"Denkowski had conducted intellectual disability evaluations of 14 people, two of whom have already been executed, and declared that they were intellectually competent enough to face the death penalty. As part of its reprimand, the Board apparently found that he conducted the assessments in ways that were biased toward making the prisoners appear to have higher levels of intelligence than they actually had.
It is particularly ironic that the Mr. Atkins whose name is on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision has himself been subjected to similar treatment, and there are many cases across the country where that is happening.
When I taught psychological testing, one of the important principles dealt with how to decide whether an answer a person gives to certain questions on a standard IQ test should be accorded 0 points, 1 point, or 2 points. Sometimes, it's clear, and sometimes, it's up to the examiner to judge. It's not hard to imagine that a psychologist brought in by the state and/or one who strongly supports the death penalty might be likely to err (consciously or not) on the side of scoring answers higher rather than lower, thus moving the IQ score away from the "severely limited" range so that they "qualify" for execution. Of course, the reverse could be true for a psychologist who is hired by the defense and/or who strongly opposes the death penalty.[2] But in one case, the outcome is death, whereas in the other, it is life.
It is, then, a dangerous myth that psychological assessments are absolutely objective and that psychologists' conduct of them can be totally free from bias. One step toward a solution is to videorecord all assessment sessions and make them available to the parties on both sides, so that intentional or unintentional manifestations of bias can be more easily spotted and corrected."
PAULA CAPLAN; PH.D. PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. (Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., is a clinical and research psychologist, author of books and plays, playwright, actor, and director. She was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, received her A.B. with honors from Radcliffe College of Harvard University, and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from Duke University. She is currently an Affiliate at Harvard University's DuBois Institute, working on their Voices of Diversity project, and a Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She has given more than 400 invited addresses and invited workshops and has done more than 1,000 media interviews as part of her work in public education and activism...)
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"Many years ago, I heard the heartbreaking story of Jerome Bowden, a very poor, Black man whose IQ had been shown when he was 14 years old to be 59," the Psychology Today post by Paula Caplan published on April 19, 2011 under the heading, "Science Isn't Golden: Matters of the mind and heart; When Psychologists Make Life-or-Death Decisions: How psychologists directly determine who lives and dies in justice system," begins.
"That score put him well into the seriously intellectually disabled category (100 is average, 70 and below generally considered severely impaired)," the post continues.
"On the basis of not one iota of material evidence linking him to the horrific murders of two white women in Columbus, GA, Jerome had been convicted and sentenced to death in 1976. His lawyer was a recent law school graduate appointed by the court and given far too little time and no resources with which to mount a defense.
When the lawyer located the psychologist who had given Jerome the IQ test and documented his serious cognitive limitations years before, the psychologist had moved several hours' drive away and refused to come and testify unless he was paid $1,000. The lawyer asked the court to provide the $1,000, but the judge not only refused to order that the psychologist's charge be paid but also told the lawyer that, since the psychologist would not be present to be cross-examined on his assessment, the lawyer could not enter the assessment results in evidence (a fairly standard ruling about circumstances under which evidence can be presented in a case). The judge then took the further step of ordering that the defense attorney could not use the term "mental retardation" in relation to Jerome during the trial.
Decades later, working with Emmy-winning director Mark Harris on a documentary about the execution of people with such disabilities, I located two of the members of the all-white jury that had sentenced Jerome to death. Both men said that they never suspected that Jerome had these disabilities and only learned the truth at the time they learned that he had been executed. Importantly, both men said that they would not have voted for the death penalty in this case, had they known.
In the course of making this still-unfinished documentary, everyone we have met who knew Jerome has a look of softness and affection cross their face when we mention his name. Jerome, it appears, was a gentle soul, and we have found strong evidence that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted.
In 1986, after ten years of valiant appeals in Jerome's case, the body of last resort, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, chose to disregard the IQ test result of 59 and to bring in a psychologist on the prison system payroll to administer an IQ test. While waiting for their psychologist to do the assessment, they issued a stay of execution.
As a psychologist myself, and one who used to teach graduate students about psychological testing, I was deeply disturbed to see from media coverage at the time that the psychologist clearly misinterpreted the findings when he spoke to the members of the Board - or at the very least, the Board members grossly misunderstood what he told them. In any case, the Board lifted the stay of execution, and early the next morning, the state of Georgia executed Jerome.
That was 1986, so in light of the 2002 Atkins v. Virginia decision, why did the Texas Board reprimand Denkowski? Here is the simple answer: He played a role like the one played in Jerome Bowden's case in 1986. As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that people with serious cognitive limitations cannot be executed, defense attorneys have been identifying people on death row (who are disproportionately poor and Black or Hispanic) who either definitely or probably have such limitations and are asking that their death sentences be overturned. States' attorneys, like the Georgia Board in Jerome's case, bring in their own psychologists to try to find evidence that the prisoners have no such limitations, so that they can be executed.
Denkowski had conducted intellectual disability evaluations of 14 people, two of whom have already been executed, and declared that they were intellectually competent enough to face the death penalty. As part of its reprimand, the Board apparently found that he conducted the assessments in ways that were biased toward making the prisoners appear to have higher levels of intelligence than they actually had.
It is particularly ironic that the Mr. Atkins whose name is on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision has himself been subjected to similar treatment, and there are many cases across the country where that is happening.
When I taught psychological testing, one of the important principles dealt with how to decide whether an answer a person gives to certain questions on a standard IQ test should be accorded 0 points, 1 point, or 2 points. Sometimes, it's clear, and sometimes, it's up to the examiner to judge. It's not hard to imagine that a psychologist brought in by the state and/or one who strongly supports the death penalty might be likely to err (consciously or not) on the side of scoring answers higher rather than lower, thus moving the IQ score away from the "severely limited" range so that they "qualify" for execution. Of course, the reverse could be true for a psychologist who is hired by the defense and/or who strongly opposes the death penalty.[2] But in one case, the outcome is death, whereas in the other, it is life.
It is, then, a dangerous myth that psychological assessments are absolutely objective and that psychologists' conduct of them can be totally free from bias. One step toward a solution is to videorecord all assessment sessions and make them available to the parties on both sides, so that intentional or unintentional manifestations of bias can be more easily spotted and corrected.
Mark Harris's and my film, "American Justice: The Jerome Bowden Story," [3] deals both with the story of Jerome, whose execution inspired the Georgia Association of Retarded Citizens to persuade their state legislature to be the first in the nation to out law execution of people with these disabilities, and with the cases of people with these disabilities currently sweating it out on death row, their lives in the hands of whichever psychologists come to their prison doors.
We hope that everyone who reads this essay and who eventually sees our film will take every possible opportunity to educate others, teaching the citizens of this country that people with severe cognitive limitations are still being executed in the United States of America."
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The post - with footnotes - can be found at:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-isnt-golden/201104/when-psychologists-make-life-or-death-decisions
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
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