the court recognized that while there are usually two components of pleading guilty—the waiver of the right to a trial and the admission of guilt—the latter is not a constitutional requisite to imposing a criminal sanction. In his dissent, Justice Brennan remarked that Alford was ‘‘so gripped by fear of the death penalty that his decision to plead guilty was not voluntary but was the product of duress as much so as choice reflecting physical coercion’’ (p. 40). As a result of this landmark decision, defendants can now enter ‘‘Alford pleas’’ (sometimes called ‘‘best-interest pleas’’ or, in New York, Serrano pleas) when they claim to be innocent but perceive their chances for acquittal at trial to be too much of a risk. Alford died in prison in 1975.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in North Carolina v. Alford (1970): "An individual accused of crime may voluntarily, knowingly, and understandingly consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit his participation in the acts constituting the crime." The Alford plea is intended as a unique sub-class of guilty plea, where a defendant maintains their innocence while simultaneously admitting that the state might be able to convict them at trial. In doing so, the defendant accepts the penalties associated with an admission of guilt while declaring their innocence. In other words, “pleading guilty without admitting factual guilt,” (Gooch, 2010; p.1757). By contrast, a stronger sub-class of the guilty plea, wherein the court levies legal penalties associated with guilt and the defendant admits neither guilt nor innocence, is the nolo or no contest plea. These sub-pleas are not, by any stretch, the same as a straightforward admission of guilt, and suggesting otherwise conceals important factual realities.

It is important to recall at this point that scientific fact and legal truths are not at all the same thing, governed by very different rules and realities (Thornton and Peterson, 2002). Scientific fact refers to information and events that have been established based on a broad factual record to a reasonable degree of objective scientific certainty by scientists using the scientific method. Legal truth refers to information and events that have been established by a court ruling based on a narrow factual record—at the discretion of a judge and/or jury (Turvey et al, 2010). This is why factually innocent people can get convicted of crimes they did not commit, and the factually guilty can avoid being convicted, depending on what is presented in courtroom and how it is perceived.

A Strong Factual Basis

A distinguishing feature of the Alford Plea is the requirement of a strong factual basis for accepting the legal consequences of guilt. In other words, as explained in Natapoff (2008; p.986):

The Alford court noted that the guilty plea in that case was acceptable in part because the trial court had before it a "strong factual basis for the plea" and "telling evidence" of guilt." In other words, even where a defendant declines to invoke the adversarial process in order to contest the government's information, waiver is not enough: guilt still requires some supporting information.

The judge, in accepting an Alford Plea, is required to ensure that such a factual basis exists. As explained in Redlich and Ozdogru (2009; p.470):

In theory, courts are supposed to find a sufficient factual basis of guilt before allowing the plea. Although Alford pleas are guilty pleas, with traditional guilty pleas the admission of guilt via the plea itself or the in-court allocution serves as the factual basis. With Alford pleas, however, because the person insists on innocence, the judge must determine there is sufficient evidence of guilt in order to allow the plea. However, as Shipley (1987) argues, ‘sufficient’ was never defined, guidelines were never forthcoming, and as a result, the pleas are accepted—or not accepted—for a variety of reasons, with differential standards applied. Further, the judge often relies on a summary of the evidence provided only by the state without a similar summary provided by the defense (Shipley, 1987).

This would suggest that while the requirement exists, it is weak in practice because of the necessity of the Alford plea in making certain expedient plea deals.

Alford and the West Memphis 3

The plea deal in this case has been described as the releasing of hostages in exchange for immunity (from civil wrongful conviction lawsuits). This is an accurate analogy in my view. And questions remain as to whether an Alford plea makes sense for these defendants, under these circumstances.

From the defendants’ perspectives, the answer must be an unwavering “yes”. Any improvement in their circumstances at all is an order of magnitude greater than anything that has happened, from a legal perspective, in the past 18 years. Being released and free to live out their lives while still relatively young is a condition that I’m sure they would be unable to put a price on. It also allows them to proclaim their innocence and continue legal battles while not constrained by incarceration.

From the perspective of the prosecution, it also makes sense. It allows them to claim victory and declare the legal guilt of the defendants without admitting to any of the wrongdoing that the case is now known for. And this is where we run into problems.

Alford requires a strong factual basis for guilt to be provided by the prosecution. Given that the states key witnesses have recanted at this point, that no physical evidence connects the defendants with the crime, and that strong physical evidence suggests other suspects, this Alford requirement is not met. This is actually not my opinion, but the opinion of Scott Ellington, prosecuting attorney for the 2nd Judicial District. He made it very clear in his statement to the press that the lack of evidence and witnesses made acquittals a very real possibility – which is why he agreed to the Alford plea deal.

Scott Ellingson also made it clear that part of the reason for the plea deal was to avoid having to make massive payouts that would necessarily result from wrongful conviction lawsuits. He even started to do the math in his press conference, counting into the tens of millions. He even stated, explicitly, this decision was based on the math. This would seem to indicate a complete lack of confidence in the state’s case.

Despite acknowledging the utter absence of evidence of guilt (other than the ability to secure a conviction when the deck is stacked), and that the convictions were likely going to be overturned, Mr. Ellingson, the States’ Attorney General, and now the governor of Arkansas have all made clear that they stand behind the convictions and that no further inquiry is required. This position is at odds with the clearly stated reasons for making the deal in the first place – fear of lawsuits and cost (as so eloquently stated by Peter Jackson in his response to the verdicts: “So the West Memphis three are finally released”). And with the anticipated findings of the Judge Laser.

Without acknowledging the problems that led to the wrongful convictions of these individuals, reforms will not be possible and further harm may be done by those that have been protected by this deal. And there are many.

It is easy to understand the state’s internally conflicted positions as an example of cognitive bias reified, (as suggested in an article by UCLA Law Professor Jennifer Mnookin; see: The 'West Memphis Three' and combating cognitive biases). However, this makes their lack of logic no less acceptable. In this case, justice has indeed been negotiated; by extorting Alford pleas from the defendants in exchange for their freedom.

We should expect more from our justice system. In point of fact, we need more from our justice system. Otherwise, we teach our legal professionals and our politicians that justice can be negotiated, and that it is better to save face than admit wrong, and let actual criminals escape justice. If those responsible for this plea actually believe that they have let guilty defendants walk free, then it is an affront to justice. The same is true if they are simply making a deal to save face. In either case, it would seem that they are generally unfit for public service.

So from the perspectives of criminal justice practitioners and the general public, this agreement should be unacceptable – not just in terms of what an Alford plea legally requires, but what we require from our public servants as well. We should, as they say, consider not just what we kill with these kinds of agreements, but also what we let live.

REFERENCES

Barksdale, T. (2007) “Piedmont profile–(Not) guilty: Lawyer in case that led to Alford plea says he worried about later questions,” Winston Salem Journal; Retrieved June 5, 2007 from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-30144461_ITM.

Gooch, A. (2010) “Admitting Guilt by Professing Innocence: When Sentence Enhancements Based on Alford,” Vanderbilt Law Review, 63(6); pp.1755-1792.

Jared, G. (2011) “Prosecutor: ‘We made right call’ in WM3 case,” Paragould Daily Press, August 23.

Natapoff, A. (2008) “Deregulating Guilt: The Information Culture of the Criminal System,” Cardozo Law Review, 30(3); pp.965-1021.

North Carolina v. Alford (1970) 400 U.S. 25.

Redlich, A., and Ozdogru, A. (2009) “Alford Pleas in the Age of Innocence,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law, Vol. 27; pp.467-488.

Shipley, C. J. (1987) “The Alford plea: A necessary but unpredictable tool for the criminal defendant,” Iowa Law Review, 72, 1063–1089.

Thornton, J. and Peterson, J. (2002) “The General Assumptions and Rationale of Forensic Identification,” In: Faigman, D. L., Kaye, D. H., Saks, M. J. and Sanders, J. (Eds.) Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony, vol. 3, St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.

Turvey, B., Ferguson, C. and Petherick, W. (2010) Forensic Criminology, San Diego: Elsevier Science.

Linkage Analysis: Ruling Cites Needs For Foundational Expert Testimony

2011-08-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

Suspected serial crimes are a challenge to those involved in their investigation and prosecution – whether they involve burglary, robbery, domestic violence, sexual assault, or homicide. Referred to in some jurisdictions as “pattern crimes”, there are multiple investigative hurdles to clear when working to identify any cases that might be connected. These can include an ongoing lack of communication between and within agencies, professional rivalries, and investigative apathy or ineptitude. And of course the politics that tend to complicate and exacerbate all of these. Then there is the issue of training: on top of everything else that is working against them, investigators must have an advanced understanding of physical and behavioral evidence, in order to comprehend whether there is a sufficient amount to suggest or confirm a potential link between cases (see Savino & Turvey, 2011). None of this simple, and none of it comes without hard work.

When enough evidence has been gathered to identify cases that are linked, and then to subsequently arrest those believed to be responsible, the next hurdles are going to arise in court. There are in fact laws that govern the admissibility of multiple, prior and uncharged crimes as evidence. How the courts apply these laws will be, in part, a function of how thorough the criminal investigation has been with respect to establishing the physical and behavioral evidence across the purportedly linked cases. It will also be a function of the soundness of arguments made by attorneys on either side with respect to the strength of that linkage.

As will be discussed, among the best mechanisms for developing arguments regarding evidence of case linkage, or a lack thereof, in light of inevitable legal questions regarding admissibility, is an independent forensic examination of the evidence referred to as a linkage analysis.

The recently decided appellate case against an accused rapist (New Jersey v. Bruce Sterling, 2011), overturned in part due to improperly joined cases and an improperly admitted prior conviction, will be used to highlight these issues. In this case, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey held that prosecutors could not argue that joined cases were linked for courtroom purposes without the benefit of expert analysis and testimony.

Some background on the case law is necessary.

THE JOINING OF MULTIPLE CRIMES

Many states have laws that disallow the joining of multiple crimes charged against a defendant unless they are part of the same crime or “transaction”. In other words, defendants must be tried for each of their crimes separately unless those crimes are somehow connected together in their commission by a common scheme or plan. Joining them together is understood to create great prejudice against the defendant, and that must be avoided to allow for a clean and unbiased conviction.

As explained in Ruben (2009):

In deciding whether offenses have a sufficient factual nexus to be joined for trial, courts have considered such factors as:

• temporal proximity;

• geographical proximity;

• similarities among victims;

• whether the same evidence or witnesses will be used to prove both offenses;

• whether the offenses are similar in type or circumstance;

• whether the defendant had a similar motive to commit both offenses...

In other words, whether a similar or even distinctive modus operandi was involved in the commission of the crimes under consideration. As explained in Turvey (20011; p.334): “Modus operandi (MO) is a Latin term that means method of operating. It refers to the manner in which a crime has been committed”.

Case Example: Anthony Flye

Consider the case of Anthony Flye. He was accused of marrying a woman in 2004, engaging in an ongoing sexual relationship her daughter (who was under 14), and sexually assaulting their disabled grandmother. Subsequent to Mr. Flye’s arrest in February of 2008, he escaped from a hospital bathroom while in the custody of sheriff's deputies, but was later recaptured (O’Connor, 2010). As explained in Pateakos (2009):

Accused rapist Anthony Flye’s defense attorneys won a motion Tuesday that will allow Flye to have three separate trials for his charges.

Flye, of 18 Rowley St. in Swansea and 9 Brinda Lane of Nantucket, is currently being held at the Plymouth House of Correction on $1 million bail while facing charges of rape, indecent assault and battery on a disabled person, assault and battery on a disabled person, rape of a child under the age of 16, enticing a child under the age of 16, incest, aggravated rape and indecent assault and battery.

Flye also faces charges in Rhode Island, which will be dealt with only after his Massachusetts trials are complete, A Rhode Island grand jury indicted him last year on four counts of first-degree child molestation and two counts of second-degree child molestation.

Flye, who worked in the construction trade and had a criminal record dating back to his juvenile days, gained national attention for his March 26, 2008, escape from a hospital’s emergency room bathroom while a court officer waited outside. Featured on the Web site of Fox's hit series “America’s Most Wanted,” Flye was on the loose for 13 days before being found on Route 6 in Westport with $800 in cash.

The new motion to sever cases, which Superior Court Judge Richard Moses approved, will allow three separate trials for the rape and indecent assault and battery on a disabled person, rape of a child under the age of 16 and escape charges.

In this case, the court agreed that these crimes should not be tried together, given the clear differences regarding the nature of the allegations (e.g., victim age, the ongoing nature of the child rape). Specifically, the court agreed that trying them together would be more prejudicial to Mr. Flye, and that each crime should be tried on its own merits given the lack of physical evidence available. Mr. Flye was subsequently convicted of child rape and incest in June of 2010, but was acquitted of charges related to assaulting the grandmother.

Examples of case law governing the joining of multiple crimes charged against a defendant:

1. California: California Penal Code section 954 provides that “An accusatory pleading may charge two or more different offenses connected together in their commission, or different statements of the same offense or two or more different offenses of the same class of crimes or offenses, under separate counts, and if two or more accusatory pleadings are filed in such cases in the same court, the court may order them to be consolidated.”

Under California Penal Code section 790 of the Evidence Code, multiple homicides committed by the same offender in multiple counties may be consolidated for trial in a single county (thus introducing a highly prejudicial element) if it can be shown that the crimes are properly joinable, and that they are connected together in their commission. CA PC 790 is also referred to by some as the “serial killer statute”.

2. Florida: As explained in Hart v. Florida (2011): “the joinder provision of rule 3.150(a)… provides that “[t]wo or more offenses that are triable in the same court may be charged in the same indictment or information ․ when the offenses ․ are based on the same act or transaction or on 2 or more connected acts or transactions.” (Emphasis added.) However, where joinder is concerned, our supreme court has cautioned that “interests in practicality, efficiency, expense, convenience, and judicial economy, do not outweigh the defendant's right to a fair determination of guilt or innocence.” Garcia v. State, 568 So.2d 896, 898 (Fla.1990) (citing State v. Williams, 453 So.2d 824, 825 (Fla.1984)). See also Ellis v. State, 622 So.2d 991, 999 (Fla.1993) (quoting Wright v. State, 586 So.2d 1024, 1030 (Fla.1991), which, in turn, quoted Garcia ); Crossley v. State, 596 So.2d 447, 449–50 (Fla.1992) (holding that while “[t]he justifications for the consolidation of charges are convenience and the preservation of the courts' valuable resources ․ practicality and efficiency cannot outweigh the defendant's right to a fair trial,” citing State v. Vazquez, 419 So.2d 1088 (Fla.1982)).”

3. New York: As provided in NY Code - Section 311.6: Joinder, severance and consolidation: “1. Two crimes are joinable and may be included as separate counts in the same petition when: (a) they are based upon the same act or upon the same criminal transaction, as that term is defined in subdivision two; or (b) even though based upon different criminal transactions, such crimes, or the criminal transactions underlying them, are of such nature that either proof of the first crime would be material and admissible as evidence in chief upon a fact-finding hearing of the second, or proof of the second would be material and admissible as evidence in chief upon a fact-finding hearing of the first; or (c) even though based upon different criminal transactions, and even though not joinable pursuant to paragraph (b), such crimes are defined by the same or similar statutory provisions and consequently are the same or similar in law. 2. "Criminal transaction" means conduct which establishes at least one crime, and which is comprised of two or more or a group of acts either: (a) so closely related and connected in point of time and circumstance of commission as to constitute a single criminal incident; or (b) so closely related in criminal purpose or objective as to constitute elements or integral parts of a single criminal venture.”

4. North Carolina: As explained in Ruben (2009): “The key question in determining whether joinder is appropriate is whether there is a transactional connection, or a factual nexus, among the charged offenses. G.S. 15A-926(a) provides that offenses, whether felonies, misdemeanors or both, may be joined for trial if the offenses are based on “the same act or transaction,” or “a series of acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a single scheme or plan.”

…Offenses that are not “joinable” as defined by G.S. 15A-926 should be tried separately. See State v. Corbett, 309 N.C. 382 (1983). Even joinable offenses may be severed for trial if joinder would impair the defendant’s ability to present a defense. See infra § 6.1C; State v. Greene, 294 N.C. 418 (1978).”

THE ADMISSIBILITY OF PRIOR & UNCHARGED CRIMES

For similar reasons, most states have laws that are designed to prevent evidence of prior convictions, and uncharged crimes where the defendant is a suspect, from being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s propensity to commit a particular type of crime. Referred to as “bad act”, “propensity” or “character” evidence, it understood to be highly prejudicial against the defendant. In fact, the admissibility of prior bad acts is so inflammatory that it can essentially predetermine the outcome of case before it even sees a jury. Its introduction is therefore hard sought by the prosecution and must be hard fought against by the defense.

Examples of case law governing the admissibility of prior and uncharged crimes include:

1. California: California Penal Code section 1108 was recently added to the Evidence Code to provide a specific exception to 1101 in sex crimes cases where a person is charged with a sexual offense and the prosecution wants to offer evidence of prior or other sexual offenses to show a propensity to commit this offense, or the charged offense. This is a special exception to single out "sexual predators".

According to Ewoldt and Balcom, "The greatest degree of similarity is required for evidence of uncharged misconduct to be relevant to prove identity." People v. Ewoldt, 867 P.2d 757 (Cal. 1994); People v. Balcom, 867 P.2d 777 (Cal. 1994). Furthermore, "For identity to be established, the uncharged misconduct and the charged offense must share common features that are sufficiently distinctive so as to support the inference that the same person committed both acts. 'The pattern and the characteristics of the crimes must be so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature.' (McCormick on Evidence, 4ht Ed., 1992)" (People v. Ewoldt (1994) 7 Cal.4th 380).

2. New York: As explained in New York v. Gantz (1984): “Although testimony of uncharged crimes is generally not admissible (see People v Ventimiglia, 52 N.Y.2d 350, 359-360), an exception may be made where a narrative description of the crimes charged necessitates mention of the uncharged criminal conduct, as when the two events are inextricably interwoven (see People v Vails, 43 N.Y.2d 364, 368; People v Willis, 52 A.D.2d 972).”

See also New York v. Roland B. Molineux (1901).

3. South Carolina: As explained in South Carolina v. Wallace (2009): “Evidence of other bad acts is not admissible to prove the defendant’s guilt except to show motive, identity, existence of a common scheme or plan, absence of mistake or accident, or intent. Rule 404(b), SCRE; see also State v. Lyle, 125 S.C. 406, 11 S.E. 803 (1923)…

Once bad act evidence is found admissible under Rule 404(b), the trial court must then conduct the prejudice analysis required by Rule 403, SCRE. The probative value of evidence falling within one of the Rule 404(b) exceptions must substantially outweigh the danger of unfair prejudice to the defendant. State v. Gillian, 373 S.C. 601, 646 S.E.2d 872 (2007).”

THE ROLE OF LINKAGE ANALYSIS

As should now be clear, whether seeking to join multiple offenses or introduce prior bad acts, the problem with allowing this type of behavioral evidence is that it is highly prejudicial. The threshold for admissibility therefore requires the “greatest degree of similarity” between cases, and extremely careful analysis by everyone involved. However, not everyone understands these thresholds or their limitations. Educating oneself, and the court, is vital.

The admissibility or exclusion of multiple, prior and uncharged crimes depends on pre-existing case law and its comprehension by the presiding judge. This is where lawyers and experts come in. It is the function of lawyers to argue for or against the admissibility of this type of evidence as they understand the law and how it applies to the facts circumstances of their cases. In some circumstances, especially those involving complex behavioral evidence issues, attorneys may (and should) employ forensic experts to conduct linkage analyses – to develop the clearest picture of the behavioral evidence and any patterns that might be evident (or absent).

Case linkage, also referred to as linkage analysis, is the process of determining whether there are discrete behavioral connections, or distinctive behavioral factors, between two or more previously unrelated cases by means of crime scene analysis. It involves establishing and comparing the physical evidence, victimology, crime scene characteristics, motivation, modus operandi (MO), and signature behaviors of each of the cases under review. It also requires consideration of both behavioral similarities and dissimilarities (Turvey, 2011).

In forensic (a.k.a. legal) contexts, case linkage is used to assist the court with determining whether or not there is sufficiently distinctive behavioral evidence to connect crimes together in their commission. This based on all available evidence gathered for trial – after the investigation has ended, arrests have been made, and charges are being made and argued. These findings can then be used to help the court decide the specific forensic issues already mentioned, such as whether similar crimes should be tried together or whether similar past crimes should be introduced at trial as evidence of criminal propensity. The issue under these circumstances is not defendant guilt or innocence, but rather the admissibility of evidence.

Confounding the often vaguely understood legal issues associated with admissibility is the reality that there may be confirmatory or circumstantial physical evidence linking a crime to a defendant. This can include physical evidence associations with high certainty, such as fingerprints or STR DNA. It can also include physical evidence associations of less certainty, such as mitochondrial DNA, partial STR DNA profiles, hair and fiber evidence, or ballistic matches (see U.S. v. Green, et al., 2005 re: limits placed on interpretations by firearms and tool-marks experts; they may testify to observations but not the certainty of matches given the lack of empirical foundation for such testimony).

Each court applies its own standards when determining the admissibility of similar fact evidence. In some jurisdictions, DNA and other hard evidence linkages may need to be considered as part of the linkage analysis. In others, physical evidence is set aside while issues of theme, modus operandi, and behavioral distinctiveness become primary. Consequently, physical evidence such as DNA must be identified treated as its own separate issue, with its own legal ramifications and inherent forensic limitations. It also requires rigorous crime reconstruction efforts by a forensic scientist, to determine the conditions of physical evidence transfer and what they mean in context (see Chisum and Turvey, 2011).

When left to argue issues of behavioral evidence without outside assistance, the results of an attorney based reconstructions and inferences regarding offense theme and similarity can be uninformed and even misleading.

Case Example: New Jersey v. Bruce Sterling (2011)

As detailed in New Jersey v. Bruce Sterling (2011): “defendant was charged with multiple offenses against five different victims on five separate dates between 2002 and 2005. Over defendant's objection, the trial judge allowed the State to try three sets of the offenses together in a single trial. A fourth set of charges was tried separately, but the court permitted the State to present evidence in that trial of one of the offenses from the previous trial. The fifth set of charges was dismissed on the State's motion. Defendant was convicted of all of the offenses arising out of these four criminal events.” The appellate court ruling goes on to detail the three offenses joined at trial (pp. 3-7):

We now describe the facts in each of the criminal episodes as developed at each of the trials. We begin with the three sets of charges that were tried jointly in the first trial, namely, those relating to the June 9, 2003 sexual assault of K.G., the January 18, 2005 sexual assault of L.R., and the May 27, 2005 burglary of S.P.'s home.

June 9, 2003 sexual assault of K.G.

On June 9, 2003, twenty-five-year-old K.G. lived with her sister in the bottom floor of a two-story, two-family home in New Brunswick. Her sister was at work that night. At 3:30 a.m., K.G. was asleep in her bedroom. She had locked all the doors, but the kitchen window “was left open about an inch.” She was awakened by the sound of her bedroom door opening. She saw a silhouette of a large figure with a knife in his hand.

The man told her “not to make any noise” and he threatened to cut her throat. K.G. pleaded with him to leave, but he slapped her across the face and told her to “shut up.” He took the knife and pressed it to her cheek, and then he “stabbed it really hard” into the bed next to her. He crawled onto the bed, took off her pajama pants, and used the knife to cut off one side of her underwear. The man was wearing latex gloves. K.G. “asked him if he was going to use a condom.” He said he would. As K.G. pleaded with her attacker and offered him money, he “repeatedly threatened to cut [her], to slit [her] throat.”

He told her that he had been “watching” her, but she had never seen him before. K.G. said she was “too terrified to look” at the man while he raped her and “didn't get a good look.” She “remember[ed] the voice more than anything.” He was African–American, “on the husky side.” She said he “looked tall” to her, but that might have been because she was lying down.

He asked her if she “had ever been with a black man,” and said “I know you want to be with a black man, things to that effect.” He fondled her breasts, kissed her mouth and penetrated her vagina with his penis. When he finished he put on his pants, got off the bed, and backed out of her room, telling her “to stay still, not to do anything” for some period of time.

K.G. waited “a minute or two” after the man left. She then called the police. When the police arrived, she provided a description of her attacker and discovered that the kitchen window “was wide open.” The police found a lawn chair that had been placed underneath to gain access to the window.

One of the large kitchen knives was missing from a butcher block near the window. The police recovered it from the backyard. K.G. said it looked like the knife that her attacker had used. On K.G.'s bed, the police found a condom wrapper, which was different from the brand used by K.G.'s boyfriend. They found no witnesses who had heard or seen anything. The police took K.G. to a rape crisis center where she was examined.

Defendant lived in New Brunswick and was employed at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center as a critical care technician. The hospital was approximately one-half mile from K.G.'s apartment, and it took an investigator approximately four minutes to drive between the hospital and the apartment.

On June 8, 2003, defendant punched in to work at 11 p.m., and he punched out at 7:40 a.m. on June 9, 2003, several hours after the time K.G. was attacked. Employees were entitled to a thirty-minute dinner break and two fifteen-minute breaks, which they could aggregate into one hour of break time. They were permitted to leave the premises for their breaks. Employees routinely disregarded the hospital policy that required them to punch out and punch back in.

On June 6, 2005, two years after she had been attacked, K.G. viewed a lineup of six men, one at a time, who were asked to read a quote from her statement to the police, “shut up or I'll cut your throat.” She testified that all of the men were “easily dismissible,” except one, referring to defendant, whose “voice sounded very familiar” and whose stocky build “looked like the build” she remembered. She told the police that the man “had a similar build and voice, but it wasn't definite.” K.G. was not asked at trial to identify defendant as her attacker.

Instead, the prosecutor said, “I am going to ask you [K.G.] to take a look at this individual that you see seated right here, and I am going to ask you whether or not you gave him permission to enter your home on June 9th of 2003?” She said, “No.”

When K.G. was brought to the rape crisis center, she was examined by a nurse, Adrienne Garber, who compiled a rape kit for K.G. Garber's supervisor, Eileen Aiossa testified at trial that Garber was “out of the country.” She offered no testimony regarding the contents of the record of K.G.'s examination, but she said the record was kept in the ordinary course of business at the center.

Jennifer Moser, a New Jersey State Police (NJSP) forensic scientist, testified that on

K.G.'s pajama bottoms she located one hair that exhibited characteristics of “Negroid” body hair. The hair was unsuitable for nuclear DNA testing, because it had no follicular material or actively growing root that would contain living cells. But mitochondrial DNA testing could be done on a hair shaft. The hair was sent to Mitotyping Technologies for analysis.

Terry Melton, president and CEO of Mitotyping Technologies, testified that her laboratory developed a mitochondrial DNA profile for a hair sample taken from defendant and the hair removed from K.G .'s pajama pants. A comparison of the hairs showed that they contained the same mitochondrial DNA sequence.

Unlike nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents and is unique to an individual and his or her identical twin, mitochondrial DNA is inherited intact only from an individual's mother. An individual and his or her siblings all will share the same type of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA testing can be used in cases where there is very little DNA in a sample, and it is commonly used on hairs that have been shed at a crime scene and that have no substantial root that would allow for nuclear DNA testing. Mitochondrial testing is the only type of DNA test that can be done on hairs that are broken or shed. Every cell has “hundreds to thousands of copies of mitochondrial DNA,” but only two copies of nuclear DNA.

The tests determine whether a DNA sequence in an individual hair is the same as the DNA sequence in a particular individual. The result is compared to an FBI database of 4800 people to determine how common or rare the sequence is in the population. Using statistical sampling methods, the examiner calculates how often the type of mitochondrial DNA in the sample appears in the general population.

Melton testified that a comparison with the FBI database showed that .06 percent or six in 10,000 North Americans would be expected to have the same type of mitochondrial DNA sequence. Defendant could not be excluded from the pool of people who could have left the hair found on K.G.'s pajamas.

January 18, 2005 sexual assault of L.R.

On January 18, 2005, a year-and-a-half after K.G. was assaulted, at approximately 6:45 p.m., thirty-nine-year-old L.R. was sexually assaulted while alone in an apartment in Edison that she shared with her son. L.R. had come home at 6 p.m. and changed her clothes. Her son was not at home. She used her microwave to make dinner and ate it standing in her kitchen, which looked out onto the parking lot behind the building. She made a telephone call from the phone in her son's bedroom. When she came out of the bedroom, her front door was open and a man was standing in her apartment.

L.R. started to scream. The intruder told her not to scream and that he would not hurt her.

They were “staring at each other” and he asked L.R. if she had any money. L.R. said she did, but her bag was in the dining room. He told her, “no, wait” and told her to take off her clothes.

She asked him to take her money and jewelry and “just go,” but he repeated that she should take off her clothes.

L.R. began screaming again. The man told her to stop, that he was not going to hurt her.

He had “a little knife” that he used to cut off all the buttons on her t-shirt. He then cut her bra and told her to take off her pants. He pushed her onto the bed and began to take off her pants. He cut the left side of her underwear with the knife. He licked her breasts and neck, and penetrated her vagina with his penis. While he raped her, he told her that if she “was going to scream” and if she called the police that he was “going to come back and he's going to f [__ __ __] me again.” He backed out of the room saying that if she called the police, “he's going to come back and he's going to hurt [me].” He said to her, “[N]ow I have white pussy and I'm going to f[__ __ __] you again.”

When he left the apartment, L.R. called her ex-husband and then the police. She was taken to a rape crisis center, where she was examined by Aiossa. L.R. described her attacker to the police as a dark-complected African–American with a “very straight nose and round big eyes” and “some kind of defect of his speech.” She said when he spoke “his tongue come [sic] out from his teeth,” so that he said “I'm not going to hurth you.” He was tall and he appeared “chubby” because he “was wearing a lot of winter clothes,” which she described more particularly as a dark winter jacket with a hood, and “another hood under his eyebrow [sic].” The room had only a night table light with a sixtywatt bulb.

The police determined that the attacker had entered and exited from a back door that led to the parking area. A person that stood outside the back entrance could see into L.R.'s kitchen into the area where her microwave was located.

On February 11, 2005, L.R. viewed a lineup of six men. She selected an individual, who was not defendant, and said that she was “ninety percent” sure he was her attacker.

On May 31, 2005, L.R. viewed six individuals in a lineup that included defendant. Pamela Jeffrey of the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office fugitive unit conducted the lineup. She testified that, “as soon as” defendant came out and began to move to his spot in the lineup, L.R. “immediately” covered her mouth and moved away from the door and up against the wall. L.R. began to cry and said “it's him, it's him.”

At trial L.R. said she “was sure one hundred percent” that defendant was her attacker. She explained that, when she saw the men in the second lineup, “I was so shocked because it was him and it's no really mistake that I can make at this time it was him who was standing in my apartment with a knife.” L.R. made an in-court identification of defendant at trial.

Aiossa, the forensic nurse who examined L.R. when she was brought to the rape crisis center, was the coordinator for the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Program (SANE) of Middlesex County, part of a statewide Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) program, which was made up of representatives from law enforcement, patient advocates, and the sexual assault nurse examiner. SANE forensic nurses receive special training and a certification from the State and the Board of Nursing.

Aiossa described the “head to toe exam” conducted by SANE nurses, which began with “comb[ing] through the person's hair looking for any kind of fibers or possibly hair left behind from the suspect.” Aiossa also testified regarding the specific swabbings she had obtained during her examination of L.R. and the injuries she observed.

It was her practice to swab each patient's cheek to obtain their DNA, and if oral sex was involved, she swabbed the patient's mouth between their gum and cheek. Aiossa swabbed under a patient's fingernails in case the suspect's DNA could be retrieved from the suspect's skin left under the patient's fingernails during a struggle.

She conducted an interior visual gynecological exam to look for injuries to the vaginal area. She swabbed the cervix area and exterior genital area “looking for if any secretions are left behind, saliva, and then we can get DNA from that.” She also collected the patient's clothing.

Aiossa used a standardized “evidence collection kit” in her examination. The forensic kit was sealed and, with the patient's permission, the kit and the clothing were turned over to law enforcement, maintaining the chain of custody. Her examination resulted in what she described as “[o]ne sealed forensic kit and one seventeen page forensic record,” one copy of which went into the forensic kit that was sent to the laboratory, one copy went to the investigating agency, and Aiossa kept the third copy.

Jennifer Banaag, a forensic scientist with the NJSP DNA laboratory, testified that her analysis of the DNA in dried secretions taken from L.R.'s neck and left breast showed within a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that defendant was the source of the secretions on L.R.'s breast. She also said that he had provided the major DNA profile of the dried secretions taken from her neck.

May 27, 2005 burglary of S.P.'s home

A little more than three months after the attack on L.R., on May 27, 2005, thirty-one year-old S.P. was living in an apartment complex in North Brunswick with her fiancé and her three children. At 2:40 a.m., she left the apartment to go for a walk after she and her fiancé argued. She testified: “I heard a gentleman say, hey, mama, can I talk to you? I turned around, looked at the person, turned back to head towards my apartment and he started to cut through the grass headed towards my door. When [sic] he told me that I didn't have to worry, that he was a gentleman.”

The man “started to walk faster” as S.P. turned to go toward her front door. She was facing him and was able to get a good look at him. She told him that her fiancé was in the house and he “apologized.” S.P. went inside her apartment and locked the door. She told her fiancé that someone had tried to talk to her, and she then went into her bedroom.

Five minutes later, S.P.'s fiancé noticed that the handle of the door that S.P. had entered was “jiggling,” and he “realized somebody was trying to open the door.” He then saw the living room window, the screen and the blind, “all three came up at the same time” and he saw a man. He asked the man what he was doing, and the man dropped the blind and ran. S.P.'s fiancé chased the man, and S.P. called the police. She gave them a description of the man who had spoken to her.

When the police arrived, S.P.'s fiancé gave them a description of the man he chased. Officer Tawana Marshall found defendant “hiding behind a tree.” Marshall asked defendant “to come out from behind the tree, and he complied, smiling.” Defendant was “sweating profusely, his clothes were missed [sic] up and his zipper was down.” Among the items in his pockets were a folding knife with a serrated edge, a Lifestyle brand condom, and the key to a Honda. S.P. and her fiancé both identified defendant at the scene as the man they had encountered.

In its ruling, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey applied Rule 3:7-6, as explained in New Jersey v. Pitts, 116 N.J. 580, 599 (1989): “Two or more offenses may be charged in the same indictment or accusation in a separate count for each offense if the offenses charged are of the same or similar character or are based on the same act or transaction or on 2 or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan.” It held that the trial court in Sterling erred not only in joining multiple cases, but in allowing evidence one of the prior cases in a second trial. As explained in Racz (2011):

Speaking as one voice in a per curiam decision, the three judges ruled that the trial court had impermissibly allowed the prosecution to join burglary charges and sexual-assault charges for Sterling in a single trial and that the court also erred by allowing, in the second trial, evidence of one of the prior crimes.

The appellate court also determined that the trial court erred when it allowed two of the rape charges to be tried together.

Further, the appellate court explained that:

…the trial court erred when it determined that the burglary charges and both sexual assault charges could be joined for trial. The S.P. burglary charge should not have been joined in the indictment with the sexual assault charges, because they failed to meet the requirements of Rule 3:7–6, and they shared no signature characteristics with the sexual assault charges that would allow all of the crimes to be tried together.

The court also erred when it determined that the sexual assault charges for K.G. and L.R. could be tried together. There was no support for its determination that the circumstances of the attacks were nearly identical or, if they were, that the average juror would have the knowledge to determine whether those characteristics meant that the crimes likely were committed by the same person. If the State wanted to try the crimes against K.G. and L.R. together, it was required to present expert evidence to establish the signature-like characteristics of the crimes. If the State chooses on remand to proceed in this manner, we express no view as to whether such expert evidence would suffice.

This remarkably detailed finding outlines the duty of the prosecution to engage expert forensic analysis regarding case linkage. Had prosecutors done so, the appellate court held that the certainty of their legal arguments could be more reliably and more objectively established. Having failed to do so, the court was unwilling to take the adventitious non-expert analysis of prosecutors as fact.

This ruling establishes that linkage analysis is an area of forensic expertise, and rightly so. As a consequence, just as attorneys are not allowed to provide legal arguments based on physical or other forms of evidence without a foundational expert examination and subsequent testimony, neither should they be allowed to do so with respect to behavioral evidence related to case linkage. Otherwise, attorneys would be allowed wide latitude to interpret the meaning of physical evidence without the benefit of objective forensic examiners to explain the strengths and limits of the evidence – which in some cases actually does happen.

The importance of this ruling is therefore twofold:

It establishes the need for independent expert analysis with respect to any proffered case linkage evidence, acknowledging the potential of its complexity to confuse the court and prejudice the jury when unchecked.

It opens the door, or in some cases simply serves to remind attorneys and the court, to challenge or exclude the arguments of any attorney that seeks to interpret any kind of evidence without a sufficient foundation in expert examination and testimony.

REFERENCES

Chisum, W.J. and Turvey, B. (2011) Crime Reconstruction, 2^nd Ed., San Diego: Elsevier Science.

Kadeem Q. Hart v. Florida (2011) Nos. 1D09–2300, 1D09–2302, District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District, May 13.

New Jersey v. Bruce D. Sterling (2011) WL 3557585 (N.J.Super.A.D.) Decided Aug. 15, 2011.

New York v. Richard J. Gantz (1984) 104 A.D.2d 692, Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Third Department, September 20.

O’Connor, K. (2010) “Trial begins for accused rapist Anthony Flye,” The Herald News, May 29.

Pateakos, J. (2009) “Flye granted motion for separate trials,” The Herald News, February 12.

Racz, G. (2011) “Bruce Sterling's multiple rape convictions reversed,” Asbury Park Press, August 16.

Ruben, J. (2009) North Carolina Defender Manual, Volume One, Pretrial, 2^nd Ed., UNC School of Government.

Savino, J. and Turvey, B. (2011) Rape Investigation Handbook, 2^nd Ed., San Diego: Elsevier Science.

South Carolina v. Karl Wallace (2009) Supreme Court, Opinion No. 26703, August 17, 2009

Turvey, B. (2011) Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 4^th Ed., San Diego: Elsevier Science.

United States v. Darryl Green, et al. (2005) No. CRIM.02-10301-NG. United States District Court, D. Massachusetts, Dec. 20.

How to Prepare for a Career in Criminal Profiling

2011-03-11T16:12:00.000-08:00

In co-operation with CriminalJusticePrograms.com, I have posted an excerpt from the Preface of the upcoming Turvey, B. (2011) Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 4th Ed., London: Elsevier Science. This is for students who are looking to inform their career choices.

See: How to Prepare for a Career in Criminal Profiling at:
http://www.criminaljusticeprograms.com/articles/brent-turvey

Crime Scene Analysis & Criminal Profiling Seminar

2011-03-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

Forensic Solutions and the Academy of Behavioral Profiling are pleased to sponsor the following two day training event in conjunction with the Elgin Community College. College credit is available for ECC students.

This is a two (2) day session where students learn theory and practice through the structured examination of case study material. The first day will involve the theory and practice of an holistic approach to crime reconstruction. The second day will involve the theory and practice of crime scene analysis. Each day will culminate in group work with actual case material. This workshop is open to the public, and is strongly recommended for students and professionals who are working or studying in areas related to:

• Criminology

• Criminal Investigation

• Criminal Justice

• Forensic Nursing

• Forensic Science

• Law Enforcement

• Legal studies

• Mental Health/ Counseling

• Psychology

• Sociology

• Women's studies

• Victimology

LOCATION

Elgin Community College
ATC Auditorium
1700 Spartan Dr.
Elgin, Illinois 60134

SEMINAR DATES & TIMES
April 8-9, 2011; 9:00AM - 4:40PM

REGISTRATION COSTS
ECC Students: $30 USD
Non-ECC Students: $50 USD
Non-Student/ Public: $100 USD
ECC STUDENTS

ECC students can concurrently enroll in PSY220.101 for course credit. See http://accessecc.elgin.edu, or contact Dr. Shawn Mikulay for more information.

CONTACTS

Brent E. Turvey, MS
bturvey@forensic-science.com
907-738-5121

Shawn Mikulay, PhD
smikulay@elgin.edu
847-214-7963

INSTRUCTORS

Brent E. Turvey, MS
Forensic Scientist & Criminal Profiler

Brent E. Turvey holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, with an emphasis on Forensic Psychology, and an additional Bachelor of Science in History. He went on to receive his Masters of Science in Forensic Science after studying at the University of New Haven, in West Haven, Connecticut.

Since graduating in 1996, Brent has consulted with many government agencies, law enforcement agencies, and private attorneys in the United States, Australia, China, Canada, Barbados, Korea and Scotland on a range of rapes, homicides, and serial/ multiple rape/ death cases, as a forensic scientist and criminal profiler. This includes cases under investigation, as well as those going to trial. He has also been court qualified as a forensic expert in the areas of criminal profiling, forensic science, victimology, and crime reconstruction, providing expert examinations and testimony for the last 15 years.

He is the author of Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ed. (1999, 2002, 2008, 2011); and co-author of Rape Investigation Handbook, 1st and 2nd Ed. (2004, 2011), Crime Reconstruction, 1st and 2nd Ed. (2006, 2011), and Forensic Victimology (2009) - all with Elsevier Science. For a complete list of titles, see Amazon.com.

Brent is currently a full partner, Forensic Scientist, Criminal Profiler, and Instructor with Forensic Solutions, LLC, as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Justice Studies at Oklahoma City University. He is also the Secretary of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling, as well as a member of their board of directors.
Shawn Mikulay, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology
Vice President, Academy of Behavioral Profiling

Shawn Mikulay received his BA, MA, and PhD in Psychology, and his MS in Industrial Management from Northern Illinois University. His published research is concentrated in the ara of employee deviance. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Elgin Community College, and teaches courses in experimental, developmental, social, introductory, and forensic psychology, as well as human sexuality.

He is currently serving as the Vice President of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling.

REGISTRATION

Those interested in registering for this workshop may pay by check, money order, Visa, MC, or Discover.
Check or Money Order
Make all checks or international money orders payable to Forensic Solutions, LLC in US Dollars. Also, provide your name, employment/ student information, and contact information including phone and email so that we can contact you and send updates.

Mail to:
ECC Seminar c/o
Forensic Solutions, LLC
P.O. Box 2175
Sitka, Alaska 99835

Visa/ MC
Click on the appropriate link below.

ECC Students: $30 USD REGISTER NOW!

Non-ECC Students: $50 USD REGISTER NOW!

Non-Student/ Public: $100 USD REGISTER NOW!

Web Page: http://www.forensic-science.com/seminar_2011.html

Crime Scene Analysis & Reconstruction Seminar

2010-09-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

Forensic Solutions and the Academy of Behavioral Profilingare pleased to sponsor the following two day training event in conjunction with the Kennesaw State University Police Department, approved by the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST).

Web Page: http://www.forensic-science.com/seminar_2010.html

LOCATION
Kennesaw State University Center
Burrus Institute (West Entrance)
Room 327
3333 Busbee Dr.
Kennesaw GA 30144

_SEMINAR_{DATES & TIMES}
October 18-19, 2010; 8:30AM - 3:30PM

INSTRUCTORS

Brent E. Turvey, MS
Forensic Scientist & Criminal Profiler

Brent E. Turvey holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, with an emphasis on Forensic Psychology, and an additional Bachelor of Science in History. He went on to receive his Masters of Science in Forensic Science after studying at the University of New Haven, in West Haven, Connecticut.

Since graduating in 1996, Brent has consulted with many government agencies, law enforcement agencies, and private attorneys in the United States, Australia, China, Canada, Barbados, Korea and Scotland on a range of rapes, homicides, and serial/ multiple rape/ death cases, as a forensic scientist and criminal profiler. This includes cases under investigation, as well as those going to trial. He has also been court qualified as a forensic expert in the areas of criminal profiling, forensic science, victimology, and crime reconstruction, providing expert examinations and testimony for the last 15 years.

He is the author of Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 1st, 2nd , and 3rd Editions (1999, 2002, 2008); and co-author of Rape Investigation Handbook(2004),Crime Reconstruction (2006), and Forensic Victimology (2009) - all with Elsevier Science. For a complete list of titles, see Amazon.com.

Brent is currently a full partner, Forensic Scientist, Criminal Profiler, and Instructor with Forensic Solutions, LLC, as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Justice Studies at Oklahoma City University. He is also the Secretary of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling, as well as a member of their board of directors.

Stan Crowder, PhD
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
CJ Internship Coordinator
Colonel (ret), US Army, Military Police Corps
President, Academy of Behavioral Profiling

Stan Crowder is a retired U.S. Army Military Police Colonel. During his 35 years of military service, Stan held in numerous positions including: MP Commander, Chief of Investigations for the Inspector General of Georgia, Counterdrug Coordinator, Battalion Commander, and Chief of Personnel. He also served seven years as a civilian police officer. He currently teaches in the Criminal Justice Program at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, where he has been since 1999. In 2007 he was the recipient of the Betty Siegel teaching award. Stan holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, as well as an MBA.

He is also the current President of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling.

Web Page: http://www.forensic-science.com/seminar_2010.html

ABP CONFERENCE & PROFILING WORKSHOP - 2010

2010-06-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

The 11 th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling (ABP) will be hosted this year by Owens Community College in Toledo, Ohio on August 7th & 8th, 2010. Open to the public, thee meeting is a conference where members present papers regarding current cases and research, followed by a two day Criminal Profiling Workshop (Aug. 9-10, 2010).

Since its inception in 1999, the ABP has grown to almost 200 international members with diverse student and professional backgrounds. This includes forensic psychology, forensic psychiatry, criminal investigations, criminology, and forensic science. The membership is unified by their forensic work, teaching and scholarly research related to crime, criminals, and forensic examinations.

The schedule of presentations at this years meeting, which is open to the public, includes lectures on the subjects of criminal profiling, behavioral analysis, investigative strategy, crime reconstruction, false confessions, serial rape, sexual homicide, and victimology.

Those interested in attending should visit the ABP's website at www.profiling.org, or contact Dr. Stan Crowder at scrowder@kennesaw.edu. All are welcome.

Links:

1. http://www.profiling.org/abp_meeting2010.html

2. http://www.forensic-science.com/seminar_2010.html

Slaying details of Oklahoma City pastor shocking

2009-08-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

SLAIN PASTOR WAS DISCOVERED NUDE IN A ‘CRUCIFIX POSITION’ AT ANADARKO CHURCH

ANADARKO — Police found the mutilated body of the Rev. Carol Daniels in a "crucifix position” behind her church altar last Sunday, The Oklahoman learned from sources close to the investigation.

Sources confirmed that Daniels’ bloodied corpse appeared to have been left in the form of a cross with both arms outstretched to the sides. Sources also said investigators were disturbed by two other facts at the crime scene:

• The killer took Daniels’ clothes, perhaps to hide evidence or as a grisly trophy.

• The killer methodically took time to spray a dissolving chemical around the body in an apparent effort to destroy any DNA evidence.

Police found Daniels’ nude body at 12:09 p.m. after being notified by an elderly couple who found the Christ Holy Sanctified Church doors locked and the reverend’s vehicle parked in front. A medical examiner’s report obtained through an open records request showed that the killer inflicted deep, gaping wounds to the throat. The wounds nearly decapitated Daniels’ head, said Dr. William Manion, a forensic pathologist in Burlington County, N.J.

Severe lacerations were also found on her left breast, back, stomach and hands — th! e latter a sign that the 61-year-old Oklahoma City woman likely tried to fight her attacker.

Daniels’ hair was also burned.

Brent Turvey, a criminal profiler and private forensic scientist, said the evidence doesn’t appear to indicate a cold-blooded, serial killer.

"This is someone who felt they had been pushed way too far, or wronged by something she had done,” said Turvey, an Oklahoma City University adjunct professor. "They felt like they had to do these things. But this person was in a complete rage — a blind rage.”

Turvey contends a serial killer would have taken one piece of clothing as a trophy, not all of the clothing.

"The taking of the clothes was not done for a trophy, but was rather a practical act,” Turvey said. "The use of a dissolving spray was also a practical act.”

Turvey suspects the position of the body might have been coincidental.

"It’s either one of two things,” Turvey explaine! d. "It could have been deliberate.

They’re in a church; they put her in this position, perhaps a defiant way of saying, ‘Screw you and your God. Look how your God didn’t help you.’

"Or it was not at all deliberate, and her body just fell that way. It’s highly common to find a nude body lying on the ground with their arms outstretched like a cross. In fact, it happens all the time,” he said.

Homicide investigations in Anadarko don’t happen often. Daniels’ death is only the second homicide since January in this Caddo County town of 6,600 residents, and this one has left investigators puzzled.

"We have no suspects,” Capt. Dwaine Miller of the Anadarko Police Department said Thursday. "We have no idea who did this.”

Since Miller’s statement, all authorities have declined comment.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has now requested FBI behavioral science experts to help catch the killer.

"Callin! g in an FBI profiler is a move of utter last resort,” said Turvey, who has worked more than 800 homicides and 30 death penalty cases in 15 years. "That is more about PR than substance.”

Video surveillance retrieved from a nearby convenience store to the north shows Daniels driving up in front of the church on Broadway Street about 10 a.m. On the south side of the church is a back door that opens into a small alley. Investigators removed that back door for potential evidence, leaving a black, plywood board in its place.

The video has since been sent to a lab for enhancement, but it is unknown whether it will reveal anything relevant.

"We had two cameras,” Miller said earlier this week. "One showed Ms. Daniels’ car.

The other camera points in the opposite direction. Had it been angled in a slightly different direction, it would have pointed to the back of that church and right at that alley.”

__________________________

In the article above, three things:

First, replace the phrase "practical act" with "precautionary act". That's what I actually said.

Second, arms wind up outstretched all the time WHEN the body has been rolled over, dragged, or moved as an artifact of body mechanics. That just needed clarification.

Third, rage applies to the actual crime, not the clean-up. This is also very common: once the anger is gone self-preservation sets in.

Brent E. Turvey, MS

Oklahoma City pastor's autopsy shows neck wounds were fatal

2009-08-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

IT APPEARS TO BE AN ANGER-ORIENTED SEXUAL HOMICIDE, FORENSIC SCIENTIST SAYS

BY JOHNNY JOHNSON
Published: August 29, 2009

ANADARKO "Brutal and severe injuries to the neck are what killed the Rev. Carol Daniels, a renowned forensic scientist who reviewed preliminary autopsy reports said Friday.

Multiple other wounds, including mutilation of her left breast, most likely were inflicted postmortem, said Brent Turvey, a private forensic scientist and criminal profiler, and an adjunct professor with Oklahoma City University.

Daniels, the pastor of Christ Holy Sanctified Church in Anadarko, was found dead inside the church shortly before service time Sunday. Authorities said she died of multiple sharp-force injuries.

Neither the state medical examiners office nor the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation would comment on the reports obtained by The Oklahoman through an open records request.

Turvey said he doesnt think the killing was a ritualistic sacrifice by a serial killer.

"I believe there is no motive other than it appears to be an anger-oriented sexual homicide, Turvey said after reviewing the reports.

"Her hair was burned, and she was found behind the church altar, he said.

The autopsy diagrams show what appear to be defensive injuries to Daniels hands, which Turvey said indicates she was possibly "fending off a knife, and fighting her attacker.

The medical examiners report depicted massive gashes encircling her neck with other major wounds around her left breast area.

Likely a knife attack
Dr. William Manion, a forensic pathologist and deputy medical examiner in Burlington County, N.J., told The Assoc! iated Press on Friday that the medical examiners report shows Daniels likely was attacked with a knife and died quickly after her throat was slashed.

"The most fatal injuries are those around her neck, Manion said. "I would say, based on the fact that both sides of the neck have major wounds associated with them, that she would be nearly decapitated.

Turvey agrees that the report clearly shows the neck wounds caused her death, but all the other injuries, including the massive chest wounds and gash on her back, were most likely inflicted postmortem.

"That means that after shes dead, the killer keeps doing things to her, Turvey said.

Manion, going on previous descriptions that the body was left in an unnatural position, said that posing or staging of a body is extremely rare and usually means the killer wanted to thwart investigators or shock whoever discovered the body.

"Its something to repel and nauseate people, s! omething very shocking to try and upset people investigating the crime, Manion said.

The evidence from the autopsy reports and the information released so far show signs of a sexual slaying possibly carried out by someone Daniels knew and who knew her schedule, Turvey said.

OSBI has called in FBI behavioral science experts to help track down the killer, said Jessica Brown, OSBI spokeswoman.

Turvey said he believes agents should stick close to people Daniels knew, including any romantic relationships or possibly someone she was counseling.

The theory that the killer knew Daniels and was enraged is one shared by Manion, "In the case of a robbery ... hes not going to hang around and keep slashing at her, stabbing her over and over, and take time to stage the body, he said.

From a forensics standpoint, Turvey said, it seems likely the nudity and the attack on her breast indicate the crime was a sexual homicide.

Turvey said authorities should be careful not to assume the killer is a man, because the crime could have been committed by a female specifically a jealous woman.

"For example, the burning of the hair, Turvey said. "Thats something a female might do.

Contributing: Associated Press

Sexual Homicide

2009-08-28T22:17:00.001-07:00

KOKH FOX 25 :: Top Stories

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Criminal Profilers Meet at Grossmont College

2009-06-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

The Tenth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Profiling (ABP) will be held this year at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California on August 8th & 9th.

"Our first meeting was in Monterey, back in 1999," says Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist and criminal profiler in private practice, as well as the Secretary of the ABP. "We got a lot accomplished in that first year, including uniform terminology, a strong code of ethics and written practice standards. All of these have been published and regularly updated in the textbook Criminal Profiling, in its third edition now, which our more senior practicing members have contributed to over the years."

Since its inception in 1999, the ABP has grown to over 150 international members with diverse professional backgrounds such as forensic psychology, forensic psychiatry, criminal investigations, criminology, and forensic science. They are all bound together by their work in relation to crime, criminals, and forensic examinations.

The upcoming meeting at Grossmont College promises to be among the most important, as changes are coming. "The profiling discipline has matured," explains current ABP President, Dr. Wayne Petherick, a forensic criminologist and professor of criminology at Bond University in Gold Coast, Australia. "There are many different kinds of criminological assessments performed by our members, because the knowledge and skills developed for profiling can be used in other forensic examinations. The ABP is evolving to keep up with those kinds of advancements."

"For our members the annual meeting is a chance for students and professionals to get together, share ideas, and remain current with methods and developments in recent cases," states Michael McGrath, MD, a forensic psychiatrist and past President of the ABP, currently serving as its Ethics Chair. "For the other professionals and even the general public, it is an opportunity to learn about forensic casework from people who are actually doing it and know what they are talking about. There are a lot of misconceptions out there."

The schedule of presentations at this years meeting, which is open to the public, includes lectures on the subjects of forensic criminology, criminal profiling, homicide solvability, motivations of law enforcement offenders, forensic victimology, ethics, and staged crime scenes.

Those interested in attending should visit the ABP's website at www.profiling.org, or contact Dr. Stan Crowder at scrowder@kennesaw.edu.

A CASE OF FORENSIC "QUACKERY"

2009-03-03T23:40:00.000-08:00

Man granted new trial in 1981 slaying of two North Tonawanda students:
Appeals court calls testimony by expert in case ‘quackery’
By Thomas J. Prohaska

NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU
The Buffalo News
TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2009
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/561414.html

A man convicted in the slayings of two fellow North Tonawanda High School students in 1981 will get a new trial because testimony by an expert witness in the case amounted to nothing more than “quackery,” a federal appeals court has ruled.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that then-Niagara County District Attorney Peter L. Broderick Sr. knew his witness, Richard D. Walter, inflated his credentials and “was committing perjury.”

Among other things, Walter claimed that he “had personal involvement with at least 5,000 to 7,500 cases” at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Doing research from prison, Robie J. Drake, the convicted killer, discovered that Walter’s job in Los Angeles was to clean the laboratory.

Walter also said he testified in court as an expert in Los Angeles many times; in fact, he testified once as a technician on a minor point. He also said he was an adjunct lecturer at Northern Michigan University; in fact, the court said, he spoke in a class as the professor’s guest.

More important to Drake’s conviction, Walter offered what the appeals court called “a fictional syndrome of sexual dysfunction” to satisfy Broderick’s desire to offer the jury a motive for Drake, then 17 and also a North Tonawanda senior, to have killed the two victims, who were apparently kissing in a parked car at the time.

Current Niagara County District Attorney Michael J. Violante, who had nothing to do with the 1982 trial, pointed out that Drake confessed to firing a fusillade of rifle shots into the car in which Amy Smith and Stephen Rosenthal died on the night of Dec. 5, 1981. Rosenthal’s rusty 1969 Chevrolet Nova was parked in a factory parking lot next to a junk yard.

“This guy claimed that he thought the car was empty and he was using it for target practice. He shot through the windows and killed two kids,” Violante said.

A Buffalo Evening News account at the time said Smith was shot twice in the head and Rosenthal was shot 16 times. Drake also confessed to stabbing the groaning Rosenthal twice, telling police, “I didn’t mean to kill him or anything.”

He also admitted to trying to dispose of the bodies by driving the car to the nearby Niagara County landfill on Witmer Road in Wheatfield. While he was putting the girl’s body into the trunk, he was caught by two North Tonawanda policemen on routine patrol.

Drake, who was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison, has been behind bars ever since.

The federal court said Broderick had plenty of evidence: Drake’s confession and circumstantial evidence of a sex crime against Smith, including autopsy reports of bites on her chest. A second autopsy determined those were inflicted after the girl was dead.

However, the 29-page ruling said things started to go awry when Broderick learned that a test slide from the Erie County medical examiner’s lab, which he was told showed traces of Drake’s semen on Smith’s body, could not be found. The next day, the medical examiner told Broderick the slide had been found but there was no evidence of
semen on it; a pathologist had erred.

Broderick, who retired as a Niagara County judge at the end of 2007, did not return calls seeking comment Monday. In a 2003 deposition cited by the appeals court, Broderick explained: “I had people who caught this defendant in the act of putting a naked girl in the trunk of a car, and all I needed was some reasonable explanation for why this thing happened, and when I lost the sperm evidence a couple of weeks before trial, I was just looking for somebody to give an explanation as to why this happened. Not that I needed to, but I think juries are always interested in knowing why.”

Dr. Lowell Levine, a forensic dentist who found the bite marks on the dead girl, suggested that Broderick call Walter, a prison psychologist in Michigan.

During a 52-minute phone call on Oct. 7, 1982, Broderick and Walter discussed the case. Later, Walter called back and said “picquerism” was involved. He said that was a syndrome in which a perpetrator obtains sexual satisfaction by sniper activity or stab or bite wounds.

The appeals court called this “fictional” and, “medically speaking, nonsense.”

North Tonawanda City Judge William R. Lewis, who was Drake’s lead defense attorney in 1982, said that he thought something was fishy at the time.

“This testimony fit too much like a glove. Everything Robie Drake did seemed to fit this ‘picquerism,’ ” Lewis said Monday.

The defense wasn’t helped by Broderick’s strategy of not telling them he was going to call Walter to the stand until the day before he did so.

“I remember saying in my summation, ‘Who ever heard of picquerism? You can’t even find it in the dictionary,’ ” Lewis said.

The appeals court said Walter’s testimony was a key factor in leading the jury to convict Drake of two counts of intentional murder, and that’s why he should have a new trial.

Drake exhausted all his appeals in state courts before he was able to work his way into the federal courts. U. S. District Judge John Elfvin rejected his appeal, but in 2003 the Second Circuit ordered that an effort be made to find out if Broderick knew Walter was lying.

After depositions by Broderick and Walter, Elfvin ruled Broderick didn’t know Walter was making false statements and that the falsehoods were not material to the jury’s verdict. Wrong and wrong, the appeals court ruled.

Violante said he contacted the families of the victims after the ruling came out Friday.

“They were shocked, as anyone would be,” he said. “I’m shocked that it took 27 or 28 years for the process.”

________________________________________

Brent E.Turvey, MS, also author of Criminal Profiling, 3rd Ed. with Elsevier Science (2008), can be reached at bturvey@forensic-science.com.

THE PERSISTENCE OF FAITH-BASED PROFILING

2008-10-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Preface To Criminal Profiling, Third Edition

"The Persistence of Faith-Based Profiling" by Brent E. Turvey, MS - April 2008

The first step is admitting we have a problem.

Faith is often enough to make decisions in personal matters. Faith can give much needed hope and strength in times of personal crisis or difficulty. Faith can build relationships, give inspiration, and provide personal guidance. But personal faith is not to be confused with an actual proof or actual evidence. As such, personal faith and belief should not be imposed in a professional context where the burdens and consequences to others are grave—as in the criminal justice system.

Many people have transcendent or phenomenological belief systems that give their lives both meaning and bearing. Personal belief systems can take root at a very early age, sometimes as a part of our cultural or ethnic identity. As a result, they are almost impossible to remove without eroding the soil of substance that gives one a sense of both identity and purpose. Many will not surrender a deeply held personal belief for fear it could lead to their spiritual loss or death. Therein lies the problem.

There is nothing inherently wrong with personal beliefs. Each person finds meaning and purpose in his or her own way, and that is as it should be. We each have our own journey to take in life, and it is deeply personal. However, there is a difference between faith and reason. As the reader will learn in the pages that follow, it is not the position of this work that personal faiths and beliefs are a problem unless they get in the way of objective forensic investigation and examination.

Let us speak clearly: faith and the phenomenological must have no influence over the objective investigation of fact. This includes religious faiths, spiritual beliefs, the metaphysical, the paranormal, and the supernatural. These are personal matters and should remain personal.

In faith-based reasoning, the premise of an argument and the conclusion are a matter of personal belief and subsequently considered above criticism. Those who question the premises of such beliefs, religious and otherwise dogmatic, are labeled heretics or worse. In faith and personal belief, there is little room for critical thinking, and no place for doubt. As a consequence, the nature of faith runs contrary to knowledge building.

Criminal investigation and forensic examination are professional endeavors in the service of the criminal justice system. Any conclusion that is not based on actual proofs susceptible to testing does not belong in their structural supports. The reason for this should be obvious. Faith-based reasoning is highly susceptible to bias, immune to skepticism, and there is often no way of knowing whether it is wrong. For a conclusion to be reliable and valid, our methods must be susceptible to independent review, and the conclusion itself must be falsifiable. That is to say, there must be actual proofs that everyone can experience, and there must be identifiable mechanisms for disproving our conclusions should our reasoning be biased or faulty.

As we will learn, criminal profilers often serve as both criminal investigator and forensic examiner. Criminal investigators are tasked with serving the criminal justice system by establishing the objective facts and evidence of a given case. Forensic examiners are tasked with analyzing the evidence and interpreting the facts objectively. These are enormous responsibilities that must not be taken lightly. When we act in service of our personal needs and beliefs our objectivity can be tainted, our methods distorted, and our conclusions biased. Emotions can rush the soundest judgment; dogma can bury the clearest evidence. As explained in James and Nordby (2003, p. 4):

When emotions overcome reason, a zealous forensic scientist may intentionally or inadvertently deny real justice. Results are misinterpreted, or worse, falsified. Such flawed science may not be easy to spot, since it can only appear through the results of the scientific investigation.

If we can agree to this—that we must maintain our objectivity—we can agree that personal faith and belief should have no part in the performance of what should be the cold and dispassionate rendering of a criminal investigation or forensic examination.

Is faith-based reasoning actually a problem in the criminal justice system and specifically in the field of criminal profiling? Sadly, more than a century after the 1894 publication of the first textbook advocating for more objective and scientific methods of criminal investigation, the answer is yes. Despite repeated attempts to educate practitioners, there persists throughout the geography of criminal investigation and forensic examination no shortage of faith-based motivations, faith-based methodology, and faith in examiner charisma or affiliation over actual knowledge and efficacy. As is often the case, ignorance and ego are the culprits.

Three general issues, all related, require some discussion before we tackle their influence on criminal profiling in specific: religion, the popular media, and psychics.

WORKING FOR GOD

Thank God for narcissism.

—Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) profiler

Roy Hazelwood (retired) (Ramsland, 2005)

They may perceive, for example, that the consequences of accepting whether a certain proposition is true have a bearing in determining the claim’s truth—or there will be negative consequences now or in the hereafter. This logical fallacy is referred to as the appeal to the consequences of a belief. When they are self-serving or just plain wrong, the consequences can be dire.

Investigators and forensic examiner’s alike are handmaidens to the various justice systems of humankind. Consequently, they must serve its laws. They must serve objectivity, not passion; they must serve facts and proofs, not beliefs or superstitions. If they cannot serve in this manner, then they are unfit to serve at all.

It must be admitted that not everyone agrees with this position. Some view this work as a moral or religious calling. According to the self-proclaimed “Homicide Investigator’s Bible,” homicide investigation is part of a Christian mandate to serve the “FIFTH COMMANDMENT Book of Exodus, 20 of the Holy Bible” in which “The Lord God said… Though Shalt Not Kill.” The text also concludes its preface with: “We work for God.”10 This is an admirable declaration in the service of personal faith and belief.

However, this declaration is more than just misplaced in the realm of homicide investigation or any work performed in the service of the justice systems in the Western world. Why? Because pretending that the Bible and the Ten Commandments are somehow served by modern law oversimplifies a complex reality. Further explanation is necessary.

To rationally discuss the Ten Commandments in an investigative and forensic context, we should probably start by getting them right. The fifth commandment is “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (NIV Study Bible, Exodus 20:12, p. 116). It is not

“Thou shalt not kill,” as described in Geberth (2006). This numbering remains true regardless of which version of the Bible one invokes.

The most accurate translation of the sixth commandment is “You shall not commit murder”(NIV Study Bible, Exodus 20:13). The translation referenced by the “Homicide Investigator’s Bible” is chosen from the King James Bible, a text known by theological scholars to be rife with translation errors, intentional and otherwise (see generally Ehrman, 2005, and Norton, 2005). This is particularly true with respect to the sixth commandment. The King James Bible reads, “Thou shalt not kill” (King James Bible, Exodus 20:13). The problem is that the verb appearing in the original Hebrew is not actually translated as “kill.” The verb used in the Torah forbiddance is ratsah, which is most accurately translated as “murder”—used in the rest of the Bible to describe killing out of anger, killing the weak, or killing in the commission of a crime like robbery. Faulty translations of the original Hebrew and subsequent Greek texts, however motivated, have led to a great deal of confusion on this matter.

Murder is a crime. There can be no disputing this whether one is an investigator, a profiler, a judge or a theologian. However, while the Bible is general in its prohibitions and punishments, modern penal codes are rich with detail. In most Western countries there are degrees of murder, there are mitigating factors, and there are aggravating factors. The variations are such that the same case facts will yield very different punishments from court to court, state to state, or country to country, depending on how those facts are interpreted. This can range from a few years in prison for manslaughter or negligent homicide, to the death penalty for premeditated murder. In the Bible, however, there is but one ultimate punishment for murder or any other intentional nonhomicidal offense against God (i.e., idolatry, adultery, improper sexual behavior, cursing or attacking your father or mother, failure to put down a bull that tends to gore people, being a sorceress, taking advantage of widows or orphans, etc.): Those found guilty are to be stoned to death, impaled on a stick, killed by the sword or burned alive.

This is probably as good a place as any to acknowledge that the origins of our legal system, in fact the legal system in most countries, are an outgrowth of tribunals in which the church was the arbiter of justice. This because most crimes, especially of an interpersonal nature, were deemed to have been committed against God—so the church took the responsibility for bringing the offender to justice.

No longer is this the case in most Western legal jurisdictions, especially where it is recognized that there is or should be a separation of church from state because of potential abuses and emotional influences (though there are marked exceptions that linger, in terms of both laws and those who judge them). In the United States, for example, this sentiment is a permanent part of our Constitution. The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” This was tested in 1801, when the Danbury Baptists Association (representing a relgious minority in Connecticut) wrote then president Thomas Jefferson to complain that their religious liberties were seen only as privileges by the Connecticut state legislature that could be revoked at will, not as immutable rights. Jefferson responded with a now well-known letter confirming that religious belief is personal and separate from the will and authority of the state. Consequently, those working in service of the state could not influence law making (and by extension law enforcement) with the preferences of their particular faith. Jefferson wrote (1802):

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

This doctrine, with language lifted directly from Jefferson’s letter, was first cited in the U.S. Supreme Court, Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). George Reynolds, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, argued that he had a religious duty to marry multiple times and was therefor improperly indicted of the crime of bigamy. The Supreme Court disagreed, and the Supreme Court of the Utah Territory upheld his eventual conviction.

So in reality, far from the creed of the “Homicide Investigator’s Bible,” investigators and forensic examiners in the United States and similar legal systems do not work for God. They do not investigate on behalf of the fifth, sixth, or any other commandment or seek to enforce biblical or other religious punishments. They do not work not to protect religious belief systems based on personal or popular interpretations of writings in religious texts. They do not investigate offenses against God. And they do not seek to impale suspects, stone them, or burn them at the stake.

Or at least they shouldn’t.

Consider the case of 50-year-old polygamist Warren S. Jeffs, the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As of this writing, he is in the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah. He waits sentencing for his 2007 convictions on two counts of rape by accomplice in the arranged marriage 14-year-old Elissa Wall to her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed. According to court records, this type of “child bride” marriage would be a common practice in Jeffs’s church, with Jeffs presiding over the ceremonies. As Winslow (2006) explains the situation:

Hildale/Colorado City Town Marshal Fred Barlow has pledged his allegiance to Fundamentalist LDS Church

leader Warren Jeffs.

“I fill (sic) that without priesthood I am nothing,” he wrote in a letter obtained by investigators for the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training board. The letter was given to the Deseret Morning News after a request under the Government Records Access Management Act (GRAMA.)

The letter was written in October 2005 when Jeffs was still a fugitive and begins, “Dear Uncle Warren.” In it, Barlow says all of the police officers in the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., are loyal to Jeffs and are working under his directions.

He updated Jeffs, who has since been captured, on a series of investigations by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and Arizona POST.

“I do not know exactly what we have ahead of us, but I do know that I and all of the other officers have expressed our desire to stand with you and the priesthood,” Barlow wrote.

Arizona POST officials are investigating Barlow and two other members of the police force over their loyalties to Jeffs and refusal to answer investigators’ questions about the FLDS leader.

Fred Barlow is facing several misconduct charges, along with officers Preston Barlow and Mica Barlow.

“In October 2005, Marshal Fred Barlow sought directions from and acknowledged previous direction on the operation of the Colorado City Marshal’s Office from a federal fugitive,” said Bob Forry, the manager of Arizona POST’s Standards and Compliance Unit.

He added that the officers have refused to answer investigators’ questions.

Administrative hearings on their police certification have been scheduled for February in Phoenix. All law enforcement officers take an oath to uphold the laws of their respective states.

“These officers are truly conflicted between their religion and their duties as police officers,” Forry said.

The Utah POST Council voted on Wednesday to begin an investigation into the actions of the entire Hildale/Colorado City Town Marshal’s Office. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Friday the letter makes him want to move quickly on suspending the police authority in the border towns…. Barlow’s letter says he was praying Jeffs would be protected while he was on the lam.

“I love you and acknowledge you as my priesthood head,” he wrote. “And I know that you have the right to rule in all aspects of my live (sic). I yearn to hear from you.”

The letter is signed, “Your servant Fred J. Barlow Jeffs.”

Arizona POST officials obtained the letter after Warren Jeffs’ brother, Seth, was arrested in October 2005 outside Pueblo, Colo. Search warrant returns from the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office that were obtained by the Deseret Morning News show a number of documents were being taken to Warren Jeffs, who was a fugitive at the time.

Among the items seized: a large box containing numerous envelopes addressed to “Warren Jeffs,” “The Prophet,” “Uncle Warren Jeffs,” and other names; a banker box with miscellaneous documents titled, “Saturday Work Project January 2005-June 2005”; credit cards; 14 gift cards, valued at $500 each; VHS tapes, media cards, CDs, a Sony digital recorder, audio cassettes, computer floppy disks, a laptop, a Palm Pilot, seven cell phones, a donation jar with a picture of Jeffs marked “Pennies for the Prophet; and more than $135,000 in cash.

Seth Jeffs later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of harboring a fugitive and was sentenced to probation.

It is hard to imagine a situation where the conflict of interest between church doctrine and state law could be clearer. Yet an entire police agency has not only failed in their oath to protect and serve, it has admitting to working to aid a fugitive from justice because of the fugitive’s faith. The result has been a pattern of forced “child bride” marriages, statutory rape, and institutional control of females from a very young age going back generations—all sanctioned by local law enforcement—not to mention further unlawful acts committed to protect the leader and conceal the leader’s crimes from the outside world. This is but one recent example of religious or cultural beliefs inappropriately influencing the law and its enforcement, taken from many throughout history.

Investigators must work to establish the verifiable facts of a case and thereby help protect the rights and property of citizens. This means all citizens, not just those who share their religious beliefs, and not just those who subscribe to their subjective interpretations of religious texts. The intermixing of investigation, criminal profiling, politics, and religion has had a tragic history that will be explored further in the first chapter of this text.

In the context of personal faith and belief, things are made worse by the persistence of magical thinking.

A WORLD OF MAGICAL THINKING

I’ve never heard of or received information [from a psychic] that has even

helped solve a case.

—Sergeant Gary L. Plank, criminal profiler, Nebraska State Patrol

(Hammel, 2003)

It is of great concern that those who are guided in their investigations and examinations by faith and faith-based reasoning are more prone to believe in and waste finite resources on the phenomenological. Not in the modern age of science and reason? Think again. As Sunstein (2005, pp. 990–991) explains, people are not always that critical, that deliberate, or that bright. In fact, many are intellectually lazy, reaching only for the explanations and reasons within their immediate cognitive vicinity:

It is well known that individuals do not always process information well. They use heuristics that lead them to predictable errors; they are also subject to identifiable biases, which produce errors. A growing literature explores the role of these heuristics and biases and their relationship to law and policy. For example, most people follow the representativeness heuristic, in accordance with which judgments of probability are influenced by assessments of resemblance (the extent to which A “looks like” B). The representative heuristic helps explain what Paul Rozin and Carol Nemeroff call “sympathetic magical thinking” including the beliefs that some objects have contagious properties and that causes resemble their effects. The representativeness heuristic often works well, but it can also lead to severe blunders.

People also err because they use the availability heuristic to answer difficult questions about probability. When people use this heuristic, they answer a question of probability by asking whether examples come readily to mind. So there are two big problems with the way people tend to reason: magical thinking and the availability heuristic. Magical thinking is often described in the cognitive psychology literature as a child-like belief that by wishing or believing something it becomes true or that seeing two things together is proof that they are causally related despite the absence of any direct evidence. The availability heuristic is in play when judgments are made based on what one can remember rather than on complete or actual information. We tend to use the availability heuristic for judging the frequency or likelihood of events.

When magical thinking and the availability heuristic come together, resulting beliefs can be almost impenetrable. There is no better example of this than the influence of film and television. The popular media feed an ever-increasing condition of metacognitive dissonance by providing false or distorted examples to populate our memory, which the public tends to believe because it wants to or because it doesn’t know

any better. The magical thinking by the public is fairly straightforward: If it’s on the screen, it must be real; and perhaps conversely it’s not real until it’s on the screen.

The Power of Media

Fictional programs like Fox’s Millennium (1996–1999), NBC’s Profiler (1996–2000), and NBC’s Medium (2005—today; based on a fictionalized version of the life of Allison DuBois, a self-described medium and psychic profiler), in combination with purported documentary programs like Court TV’s current hits Psychic Detectives and Haunting Evidence (with “psychic” profiler Carla Baron) have made psychic phenomena seem not only mainstream but valid as an investigative resource.

For a variety of reasons, there are those who continue to argue that modern TV and film audiences are largely able to discriminate between fact and fiction. They maintain that most people do not uncritically accept what they see on the screen just because it’s in front of them, with good lighting, compelling images, and an emotive soundtrack. Surely, they argue, public faith and a belief in the supernatural are not simply a reaction to popular culture.

However, evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. Rather than being a mechanism for conveying properly vetted experts and information, the popular media have long been an effective tool for propaganda, press relations, and “spin.”

Methods range from the creation of blatant propaganda material, to influences on filmmaking, to opinion-editorial pieces on various subjects of varying factual content, to biased reporting, all the way to news blackouts. Why? It is because of the availability of heuristic and magical thinking. People believe what they read, what they see, and what they hear when it is put in front of them—and they very much want to believe what they feel. Put this all together in a compelling package and it can change the world for a second, a minute, an hour, or a lifetime.

Some modern examples should be given.

In 1973, when William Peter Blatty’s book The Exorcist became a feature film, the Catholic Church experienced a surge in numbers owing to the fear audiences developed in relation to evil spirits and demonic possession. To this day, and even as a direct result of being influenced by this film, there are educated people who believe whole-heartedly in the unproven phenomenon of demonic possession.

The Catholic Church’s position on this and similar films, like the more recent The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), is that publicity about the devil and his evil works is good for everyone (Matera, 2005). In other words, films can be effective press relations when they are on message and of sufficient quality.

In 1977, Jesus of Nazareth was shown on television as a miniseries and prompted yet another surge in conversions. It was aired again the year of this writing on several cable television networks as part of what has become a Christmas tradition. The number of conversions owed to inspiration by this film are said to be in the tens of millions.

In 1988, the film version of Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ was released. It portrays Jesus Christ on the cross, in his last moments, tempted by a normal life with Mary Magdalene as opposed to dying without sin for the sins of humankind. Director Martin Scorsese billed it as a work of fiction, an exploration of what Jesus Christ might have been like as a normal human being. The idea of Jesus Christ as a mere human was so intolerable to some Christians that the film opened to violent denouncements from religious groups all over the world, as well as bomb threats to theaters that agreed to show it. Those in opposition to the film’s premise apparently believed that the film had the power to tarnish the image of Jesus Christ that the church had worked so hard to cultivate over the centuries.

xxxiii

One might be inclined to argue that Western audiences two decades ago were perhaps more open to media influence, and they were perhaps even less discriminating than audiences today. However this argument simply does not hold. In 2005, the film version of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code was released. Worse to some Christians than The Last Temptation of Christ, this fictional work portrays Jesus Christ as a mortal who was, in fact, wed to Mary Magdalene and argues that there exists a bloodline from that union, which can be traced from their child to this day. Based on a variety of intriguing and even compelling evidence (some real and some highly dramatized), the questions it raised struck enough fear into organized religion that the film found itself banned by cities and even some countries worldwide.

As with The Last Temptation of Christ, many in the church worried if people read the book or saw the film that they would believe it was true (BBC, 2005). What is of great interest here is the persistent lack of faith by purported faithful. If conversions are of substance and the converted truly faithful, then film and television should be no threat. There should be no need to ban books, films, or ideas.

But this is not how public perception works—faith is not typically a function of critical thinking or of thoughtful reflection and careful study. Dogmatic advocates understand this and understand the need to craft not only the message but also how it is perceived. It is a direct understanding and manipulation of the availability heuristic.

But surely, as powerful as they are, film and television do not influence investigative professionals the same as an ignorant public. Surely professionals can distinguish between the fantasy world created on TV and the realities of a criminal investigation involving real people. Surely professionals are trained to know better

than to believe what they see on TV.

Enter the popular television show 24, aired on the Fox Network (currently in its seventh season, having been launched in the months following 9/11). Being the owner of every available box DVD set released to date, this author is a conversant and unrepentant fan of the show. It chronicles the life and career of the fictional Jack Bauer, a field operative in the fictional U.S. Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU). Each season is 24 episodes long, as story arcs take place in real time over the course of a single day. This creates drama and tension as Jack Bauer fights to unravel and thwart various cascading terrorist plots within and against the United States under crushing time constraints. To be blunt, the fictional Jack Bauer is both extreme and brutal. He tortures suspects, innocent and guilty alike, and executes whoever is necessary to protect the United States or the lives of its citizens. It is great television, but it is only television. Or at least, that’s how it is supposed to be.

Two circumstances exist proving beyond any doubt that military students and professionals alike are watching the fictional TV drama 24, and that they are taking the torture methods it depicts directly to the front line in the U.S. war on terror.

First, there are the admissions of former U.S. Army specialist Tony Lagouranis, who left the military with an honorable discharge in 2005. He and other members of his unit attempted to copy the interrogation methods and interrogator demeanor advocated by characters in the fictional program when interrogating prisoners during his 2004–2005 tour of duty in Iraq. His interview is quoted in

Bennett (2007):

NEWSWEEK: How common were shows like “24” while you were in Iraq?

TONY LAGOURANIS: There were TVs everywhere in Iraq, so people were watching movies and television all the time. I don’t know if it was specifically “24,” because I hadn’t watched it back then, but I do remember remarking all the time that it was just so common to see interrogation scenes. And they all seemed to have a common theme, that the interrogator would establish power over the detainee and then establish a threat that would make the detainee break—maybe the threat of torture, maybe actual torture.

NEWSWEEK: And soldiers would mimic that?

TONY LAGOURANIS: They were. Interrogators didn’t have guidance from the military on what to do because we were told that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply any more. So our training was obsolete, and we were encouraged to be creative. We turned to television and movies to look for ways of interrogating. I can say that I saw that with myself, also. I would adopt the posture of the television or movie interrogator, thinking that establishing that simple power arrangement, establishing absolute power over the detainee, would force him to break.

NEWSWEEK: What kinds of television-type torture were soldiers actually imitating?

TONY LAGOURANIS: Mock executions and mock electrocution, stress positions, isolation, hypothermia. Threatening to execute family members or rape detainees’ wives and things like that.

NEWSWEEK: What sort of training did you go through when learning how to interrogate?

TONY LAGOURANIS: We had some classroom training, we’d get Power Point presentations on what interrogation should be, but then we’d spend maybe a minute in the interrogation booth with a role player who was an instructor and we’d interrogate. And mostly we were judged on the form of our questions, whether or not we moved from question to question logically. It really didn’t have to do with breaking the prisoner. It didn’t have to do with coercion or reproaches, which in Iraq is pretty much all you did. So we really weren’t trained at all for the mission we had in Iraq.

NEWSWEEK: And that’s where television came into play?

TONY LAGOURANIS: The approaches that we were taught we could use, but we were encouraged to use more extreme tactics. We didn’t have training in the more extreme tactics so people turned to television to learn what those might be.

NEWSWEEK: It must be easy to watch those shows and think everything will go smoothly—Jack Bauer always seems to get what he wants. How realistic is that?

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TONY LAGOURANIS: [“24”] portrays Jack Bauer as this loose cannon who’s operating outside the law but is doing what’s necessary to save Los Angeles from a nuclear bomb. The message really is that everyone will break, at some point. But it’s not as easy as they make it look. The point is that what he’s doing is not an effective technique for gaining intelligence, and his success rate isn’t lifelike at all. [Plus] the tactics he uses are completely illegal, under U.S. and international law.

This occurrence is an admission that in the absence of sufficient education and training, relatively inexperienced interrogators relied on a fictional television program to guide them in their real life interview/interrogation tactics.

Second, the 24-effect has now trickled down to the cadet level at West Point Academy in New York. In early 2007, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, dean of the academic board of the United States Military Academy at West Point, visited the set of 24 to urge its producers to cut down on torture scenes. He also invited Kiefer Sutherland, a producer as well as the actor who plays Jack Bauer, to visit West Point Academy and lecture on the evils of using torture to extract information from suspects. According to published reports, Sutherland has accepted that invitation.

As Wenn (2007) explains:

Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan visited the set of 24 to urge its makers to cut down on torture scenes.

He told the show’s producers, “I’d like them to stop. They should do a show where torture backfires. The [cadets] see it and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about 24?’

“The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

To be clear, the General asked the real-life actor to give a lecture at West Point Academy, to explain that he is only playing a fictional character in a television fantasy, to explain that Jack Bauer is not real, to explain that getting reliable intelligence from torture is not the norm, and to explain that torture itself is not only wrong but illegal. General Finnegan understands the influence of television on his cadets, and he is trying to stem the tide of ignorance that it creates. This is nothing short of an admission that his cadets are not able to tell the difference between television and reality—making them no different than most other people.

Belief in Psychic Phenomena

The question of psychics and their utility was actually answered four decades ago. Back in 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Behavioral Science Services (BSS) (currently responsible for planning, developing, implementing, and administering the department psychological services program) published a study of psychic efficacy in a police investigations. The results of this study found that psychics often gave unverifiable insights and did no better than chance (or worse) when they predicted specific details. The BSS ultimately concluded that psychics were not useful in aiding investigations (Reiser et al., 1979).

Dampening belief in psychic ability as it intersects criminal investigation is currently made difficult for advocates of the scientific method and critical thinking by the self-anointed “Homicide Investigator’s Bible”—Practical Homicide Investigation by Vernon J. Geberth. This widely used text dedicates five pages to the subject of purported psychics, ultimately advocating for their use by police. It first defines psychic ability in a way that is impossible to prove, support, or even defend with scientific fact—in other words, based entirely on belief (Geberth, 1996, p. 666; Geberth, 2006; p. 718):

[A] psychic is a person who learns to control a portion of the brain which is not generally used in order to see and feel things which the average person cannot experience.

This bold assertion presupposes that psychic phenomena involve special areas of the brain, and that purported psychics actually do sense things that others do not—none of which has ever been proven by any scientific study of psychics or the brain.

Next, the text suggests using psychics as an “investigative aid,” even though they will often be wrong and of little investigative use (Geberth, 1996, p. 666; Geberth, 2006, p. 718):

It should be noted that information may not always be accurate and in some instances may be of no value to the investigation. However, this should not discourage authorities from using a psychic, especially in homicide cases where there is limited information. The use of a psychic can be considered as an additional investigative aid.

There is no tenable reason for relying on any purported “investigative aid” that provides inaccurate information or information of no value. However this is precisely what is being suggested.

Unfortunately, the continued media attention on psychic phenomena and the support these ideas have with a minority of police practitioners who provide training bestow an unearned perception of reliability and validity on those who claim to be psychic. This is largely accomplished through unverified or unverifiable testimonials. Testimonials are interesting, but they are more associated with press relations and advertising than with analytical logic and the scientific method. Put another way, testimonials are irrelevant to the issues of reliability and validity—but they are necessary to sell a product, idea, or service when actual proofs are unavailable. And, when evocative, testimonials influence the availability heuristic.

This wishful and magical thinking (that psychics are real; that some people, specifically psychics and profilers, have supernatural abilities) is alluring to inexperienced and ignorant investigators, who are often desperate to try anything on a big case because they don’t have enough training to know better. Accepting this and any other form of magical thinking has the additional benefit of not requiring the possession of investigative skill. It takes less ability and less effort to follow up on leads provided by a psychic and to believe in the supernatural than it does to buckle down and work a case.

Consider the following examples of recent cases where police have used psychics. These demonstrate that not only are many investigators ignorant on the subject, but that they are necessarily ignorant of criminal investigation techniques as well.

Given that the existence of psychic ability has never been proven when proof should be relatively easy to find, this is a testament to the persistence of faith and belief over critical thinking and analytical logic.

Example: The Case of Elizabeth Smart

Elizabeth A. Smart was a 14-year-old from Utah who was kidnapped from her bedroom on June 5, 2002. Police found her alive nine months later on March 12, 2003, a few miles from her home in Sandy, Utah. Brian David Mitchell, 49, a drifter and self-described prophet calling himself “Emmanuel,” had abducted her. Mitchell had done some work in the family’s home in November of 2001.

Rather than focus on those obvious suspects with access to the home, and locating them and interviewing them, police spent a lot of time during that nine months responding to psychic tips and their “visions.” As reported in “Police, Archaeologists Wary of Psychics’ Theory of Smart Mystery” (2002):

The months-old search for Elizabeth Smart took a strange twist last week when two Salt Lake City detectives—at the behest of a group of psychics—ventured into a crypt that holds the skeletal remains of ancient American Indians.

Officials from PSI Tech, a Seattle-based company, claimed that more than a dozen of its members had determined the location of Elizabeth’s body by using a special psychic process they call “Technical Remote Viewing.”

Independently, the company claims, 14 visionaries all pointed to a concrete burial vault built by the state of Utah about 10 years ago. The vault, located in Salt Lake City’s This Is the Place State Heritage Park in the mouth of Emigration Canyon, contains the remains of 75 American Indians, many unearthed by construction projects around Utah.

But the crypt was searched and no trace of the 14-year-old girl, snatched June 5 from her bedroom, could be found,

said state archaeologist Kevin Jones….

The investigators’ fruitless Aug. 28 search through cobwebs and stale air was one example of how thousands of tips from self-proclaimed psychics have occupied overworked detectives desperately trying to crack the baffling case.

“Many of these [psychic tipsters] are well-meaning, but these tips certainly take manpower away from the investigation,” said Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse.

Still, he said that investigators will check out every “psychic vision” if the tip is specific.

“I don’t encourage it or discourage it,” Dinse said, speaking of psychics sharing their beliefs. In fact, Dinse said officers still may recruit a psychic to assist with the case.

Note that, as encouraged by the “Homicide Investigator’s Bible,” the chief of police refused to cease the use of psychics in the Smart case, despite the fact that they were wrong every time.

Example: The Case of Australian

Prime Minister John Howard

In April of 2006, a senior Australian Federal Police (AFP) officer was suspended for consulting a psychic—Elizabeth Walker, a Scottish-born medium based in New South Wales—over a threat to assassinate Prime Minister John Howard. As reported in Duff, Koutsoukis, and Shanahan (2006):

The AFP’s spokesman for homeland security, Arch Bevis, said he would be greatly concerned if the AFP was using clairvoyants. “I think, perhaps, this fellow has watched a few too many of the US detective shows,” he said.

The AFP had doubled security staff between 2002 and 2005, Mr Bevis said, but that, apart from the comical aspect, the incident raised the serious issue of adequate training. “This does make you wonder … if the vetting of recruits is as thorough as it should be, and whether officers are receiving adequate training,” he said.

Barry Williams, of Australian Skeptics, said he “would be very worried” if he were John Howard. “I know security and intelligence gathering can be a very hard job at times,” he said.

“But if your critical faculties are intact and you are going to a psychic to ask for help on something like this, then I think you should be looking for another job.”

What this helps demonstrate is that the law enforcement community is divided on this issue of psychics. Some believe in psychics and want to use them; others recognize the use of psychics as a sign of investigative inability and ignorance.

Yet there is pressure to use them because the public has been saturated by media accounts of psychics helping the police. It takes a strong police agency with even stronger leadership to take a hard line against the use of psychics in the face of what can be overwhelming pressure, especially when it comes from a victim’s family.

Example: The Case of Shawn Hornbeck

According to an FBI missing person’s report, 11-year-old Shawn D. Hornbeck left his home riding a bicycle in Richwoods, Missouri, on Sunday, October 6, 2002, at approximately 1 p.m. He was headed to a friend’s house, but he never arrived.

Shawn’s family eventually reported him missing, and local law enforcement initiated an investigation. In February 2003, The Montel Williams Show aired a segment with psychic Sylvia Browne. According to

Boyle (2007):

Sylvia Browne told the family of missing Shawn Hornbeck he was dead shortly after the Missouri boy vanished—and later allegedly offered to help locate his body for $700 per half hour.

The popular TV clairvoyant appeared on the “Montel Williams Show” in February 2003, four months after Shawn disappeared, and told Pam and Craig Akers she believed their son was “no longer with us.”

She also advised that his body could be found in a wooded area 20 miles from their Richwoods, Mo., home, near two large jagged boulders….

Browne’s “vision” of his death caused search teams to redirect their efforts and drew dozens of calls from the public who believed they lived near the woods matching Browne’s descriptions.

The family also claims the psychic then tried to cash in, which Browne vigorously denies.

Shawn Hornbeck was found alive and well in January of 2007. The 15-year old Hornbeck was discovered living just a few miles away from his home with 41-year-old Michael Devlin, a 300-pound pizza parlor manager, and 13-year old Ben Ownby. Hornbeck was found because police were actively searching for Ownby, who had been abducted from his family four days prior. A tip from a witness led authorities to Devlin, who was charged with both abductions.

These are cautionary tales meant to educate serious investigative and forensic professionals that the reality of psychic phenomena is this:

1. Anyone who claims to be a psychic is either mentally ill, an intentional fraud, or has become proficient at “cold reading” without knowing it.

2. Anyone who claims to be a psychic that has actual information about the case that only the offender could know is something else—a suspect or a witness.

3. Any professional that supports the use of psychics in criminal investigations suffers from a serious training deficiency, and that person’s investigative abilities should be viewed with the utmost skepticism.

Profilers and Psychics: Special Powers?

What do psychics and psychic abilities have to do with legitimate criminal profilers? Unfortunately, more than one might think. The confusion of psychic ability with criminal profiling has become an increasing problem, as too many profilers have repeatedly suggested over the years that the ability to profile is a special, near psychic intuition that not just everyone has. It is innate, they argue, and not something that can be taught except to those who belong to a particular group or organization.

It should come as little surprise that such profilers also tend to support the use of psychics.

Many profilers have come to enjoy the suggestion that they are among an intellectual elite who have special knowledge and divining powers. This is an image that a number of profilers have actively cultivated in their reach for celebrity. This becomes more problematic as psychics pretend to be profilers, as profilers stump for psychics, and as profilers themselves claim to have near-psychic abilities.

Consider the following prominent examples.

Robert Ressler, FBI Profiler (retired)

In 1992, retired FBI profiler Robert Ressler published his memoir Whoever Fights Monsters (Ressler and Schachtman, 1992).20 There he discussed openly his belief in psychic ability and admitted to consulting with purported psychic Noreen Renier in both his personal and professional life (pp. 238–239). According to Provence (2005):

Former FBI agent Robert Ressler invited [psychic Noreen Renier] to lecture at the FBI Academy in Quantico in the early ‘80s.

“I worked on several cases with her,” says Ressler, now a consultant in Fredericksburg. “She worked with me—not the FBI, because the FBI never condoned working with a psychic.”

He mentions that Renier helped find a downed aircraft carrying FBI personnel and says that she predicted in 1981 that President Ronald Reagan would be shot.

Ressler estimates he’s referred “dozens” of law enforcement officers toRenier. He says that while he doesn’t endorse psychic detective work, he doesn’t refute it, either. “It can be useful. It can produce additional leads. It can solve cases,” he says.

He compares Renier’s work to his own as a criminal profiler: “Sometimes it gets results, sometimes not.”

As for Renier’s psychic abilities, “I don’t think there’s any question,” he says. “She’s been tested at Duke University.” Court TV checks out people very carefully, notes Ressler. “The fact that Court TV is backing her is proof she’s legitimate,” he claims.

Note that as proof of the psychic’s ability, Ressler states that she was tested at Duke University and that Court TV backs her. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning does not hold up to scrutiny. The psychic contacted Duke University herself to be “tested” by undergoing “psychological evaluations and brain pattern monitoring.”

xli

The result was not a confirmation of her psychic ability (Boyajian, 2001). Moreover, being on TV is not a professional credential or an endorsement of ability. Being on TV is at best recognition that one has a view or a personality that sells market share, nothing more.

John Douglas, FBI Profiler (retired)

In 1995, FBI profiler John Douglas published his first memoir, Mindhunter (Douglas and Olshaker, 1995).21 Like Ressler before him, he openly embraced the notions that not only are some psychics legitimate, but there may be a psychic component to criminal profiling. He further takes the position that criminal profiling is not entirely teachable. He describes his own method of rendering conclusions in the following passage (p. 151):

I try to think exactly as [the criminal] does. Exactly how this happens, I’m not sure, anymore than the novelists such as Tom Harris who’ve consulted me over the years can say exactly how their characters come to life. If there is a psychic component to this, I won’t run away from it, though I regard it more in the realm of creative thinking.

Psychics can, on occasion, be helpful to a criminal investigation. I’ve seen it work. Some of them have the ability to focus subconsciously on particular subtle details at a scene and draw logical conclusions from them, just and I try and train my people to do.

Bear in mind that Douglas admits to not knowing how he comes up with his conclusions and name-drops Thomas Harris to legitimize it. Essentially, he has compared what he does to psychic intuition and fiction writing. These are not the hallmarks of informed methodology, let alone objectivity and reliability.

Gypsy Niyan, Psychic;Dr. Micki Pistorious, Investigative

Psychologist;Robert K. Ressler, FBI Profiler (retired)

When FBI profilers advocated the use of psychics and “embraced the possibility that [profiling] involves psychic powers” (Risinger, 2002), the door opened for psychics to start referring to themselves as profilers, and vice versa. The media embraced it, and FBI profilers raised no notable objections. In fact, there is continuing evidence to suggest that they openly endorse this association.

One of the most notable examples is that of Dr. Micki Pistorius from South Africa. She studied under Dr. David Canter at the University of Liverpool and graduated with a Ph.D. in investigative psychology. She is a former journalist and worked for the South African Police Service as an “investigative psychologist” for six years before abruptly retiring in 2000. According to Johnson (1997):

[1994] was when Pistorius joined the [police] service, straight from completing her master’s in psychology at Pretoria university. Until recently this former SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation] journalist was the only person to whom the country’s police could turn to for help whenever a serial killer was suspected.

The University or Pretoria, it should be noted, is a religious learning institution. The Department of Psychology, where Dr. Pistorius studied, defines psychology in quasi-religious fashion:

Psychology is the scientific study of all the aspects of human behaviour within the context of the person with him or herself, with his or her fellow man, with his or her environment and with the Creator.

Dr. Pistorius has repeatedly made claims that she has what can only be referred to as psychic experiences in which she reads the crime scene on a “quantum level” and then searches in her mind for the killer. Her own words explain her methods best (Phirippides, 2002):

[T]here’s usually a wind, a peaceful wind, and I’d just absorb the energy flowing, of the crime scene, because that is the place the person acted out their fantasy. Sometimes after a while, the same day, sometimes a night, sometimes a week, the feeling would be translated….

The abyss is a very dark place in my mind where I managed to, on a mental plane, find these killers. It got so bad at one stage that on a Sunday afternoon I would get a feeling of sticky blood on my hands and I would feel the killer digging his hands into intestines, and then afterwards we’d find a crime scene which compares with that feeling I had….

“Psychic” is a difficult word for me. I can’t predict the future, I can’t hold the clothing of a missing person and tell you where they are. It goes a little beyond. In the beginning I was lured into it without realising how it happened and it bothered me a lot so I started reading about it and I found the answer in quantum physics, in energy vibrations.

When I sit on a crime scene, if the body’s been removed or not, I pick up the vibrations of energy and then it takes a while when this is translated into a pattern… and then I get this feeling. It’s not like a visual picture, I can’t tell you what the killer looks like, but I get the feeling and fantasy.

The manner in which a serial killer carries out his crime is a symbol of his personal agony. It is the job of the investigative psychologist to decipher the particular killer’s fantasy.

Clearly, Dr. Pistorius believes she is having certain metaphysical experiences. Some might call these hallucinations. Some might call them wishful thinking or playing to an audience or market. In any event, none of her “experiences” are verifiable, nor have her profiles and methods been subjected to outside validation or review.

While the word psychic may be difficult for Dr. Pistorius, legitimizing psychics is apparently not. In 1995, she wrote a testimonial letter for Cape Town psychic Gypsy Niyan, as a credential authenticating her work with the police. Niyan produced the letter to journalists in 2003, after she was denied an audience with local police to give assistance on an unsolved series of poisonings. The media published her grievance and her psychically derived profile of the suspect (Williams, 2003, p. 1):

Gypsy Niyan said: “My initial feeling is that he is medium-dark in colouring, so he is not fair or blonde. He is swarthy-looking, stocky and foreign-looking. He might be a South African citizen, but is of foreign extraction. He is someone with a way out to a foreign country if he needs to run.”

Niyan believes his motives were not only money—the extortionist has demanded R500 000 from Pick ‘n Pay—but “some kind of a revenge thing.”…

Niyan produced a testimonial signed by top profiler Micki Pistorius.

The letter, dated 1995, read in part that Niyan “has assisted the South African police in an unofficial capacity in the investigation of the station strangler serial killer case in Cape Town, as well as the River Strangler serial killer case in Durban.”

Pistorius also wrote that “in all these cases (Niyan) was particularly accurate in describing crime scenes.”

The case remains unsolved.

Despite retiring in 2000 owing to “post-traumatic stress” (Phirippides, 2002), Dr. Pistorius apparentl continues to consult with South African police, and they also continue to consult with psychics:

During the investigation into the murder of [Juanita] Mabula and the deaths of the other two women, [Deputy Police Commissioner Marius] Visser has been in contact with a South African psychologist who is regarded as an expert on serial killings in South Africa, Dr Micki Pistorius, to get some guidance on possible ways to approach the investigation of the three young women’s deaths.

He has in the meantime also met a supposed South African psychic, Sue du Randt, who had offered to use her alleged supernatural abilities to help with the investigation, Visser said yesterday.

Her participation has however not yet borne fruit for the investigations either.

According to retired FBI profiler Robert Ressler, it was his involvement with Micki Pistorius in 1994 that enabled her formation of the South African Police Service’s Investigative Psychology Unit in 1995 (Ressler and Schachtman, 1998, p. 213). At the time, she was still a Ph.D. student of Dr. David Canter’s at Liverpool, and a volunteer with the South African Police Service. Ressler often touts her as “one of the

world’s best criminal profilers” in books and interviews (Phirippides, 2002).

Clint Van Zandt, FBI Profiler (retired)

In 2001, Clint VanZandt, a retired FBI profiler and hostage negotiator went on CNN’s Larry King Live to participate in a program called “Are Psychics for Real?” His answer to the question was in step with that of other FBI profilers that have openly discussed the subject (King, 2001):

[A]s an FBI agent, you know, you have to keep your mind open, and I’m not going say I’m a skeptic. I would listen if somebody could help solve a crime, Larry.

When I was in Waco, dealing with David Koresh, and a psychic sent a letter in and said: If you say the word—I think it was Beelzebub—to David Koresh, he will come out. I read the letter, I got a three-by-five card and I wrote that word on the three-by-five card, and I shoved it in front of the face of the negotiator talking to David Koresh on the phone.

The negotiator says, “What am I supposed to do with this?” I said, “Use the word in the sentence.” He said, “I don’t know how to.” I said, “Make up a sentence.” So we did, and we used it.

I would have loved David Koresh to come marching out with those little kids behind him, Larry, but it didn’t happen. And there were situations where we have tried, and it didn’t happen.

But if you exhaust law enforcement investigation, if you exhaust psychological profiling, if the victim’s family or the police say, “I would like to try a psychic,” I would say, anything that can help, and anything that would help a victim’s family, I would not stand in the way.

Like Geberth, Douglas, Ressler, and Pistorius, retired FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt believes that psychics may be real and believes that investigative resources should be wasted indulging them. This belief persists, despite that fact that his experience has shown just how little value they actually have.

The Problem

The media affect the hearts and minds of the public—perpetuating magical thinking and influencing the availability heuristic. A segment of the public is fascinated with or believes in the supernatural—often as an adjunct to personal religious faith. The media have embraced this market by courting psychics, profilers, psychic profilers, and profilers who suggest that they have special powers. Because the media have an effect on what people believe, it is now in a continuous feedback loop with respect to psychics and near psychic profilers: the public believes; the media provide—the public believes more; the media provide more. Clearly, there are also more than a few professional criminal profilers and criminal investigators who are in the dark with respect to understanding how criminal profiling interpretations are actually made—theirs or others. Too many are supplementing this ignorance with claims of special abilities because it intersects with personal belief systems, makes for light work, and most important it sells. They are also training others to think the same way—through their publicized interviews, their memoirs, and their example.

Criminal profiling is not akin to being psychic, and it is not the result of having special, innate abilities. Continually playing to the popular market (the public) by suggesting otherwise has hurt the credibility of the field tremendously. It has also resulted in the waste of untold investigative time and resources.

When investigators and forensic examiners purport that findings are inspired by special abilities or by divine providence, they tend to gain a measure of public credibility and deflect scrutiny from the faithful. This is anathema to critical thinking, analytical logic, and the scientific method, which are vital to reality-based criminal profiling and working cases to a meaningful result.

The Solution

The first step is admitting we have a problem. Faith-based reasoning of any kind, while often important in one’s personal life, has no place in the objective investigation of facts, forensic examinations, or evidence interpretation. It promotes bias and is not susceptible to falsification. To that extent, there is a problem of magical thinking that is endorsed by some profilers, embraced by a particular segment of the public, and perpetuated for profit by the media.

In the short term, the legitimate profiling community must openly separate itself from faith-based reasoning. This means bringing an end to playing up religious and psychic influences with respect to profiling interpretations. It means refusing to endorse magical thinking in any way, shape, or form as it coincides with the popular media. It also means moving toward methods that embrace the scientific method, analytical logic, and critical thinking. In other words, it means we need to be showing our work and embracing methods that are verifiable. There is no tenable reason for doing otherwise. Education is the only long-term solution to the problem of faith-based profiling.

The purpose of this third edition is to move evidence-based criminal profiling closer to a full embrace of the scientific method and all that it can bring to bear on the interpretation of behavioral evidence. We will discuss the role that intuition plays in logic and reason; we will learn how to interpret behavioral evidence rationally and deductively. We will learn principles and practice standards. We will identify what actually works and how, what actually doesn’t work and why, and we will not bow to any particular profiling faith or celebrity. Criminal profiling is not a priesthood—it is a skill that can be taught and learned. Only through serious, critically oriented students does it have the potential to become more reliable and more useful as a forensic discipline.

REFERENCES

BBC (2005) “Church Fights DaVinci Code Novel,” March 15. Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4350625.stm. Accessed December 19, 2006.

Bennett, J. (2007) “TV’s Guide to Torture,” Newsweek, February 27.

Boyajian, R. (2001) “ESP Made Easy,” Independent Florida Alligator, April 21.

Boyle, C. (2007) “She Told Them Boy Was Dead,” New York Daily News, January 18.

Douglas, J., and Olshaker, M. (1995) Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, New York: Scribner.

Duff, E., Koutsoukis, J., and Shanahan, L. (2006) “The Police, the PM and the Psychic,” The Age, April 9.

Ehrman, B. (2005) Misquoting Jesus, New York: HarperCollins.

Geberth, V. (1996) Practical Homicide Investigation, 3rd ed., Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Geberth, V. (2006) Practical Homicide Investigation, 4th ed., Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Gross, H. (1906) Criminal Investigation, Madras, IN: Ramasawmy Chetty.

Hammel, P. (2003) “Police Are Reluctant to Rely on Psychics,” Omaha World-Herald, February 23.

James, S., and Nordby, J. (2003) Forensic Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Investigative Techniques, Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Jefferson, T. (1802) Personal Letter to Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association in the State of Connecticut, January 1, http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpost.html.

Johnson, A. (1997) “The Woman Who Stalks the Killers,” Electronic Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa, October 8.

King, L. (2001) “Are Psychics for Real?” CNN, interview with FBI Profiler Clint VanZandt, aired March 6.

Matera, A. (2005) “Interview with an Exorcist: Fr. James Lebar Talks about ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose,’ ” Godspy Magazine, October 3.

Norton, D. (2005) A Textual History of the King James Bible, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Phirippides, S. (2002) Transcript of interview with Micki Pistorius, Carte Blanche Interactive, www.carteblanche.co.za, July 2.

“Police, Archaeologists Wary of Psychics’ Theory of Smart Mystery.” (2002) The Salt Lake Tribune, September 7.

Provence, L. (2005) “NEWS-Medium Rare: Psychic Offers Help in Rapist Hunt,” The Hook, February 3.

Ramsland, K. (2005) Interview with Roy Hazelwood, Court TV Crime Library, www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/profiling/hazelwood/4.html. Accessed December 28, 2007.

Reiser, M., Ludwig, L., Saxe, S., and Wagner, C. (1979) “An Evaluation of the Use of Psychics in the Investigation of Major Crimes,” Journal of Police Science and Administration, 7(1), 18–25.

Ressler, R., and Schachtman, T. (1992) Whoever Fights Monsters, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Ressler, R., and Schachtman, T. (1998) I Have Live the Monster, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Risinger, M. (2002) “Three Card Monte, Monty Hall, Modus Operandi and “Offender Profiling”: Some Lessons of Modern Cognitive Science for the Law of Evidence,” Cardozo Law Review, November, pp. 101–183.

Sunstein, C. (2005) “Group Judgments: Statistical Means, Deliberation, and Information Markets,” New York University Law Review, June, pp. 962–1049.

WENN (2007) “U.S. Army Invites Sutherland to Give Anti-Torture Speech,” Hollywood.com, February 26.

Williams, M. (2003) “Psychic’s Vision of the Pick ‘n’ Pay Poisoner,” The Cape Argus, July 12, p. 1.

Winslow, B. (2006) “Town Marshal Pledges His Allegiance to Jeffs,” Deseret Morning News, December 9.

____________________________________________

Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 3rd Edition
by Brent E. Turvey, MS, Hardcover, 816 pages, Published by Elsevier Science, 2008; ISBN: 0123741009

Brent E.Turvey, MS, also author of Forensic Victimology with Elsevier Science (2008), can be reached at bturvey@forensic-science.com.

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