In Commonwealth v. Dunphe , 153 N.E.3d 1254 (Mass. 2020), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that there was a significant risk that the jury misunderstood a model jury instruction on criminal responsibility. With this, justice demanded that the defendant's conviction be vacated and the

Edited by Basant Puri, Ian H. Treasaden. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 2017. 954 pp, $215. Forensic Psychiatry: Fundamentals and Clinical Practice simultaneously provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of key concepts in the specialty while emphasizing commonly overlooked topics in forensic

In State ex rel. Montgomery v. Kemp , 469 P.3d 457 (Ariz. 2020), the Supreme Court of Arizona ruled the trial court erred in determining Apolinar Altamirano was intellectually disabled. The supreme court found that the trial court failed to conduct an overall assessment of how Mr. Altamirano's

Edited by T Grisso, SL Brodsky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. The Roots of Modern Psychology and Law is a collection of stories about the rise of psychology and law in postwar America. Psychologists Thomas Grisso and Stanley L. Brodksy, who served as editors of the collection, expertly

In United States v. Runyon , 983 F.3d 716 (4th Cir. 2020), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit considered the claim that a lawyer's failure to investigate fully, and present mitigating evidence of, a defendant's brain injury and mental illness constituted ineffective assistance of

In Guerra v. Barr , 974 F.3d 909 (9th Cir. 2020), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) erred when rejecting an immigration judge's (IJ) decision to grant Jose Eduardo Guerra deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture because of

The conflict between knowing and not knowing, speech and silence, remembering and forgetting, is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. This conflict is manifest in the individual disturbances of memory, the amnesias and hypermnesias, of traumatized people. It is manifest also on a social level, in persisting debates over the historical reality of atrocities that have been documented beyond any reasonable doubt. Social controversy becomes particularly acute at moments in history when perpetrators face the prospect of being publicly exposed or held legally accountable for crimes long hidden or condoned. This situation obtains in many countries emerging from dictatorship, with respect to political crimes such as murder and torture. It obtains in this country with regard to the private crimes of sexual and domestic violence. This article examines a current public controversy, regarding the credibility of adult recall of childhood abuse, as a classic example of the dialectic of trauma.

An Alaska superior court terminated parental rights upon finding that the parents had caused mental injury to a child, based partly on testimony from a therapist who had not been qualified as an expert witness. In Cora G. v. State, 461 P.3d 1265 (Alaska 2020), the Alaska Supreme Court concluded that

By Julie D. Trebilock, Samantha K. Weston. New York: Routledge, 2020. 312 pp. $44.95. With Mental Health and Offending , authors Dr. Julie Trebilock and Dr. Samantha Weston endeavor to survey the relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior and the various mechanisms by which the

In Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board , 972 F.3d 586 (4th Cir. 2020), the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether the school board was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C. § 1681(a) (1986