Court Reports Research Articles

Court Reporters: A Viable Solution for the Challenges of Focus Group Data Collection?

Focus group interviews are a common approach to data collection in qualitative research projects. They are, however, a method with the potential for methodological and pragmatic difficulties, many of which stem from transcribing focus group data from an audiotape. An alternative to postinterview transcription is the use of a court reporter. Advantages found using court reporters were increased accuracy, timely receipt of transcripts, less distraction for focus group facilitators, guaranteed confidentiality, time saved reviewing transcripts, and convenience. Because court reporters do not traditionally work in health research, there might be issues with medical terminology that require diligence on the part of the researcher to ensure that jargon is appropriately identified and transcribed. Using court reporters in rural areas might be cost-prohibitive because of travel expenses. Court reporters offer a viable and worthwhile approach to data transcription, and in our experience, have provided our research team with rich and accurate data.

Quantifying the Accuracy of Forensic Examiners in the Absence of a Diagnostic 'Gold Standard'

Background: In medicine, diagnostic accuracy is usually evaluated against a near-infallible criterion - a standard - for true disease status. Most mental health classifications have no gold standard, however, and absence of agreed-upon truth is common for psycholegal assessments. Aims: To show that even without a gold standard, accuracy of forensic assessments can be quantified using latent class methods and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Method: Using redacted court reports, clinicians rated 156 hospitalized criminal defendants on their Dusky-defined competence to stand trial and on their understanding, appreciation, and reasoning about criminal proceedings. Multiple ratings per evaluee permitted estimation of ROC parameters using maximum likelihood and Bayesian approaches. Results: Raters were highly accurate, with ROC areas averaging 0.967 or more. Conclusions: Accuracy of forensic examinations can be quantified numerically despite the absence of a diagnostic gold standard. Methods used in this study should be applicable to many other psycholegal questions where quantifying accuracy would have scientific and evidentiary value.

Homicide et maladie mentale grave : quelles sont les différences sociodémographiques, cliniques et criminologiques entre des meurtriers malades mentaux graves et ceux indemnes de troubles psychiatriques ?

To establish the social, clinical, and forensic differences between murderers suffering from a major mental disorder and murderers without any psychiatric disorder and, in particular, to compare their respective records of psychiatric symptoms and their respective relationship with their victims. We studied 210 forensic examinations of murderers, the offences related to the murders, and the social and clinical information collected from psychiatric court reports on persons convicted of homicide. Firstly, we identified the socio-demographic, clinical and criminological profiles of 210 murderers from which were distinguished murderers with major mental disorder. Then, we compared the profiles of murderers suffering from a major mental disorder with those of murderers without any mental disease. In other words, we compared 37 persons affected with major mental disorder (schizophrenia, paranoiac delusional disorder, and affective disorder) with 73 persons without any mental disorder. We deliberately excluded subjects with personality disorder or abuse of/dependency on drugs, mental retardation or dementia. With the exception of certain variables, murderers with major mental disorder have the same characteristics as others murderers: young man, living alone, with psychiatric and offence records and substance abuse. Murderers with major mental disorder are older (37.8 versus 31.7 years old) than perpretators without any mental disorder, and the former have a psychiatric record more often than the latter (81 versus 32.9%). In addition, contrary to the latter, the former show clinical symptoms of a psychopathological process. Depression, delusional and suicidal ideas are frequent among murderers with a major mental disorder, whereas the persons without mental disorder quarrel or have a row with their victim just before their crime. The victim was known to the perpetrator significantly more often in the major mental disorder group than in the no mental disorder group (94,6 versus 76,7%, p=0,008). The most major mental disorders' homicide was more likely to be against intimates than strangers. The application of the former article 64 or the present article 122-1 of the French Criminal Code are envisaged more often in the major mental disorder group than in the no mental disorder group. The main difference between murderers with a major mental disorder and murderers without any mental disorder is the psychopathology of the morbid process which underlies the homicide. Impairment of judgment at the time of the crime should be taken into account. As a clinician, we should focus our attention on general risk factors of violence and homicide (male, young, underprivileged class, abuse of alcohol) and on more specific factors (mental disorder co-morbidities...). To these factors should be added the dynamic characteristics of the meeting of the protagonists.

Court Compliance as a Predictor of Postadjudication Recidivism for Domestic Violence Offenders

This study evaluated pre- and postadjudication behavior of 220 male defendants convicted of a domestic violence-related offense using court records and police department data. Our goal was the identification of possible predictors for continued criminal behavior that could pose a risk of further harm to victims. Factors identified as significant predictors of defendant recidivism were having two or more court reports of noncompliance with domestic violence treatment, two or more warrants issued by the court for noncompliance, and two or more reports to law enforcement of new criminal activity involving the defendant. Law enforcement reports were the strongest predictor of recidivism, with an odds ratio of 7.7 and confidence interval of 3.0-19.7. These results illustrate the importance of monitoring multiple dimensions of defendant behavior while under court supervision and of communicating information on noncompliance with victims and advocates to assist in safety planning efforts.

ABA Guideline 10.7 (B)(2): The New Achilles' Heel for Trial Courts and Counsel Handling Death Penalty Cases?

Guideline 10.7 (B)(2) of the American Bar Association's Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases (2003) requires death penalty defense counsel to obtain a complete record of the case. This article explores common problems encountered when lawyers attempt to meet the mandate of Guideline 10.7(B)(2) from the perspective of court administrators, court reporters, and capital-defense attorneys. The author offers solutions for problems with capital-case record procurement and archiving, including define the record, index court proceedings and identify missing transcripts, obtain transcripts from historic key-punched or handwritten stenographer notes, and improve record requests and communication between court staff and defense counsel. The article includes constructive ideas for formal collaboration between courts and criminal-law practitioners with regard to the archiving of capital-case records.

Re: Teenage decision-making in the context of the Jehovah's Witness faith (again).

Re: Teenage decision-making in the context of the Jehovah's Witness faith (again).

Referrals of older adults to forensic and psychiatric intensive care services: a retrospective case‐note study in Scotland

The aim was to determine the number of referrals of people aged 55 and over to three forensic and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) services in Scotland, and to describe their demographic, criminological and psychiatric characteristics. Of a total of 1838 referrals, 63 (3.4%) were aged 55 and over. Of these, 35 were referred for court reports or prison assessment and half had been charged with violent or sexual offences. Most were diagnosed as suffering from a psychiatric disorder at the time of assessment, 11 (31.4%) were admitted for further assessment. There were a further 28 admissions to PICU beds. Older adults form a small but important minority of referrals to forensic and PICU services. A single case register would aid further study in this area. Further exploration of the clinical needs of these patients would be useful.

Finding Their Voice

After a brief review of organizing models and the current legal environment for public employee organizing, the recent successful campaign of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to organizing Illinois state court reporters is chronicled here into five distinct but interrelated stages. Throughout this five-year campaign, which culminated in a successful representation election in Cook County and the union's first collective bargaining agreement, the union relied differentially on traditional organizing campaign tactics, as well as comprehensive and legislative-political campaigns. Although Illinois had a comprehensive public sector law, this case demonstrates public employee organizing campaigns will continue to be hard fought.

Offending in the learning disabled population: a retrospective audit of Tayside learning disability service court reports

The literature regarding offending in the learning disabled population is limited; the effects of normalisation and deinstitutionalisation on offending behaviour is not yet determined. We retrospectively examined 93 court reports completed by the Tayside learning disability service since 1986. Twenty patients were not considered to be learning disabled. Sixty-four of the subjects deemed learning disabled faced charges, the most common being public order offences, which was in common with previous reports. Eighteen per cent of these had a co-morbid mental illness, the majority attracting a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Inpatient assessment, assessment as a day patient or probation were recommended for about two-thirds. Fewer than 50% of cases had no psychiatric recommendation made to the court. There was a predominance of arson and sexual offending. Arsonists were twice as likely as sex offenders to be recommended for inpatient treatment.

Sexuelle Tötungsdelikte

Empirical data are lacking that answer the question of how sexual murderers detained in forensic mental hospitals can be differentiated from those sentenced to prison. Psychiatric court reports and national criminal records on sexual murderers detained in a forensic mental hospital (n=45) were compared with those of prisoners (n=89) regarding diagnostic, criminologic, and prognostic characteristics and criminal recidivism rates after detention. Sexual murderers detained in forensic mental hospitals were characterized by higher psychiatric morbidity and slightly higher risk of future sexual and nonsexual violence. They were released from incarceration less often than the prison inmates but did not show higher sexual or nonsexual violence recidivism rates than those from the prison group.

Violence Against Girls Provokes Girls' Violence

Young women adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court report suffering inordinate amounts of emotional, physical, and sexual trauma in early childhood and adolescence. In addition, adolescent girls' arrests for violent crimes rose dramatically in the 1990s. This article explores the relationship between those two factors. Drawing from interviews with court-involved girls, this article highlights two contexts in which girls committed aggressive offenses: an incidence of intimate violence in a lesbian relationship and a stabbing in self-defense against sexual assault. I argue that the trauma witnessed and experienced from prior childhood and adolescent injuries--much of it experienced in private--contributed to girls' coming to the attention of public authorities.

Schreber's “Bellowing Miracle”

Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness has, in the 100 years since its publication, generated a substantial hermeneutic literature in psychiatry. It is 30 years since the first major content analysis was performed and published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. This study, using a simple frequency count approach to the Memoirs, has revealed that the term "bellowing miracle" (das Brüllwunder) is the most frequently mentioned of all of Schreber's celebrated neologisms. The prevalence of the "bellowing miracle" in the text of the Memoirs, psychiatric charts, and court reports warrants closer examination and attempts at explanation. It is clear that the manifest symptoms of the bellowing miracle had a significant influence on Schreber's treatment and struggle to secure his release from the asylum. It is suggested that adult tic disorder may explain the symptoms of the bellowing miracle.

Observation Compromises the Credibility of an Evaluation

Abstract Impairment evaluations often occur within an adversarial context that involves a claimant or plaintiff vs a defense or benefits system; this adversarial context may precipitate proposals for observations of a clinical evaluation (eg, by an attorney or attorneys for one or both parties, a court reporter, a clinical expert, other consultant; audio or video also may be recorded). Evaluators, judges, and state workers’ compensation systems sometimes allow such observation, but a century of scientific research has reliably demonstrated that any observation changes an examinee's presentation in ways that are not themselves predictable. Such contamination leaves the evaluation results without a scientifically credible analysis, rendering observed evaluations futile exercises at best and sources of misinformation at worst. This article reviews the research in social psychology regarding “social facilitation and inhibition,” which has identified an extensive list of factors that are affected by observation (eg, complexity or novelty of the issue being evaluated, perceptions of the observer as an evaluator, stranger, or ally, number of observers, and other factors). No mechanism allows an evaluator to systematically account for the effects of all such variables for any given evaluation. When observation is mandatory, the evaluator should clearly document and communicate that a credible direct evaluation was rendered impossible, to the detriment of the referring party and the system as a whole.

Occupational Segregation and the Tipping Phenomenon: The Contrary Case of Court Reporting in the USA

The ‘tipping’ phenomenon, whereby an occupation switches from dominance by one demographic group to dominance by another, has occurred in various occupations. Multiple causes have been suggested for such switches, including several related to technological change, both through effects on the performance of the work and through the effect of changing demand for different occupations. The court reporting occupation provides a novel setting for testing the relevance of various proposed causes for the increased feminization of many occupations. In this case, many of the general correlates, including declining wages, are not found; rather the phenomenon is related to the earlier feminization of the clerical workforce and the increased identification of court reporting with clerical work.

THE SELECTION PROCESS IN LOCAL COURT REPORTING

Court reporting is a regular feature of German daily newspapers and is widely read by a third of German newspaper readers. However, only a modest number of the daily trials find their way into the press. The aim of the present study is to identify the process and criteria for selecting local court cases for press coverage. The study is based on four Dresden daily newspapers whose reporting is examined initially by means of content analysis. The results signal a focus on criminal, rather than civil, law matters as well as trials conducted in the place of publication. A second element of the research involved observation of the selection of criminal law matters at Dresden county court by reporters of the four newspapers. It was possible to identify a multi-step selection process as a result of which only a fraction of the trials were reported. Thirdly, selection factors were identified using guided interviews with court reporters and their editors. Significant factors steering selection included the seriousness of the deed, the editorial requirement for diversity of reporting, the degree to which the readers are directly affected by the event, the prominence of the participants as well as the possibility for simple presentation and illustration.

Sexual Sadism and Sadistic Personality Disorder in Sexual Homicide

Controversies exist about the diagnostic validity of sexual sadism and its relation to sadistic personality disorder in sex offenders. The aim of this study was to investigate which diagnostic, developmental, and criminal characteristics differentiate sexual sadistic from non-sadistic sexual homicide perpetrators. Psychiatric court reports on 166 men who had committed a sexual homicide were evaluated regarding psychiatric, sexual and criminal history. Sixty-one offenders (36.7%) with sexual sadism (SeSd) were compared with 105 (63.3%) offenders without this diagnosis (NSeSd). Besides the sexual sadistic symptoms, there were seven factors that discriminated best between the two groups (sexual masochism, sadistic personality disorder, isolation in childhood, multiple sexual homicide, previous rape, previous tendencies for similar behavior, and long duration of the homicidal act). Sexual sadism is connected with circumscribed other characteristics and has to be considered in risk assessment and treatment of sex offenders.

Establishing Children's Wishes and Feelings for Family Court Reports

Current UK government policy is to promote mediation as a way of avoiding family court proceedings and there is a risk, therefore, that welfare report-writing practice may receive less critical attention than it merits. A largely unstudied aspect of this practice is the significance given by practitioners to the child's age. More widely, across a broad academic and policy canvas, preoccupying concerns with children's rights, their ability to participate and their individuality have shifted attention away from questions about the age relatedness of competence. Two sets of findings from recent research are presented in this article: first, statistical data relating to the age of children involved in welfare report enquiries; and, second, data drawn from a qualitative study of how private lawpractitioners establish the wishes and feelings of children of different ages.

Arson: A growing inferno

In a series of 34 arsonists, our survey compares the changing trends in arson to an earlier study carried out ten years ago in the same region in the UK by Rix (1994). The survey is based on pre-trial court reports done by the second author only. Fire-setting offending was predominantly seen in the young male (18-32). Fire-setting started as early as age seven and was seen as late as 63 years of age. More than half of the subjects received some form of family support. At least one third had an ICD-10 (WHO, 1992) diagnosable mental disorder and more than half were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder during the time of reporting. A third of the subjects had a personality disorder diagnosis prior to reporting and another third had disordered personality traits established during the time of reporting. More than half had a psychological motive. Eleven per cent started a fire for excitement with only one for revenge. A third of the subjects were first time arsonists. Sixty-five per cent of arson involved building damage and all the 34 subjects were under the influence of alcohol prior to and during the act of arson. Additionally, there was cannabis use in nearly half of the subjects. Opioids and poly substance abuse were seen in a third of subjects. With the extent of financial and social burden along with risks, attention should be focused on accessing these individuals early to preventing recidivism. More research needs to be undertaken to identify the psychological motives behind fire-setting and to look into the drugs and alcohol problems amongst the younger age groups.

Split Personality: Random Thoughts on Writing for Theater and Film

of that film. But the transcriber-the court reporter, the simultaneous translator, the amanuensis-takes breaks for tea, gets inspired, skips over the boring parts, dawdles, daydreams, stares at shop windows, stubs her toe on an unexpectedly high curb, pours cream in his tea, spoons in sugar to taste, stirs, goes off on a tangent-and returns from that tangent with memories, maps, souvenirs. Someone takes those souvenirs and punches them with holes. Someone puts brads through the highest and lowest of those holes. Someone types out a title page. It says Moby Dick. It says, Sharkey. Or, better still: it says Agamemnon.

XYY chromosome abnormality in sexual homicide perpetrators

In a retrospective investigation of the court reports about sexual homicide perpetrators chromosome analysis had been carried out in 13 of 166 (7.8%) men. Three men (1.8%) with XYY chromosome abnormality were found. This rate is much higher than that found in unselected samples of prisoners (0.7-0.9%) or in the general population (0.01%). The three men had shown prepubescent abnormalities, school problems, and had suffered from physical abuse. The chromosome analysis in all cases had been carried out in connection with the forensic psychiatric court report due to the sexual homicide. However, two men had earlier psychiatric referrals. All were diagnosed as sexual sadistic, showed a psychopathic syndrome or psychopathy according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised [Hare RD, 1991, The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Multi-Health Systems]. Two were multiple murderers. Especially forensic psychiatrists should be vigilant of the possibility of XYY chromosome abnormalities in sexual offenders.