Forensic Psychophysiology - Essay Example

FORENSIC PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY Throughout history, man has sought and found ways to separate truth from deception but, the science of verifying truth based upon psycho-psychological analogues is hardly a hundred years old. In order to ascertain truth and lie, right and wrong and deception and non-deception from the ancient times to the present day, many methods and techniques have been invented and tried out. Forensic science deals with the scientific applications to solve problems that involve the public, or crime. The different methods used are sometimes purely mechanical or psychological and sometimes a combination of both, but they all come down to gaining the knowledge of truth and real facts. Forensic science has many branches because any science has some application to criminal or public matters. This paper will try to shed light on some of the main areas that play an important part in forensic psychophysiology. The forensic scientists usually work in a laboratory setting to analyze the particular types of evidence and preparing written reports to testify in the courts as expert witnesses. In certain cases they may even attend the crime scenes to help in the reconstruction of crime or collect, preserve and help in the recognition of evidence, within their field of specialty. For instance, a forensic chemist may be asked to help in the processing of a clandestine drug laboratory, a forensic anthropologist may help in collecting skeleton remains found in the woods or a trace evidence examiner may be asked to help collect fibers, hairs or any other traces from a homicide scene. Forensic Psychology Many psychologists have contributed towards the development of forensic psychology to help attain its present status in forensic science. In 1895 J. McKeen Cattell conducted some of the earliest research on the testimony of psychology by posing a series of question to students of Columbia University. He asked them to provide a response and rate their degree of confidence in their answers (Cattell, 1895). Cattell’s results showed a surprising degree of inaccuracy; which later inspired Alfred Binet to replicate Cattell’s research, and study the results of other psychological experiments that were related to law and criminal justice (Bartol, 2005). Binet’s work played an important part in intelligence testing. It greatly helped in the development of forensic psychology as it laid the foundation for future assessment tools in the field of forensic psychology. Another psychologist, William Stern carried out an experiment which was related to study witness recall (Stern, 1939). He asked a group of students to summarize a dispute they witnessed between two classmates. Stern discovered that there were common errors among the witnesses and concluded that emotions decrease the accuracy of witness recall. This was also a time when psychologists were being introduced as expert witnesses in criminal trials, throughout Eupore. In the year 1896, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing testified at a murder trial about the effects of suggestibility on witness testimony (Bartol, 2005). Similarly, another psychologist, Hugo Munsterberg made great contributions to the development of forensic psychology. He was an ardent believer of the fact that psychology had great practical application in our everyday life. He published his book On the Witness Stand, advocating the use of psychology in legal matters. Later in 1916, Lewis Terman began applying psychology to law enforcement after revising Binet’s intelligence test and the new Stanford-Binet test started being used for assessing the intelligence of job candidates for law enforcement positions. In 1917, a student of Munsterberg, William Marston found that systolic blood pressure was greatly connected to lying and this discovery led to the design of the modern polygraph detector. But until after World War II, there wasn’t significant growth in American forensic psychology, as psychologist only served as expert witnesses in trials that weren’t perceived as infringing the medical specialist’s credibility. It was only during the past three decades that forensic psychology continued to grow and evolve. And finally in the year 2001, the American Psychological Association officially recognized forensic psychology as a specialization within psychology. Forensic Anthropology Forensic anthropology is the investigative technique which uses multi-disciplinary approaches to uncover the secrets hidden in bones. It is the scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the social, cultural and physical development of humans. Forensic anthropologists use their expertise in physical anthropology, archaeology, allied sciences and anatomy. They use their knowledge of science, biology and the culture to the legal process. Along with the pathologists, homicide detectives and other specialists they identify human remains. In cases of history detectives, a forensic anthropologist uses his skills to identify the cause of death to skeletal remains or identification of victims of mass disaster or international war crimes. Forensic anthropology is relatively a new field and although a few grisly murders of the 19th century were solved with the help of examining the bones of body fragment, but it wasn’t until the 1930’s that the formal relationship between anthropology and police were formally recognized. Later, the World War II and the Korean War helped in developing a database of information that became the basis of identification which is used by anthropologist even today. All this started with the task of identifying dead soldiers who had thorough health records taken before they were shipped off to war. These records included, age, illness history, height and dental records. With the help of this information the researchers were able to discover the names of soldiers and develop a database of skull and bone statistics, which is proving helpful for forensic anthropologists up to this day. Fingerprinting In the 19th century it was observed that the contact between someone’s hand and the surface leaves barely visible marks known as fingerprints. When fine powder is dusted these marks become more visible. But the modern fingerprint identification dates from 1880 when Englishmen Henry Faulds and William James Herschel’s letters were published by the British scientific journal Nature, which described the uniqueness and permanence of fingerprints. Their observations were verified by Sir Francis Galton, an English scientist. Sir Francis Galton then designed the first elementary system which classified fingerprints based on grouping the patterns into loops, whorls and arches. Later the system presented by Galton was improved upon by Sir Edward R. Henry, a London police commissioner. The Galton-Henry system for classifying fingerprints was published in June 1900 and was officially introduced at Scotland Yard in 1901. The Galton-Henry fingerprint classifying system is the most widely used method of fingerprinting to date. Forensic Criminalistis Another important branch of forensic psychophysiology is criminalistics. In 1891, Hans Gross was the first person to use the term criminalistics (Krininalistik), (Gross,1891,1924) but, it was mostly forgotten until 1960. During this period, a number of cooperative movements took place between the criminal justice or criminology department and the police to establish criminalistics and forensic science college programs. This branch of forensic psychology focuses its attention on the up-to-date technologies which the police rely on to capture criminals and to link them through trace evidence to the crime scenes. A criminalist searches for, collects and preserves physical evidence in investigating crime and suspected criminals. In 1910, the world’s first crime laboratory was established by Edmond Locard in Lyon, France. The well known Locard Exchange Principle, which means that every contact leaves a trace; is named after him when he solved a strangling case by fingernail scrapings. During the 1930’s a few major cities in America and the FBI obtained crime labs and by the mid-1970’s; 47 states had crime laboratories. General criminalistics are based on selected phases of analytical chemistry, microscopy, applied physics, biochemistry, technical photography, immunology as well as a number of other basic sciences. The latest technologies related to DNA profiling includes STR and mitochondrial DNA which has helped in designing a new nationwide DNA data bank in order to apprehend the criminals on the run. Today, with the help of less than one-billionth of a gram of DNA, the forensic scientists can extract critical information at a crime scene. This means that saliva licked on stamp, a can or cup that has come into contact with the person’s lip, the sweat band of the hat or a bed sheet containing an individual’s skin cells, can lead to the criminal. The impact of the digital revolution has led to the development of data banks for fired bullets, hair, shoeprints and fingerprints. Criminalists mostly testify about matters related to cross contamination, contamination and chain of custody. Some senior criminalists have developed an interpretive expertise. They provide their expert opinion on drug identification, blood spatter analysis, trace evidence, impression evidence as well as crime reconstruction. Polygraph The literal meaning of the term polygraph means Multiple Writing. It is now often connected to the term Lie Detector, an instrument which simultaneously records different pulsations of physiological activities. All our conscious activities such as pulse, blood volume breathing etc. are regulated by our automatic nervous system called the hypothalamus. This method of using pulse and blood pressure were already being used as an investigative tool in the past as well, but the greatest breakthrough came at the end of the 19th century when in 1895, Cesare Lambroso (1895), also known as the father of criminology, started experimenting with blood pressure and pulse to record the honesty of criminals while they answered certain questions. He called his machine a hyposphygmograph. However, an earlier; though a less successful lie detector or polygraph machine was invented in 1902, by James Mackenzie. In cases of espionage during World War I, a similar devise was used by Harvard psychologist William Marston. In 1921 John Larson, a student of University of California; added the respiration rate to the polygraph machine. By 1939, Leonard Keeler who was one of the founding fathers of forensic science, added skin conductance and an amplifier and all these changes signaled the birth of the polygraph as we know it today. Though this idea was old, but Lomborose and his student Angelo Mosso were the first ones to actually use a physical devise and scientifically document the findings, in order to reveal the changes in pulse and blood volume. The underlying theory behind polygraph is that when a person lies, it causes a certain amount of stress which produces several changes in the involuntary psychological reactions. During this test a number of sensors are attached to the body and as the polygraph measures changes in pulse and perspiration, blood pressure and breathing, pens record the data on graph paper. During the lie detection test, a series of controlled questions are asked by the operator that set the pattern of how an individual responds when giving true or false answers. Then mixed with filler questions, the actual questions are asked. The examination lasts for about two hours after which the data is interpreted by the expert to assess whether the answers were true or false. Forensic Entomology Forensic entomology is the science that studies the insects and their arthropod counterparts which intersects with legal matters. Insects especially blowflies and their larvae play an important part in providing vital clues in crime investigation. The potential for entomology contributions to legal investigations has been known for at least 700 years but it has been defined as a discreet field of forensic science only within the last decade or so. Medico-legal forensic entomology is related to the cases such as rape, suicide, murder and physical abuse. In murder cases this field of forensic psychophysiology helps investigate insect egg lays; and the order in which they appear in dead bodies. This greatly helps in determining the time and location of the death in question. Bergeret near Paris, France was the first Westerner to use insects as forensic indictors around 1850. His methods and materials were quite similar to the main techniques used in medico-criminal entomology even today. This method stated that the successive colonization of a corpse is predictable by succession of arthropod species. Between the years 1883 and 1898, J.P. Megnin in France published a series of articles which dealt with medico-criminal entomology. But in 1235 A.D., a Chinese investigator Sung Tz’u wrote a book entitled The Washing Away of Wrongs (as translated by McKnight in 1981) which recounts the details of probably the first actual medico-criminal entomology case. Later, the first observations on insects and their arthropods as forensic indicators were documented by Reinhard and Hofmann in France and Germany during the mass exhumation in the late 1880s. These two entomologists are recognized as co-founders of the discipline. Different cases were studied before and after the World Wars by entomologists adding to the existing knowledge in this field. Since then basic research and advanced applications to forensic entomology in Russia, Canada and the United States have paved the way for routine casework. Today, researchers throughout the world are using entomology in criminal investigations including high profile cases and murders. Forensic Handwriting Throughout history, scientists, historians, philosophers and artists have been interested in the relationship between handwriting and writer. A vast majority of crimes that take place either involve paper or are committed on paper. Handwriting is an individual characteristic which is largely dependent upon unconscious behavior related to mechanical, physical as well as mental factors. Scientific analysis has been designed to determine the authenticity of a signature or document as everything about that paper can be a potential clue and therefore, questions about the legitimacy of documents are probably as old as documents themselves. Questioned Document Examination or QDE has been a profession since at least 1870.This science is related to any “questioned” document in any signature, handwriting, typewriting, computer crime detection, historical dating, fraud investigation or other marks, whose source or identity is in dispute or doubtful. The most questioned documents are wills, passports, suicide notes, lottery tickets, organized crime, white collar crime, art and sex crime etc. therefore, to check their authenticity certain methods of forensic analysis have been developed. In Cases dating back to 1805 when Shakespeare’s play was forged, in1920’s in Oliver Will case in New York; where the document was changed by tearing away a piece, in 1972 in Mr. Clifford Irving v. Mr. Howard Hughes case, where a hoax document was used to write an autobiography; to the present day, forensic handwriting analysts have carried out extensive tests to prove the possible forgery of the document in question. And in future too, forensic handwriting will continue to do so by putting to rigorous tests such disputed and doubtful handwritings and signatures; to prove their authenticity and bring out the truth. Conclusion Our era today is characterized by crime at the global level. This shows the urgent need for all democratic countries to reform their system to fight crime more effectively, and forensic psychology is undoubtedly an integral part of this system against crime. This field can provide valuable knowledge and information regarding the cause of death. Forensic psychophysiology can also prove helpful from an epidemiologic point, and help in better organization of preventive measures for the greater interest of the community. As forensic science enters the new millennium, harmonization and collaboration in the operation of various forensic systems around the world are of paramount importance, in order to achieve effective prevention of crime. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackerman, M. (1999). Essentials of Forensic Psychological Assessment. NY: Wiley. Bartol, C. R., & Bartol, A. M. (2005). History of Forensic Psychology. In I. B. Weiner & A. K. Hess. Ed. The Handbook of Forensic Psychology. 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