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Personality Disorders And Psychoses Form Two Distinct Subgroups Of Homicide Among Female Offenders

November 20, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

This study examined circumstances of homicide by women in relation to their subsequent diagnoses. We investigated the written reports of forensic psychiatric examinations on 125 Finnish women who committed murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, or attempted manslaughter during 1982-92. In 86% of the cases the victims were adults, in 15% children. Intimate partners were the victims in 54% of the cases. Stabbing was the most frequent method and a quarrel the most frequent motive. The diagnoses of personality disorders and psychoses formed distinct subgroups. Psychotic women attacked proportionally more children than the personality disordered, who mainly attacked adults. Personality disordered women were more likely to have been intoxicated with alcohol at the time. Future treatment programmes and studies are suggested....

What’s the ROI on Cold Case Investigations?

November 20, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

The field of forensics has grown by leaps and bounds over the past several years, so much so that decades-old crime cases can sometimes be solved with DNA testing and other modern technology. In an effort to increase case clearance rates (and catch bad guys long gone) police departments have slowly opened more ‘cold case’ units over the last 20 years; a phenomenon that has been documented and dramatized on TV.

In a new RAND paper, researchers Robert C. Davis, Carl Jensen, and Karin E. Kitchens set out to measure the effectiveness of cold case units by posing a simple question, though one that’s rarely asked of police work: What’s the return on investment? They write:

[D]espite the increasing number of cold-case units and the expenditure of significant resources to fund them, we know virtually nothing about the return on this investment. Does it make sense...

Relational Distance and Homicide: The Role of the Stranger

November 20, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

I. INTRODUCTION

When the actions of one individual cause the death of another, a homicide has occurred. While that initial statement is simple, homicide is a multi-faceted act involving numerous possible causes and circumstances. As Nettler suggests, there are many routes that lead to culpable killing.' Given the diverse nature of the acts described as homicide, it is little wonder that theoretical writing on the subject as a whole has been spartan. The first step in explaining any phenomenon is adequate classification of the groups of acts sought to be understood.3 In the case of homicide, a number of strategies have been tried in classifying those acts that result in death. Some authors have concentrated on causes of homicide, including psychological imbalance (mental illness, psychiatric disorders), motivations (political, religious, sexual, self-defense, conflict) and methods (poison, shooting, beating). By far the most common tactic has been to study the...

Homicide And Allied Inquiries: In Whose Best Interests?

November 20, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Over a decade ago the present author presented some comments on homicide inquiries in this journal. Since then there have been a number of important developments, including the increase in the number of such inquiries and changes in their constitution and functions. A somewhat neglected area has been soliciting the views of those who chair such inquiries. The present contribution endeavours to remedy this deficiency.

Psychotropic Drugs And Homicide: A Prospective Cohort Study From Finland

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

After a high-profile homicide case, there is often discussion in the media on whether or not the killing was caused or facilitated by a psychotropic medication. Antidepressants have especially been blamed by non-scientific organizations for a large number of senseless acts of violence, e.g., 13 school shootings in the last decade in the U.S. and Finland [1]. In September 2014, there were more than 139,000 hits from Google for the search terms “antidepressant, homicide”, and more than 1,050,000 hits for the terms “antidepressant, violence”. It is likely that such massive publicity in the lay media has already led a number of patients and physicians to abstain from antidepressant treatment, due to the perceived fear of pharmacologically induced violence.

What is the scientific evidence for an association between psychotropic drugs and homicidal behavior? Most of the available studies are case reports that only suggest a coincidental link between violence or homicide and antidepressants...

Psychiatric Characteristics of Homicide Defendants

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Objective The authors examined the rate of mental disorders in an unselected sample of homicide defendants in a U.S. jurisdiction, seeking to identify psychiatric factors associated with offense characteristics and court outcomes.

Method Defendants charged with homicide in a U.S. urban county between 2001 and 2005 received a psychiatric evaluation after arrest. Demographic, historical, and psychiatric variables as well as offense characteristics and legal outcomes were described. Bivariate analyses examined differences by age group and by race, and logistic models examined predictors of multiple victims, firearm use, guilty plea, and guilty verdict.

Results Fifty-eight percent of the sample had at least one axis I or II diagnosis, most often a substance use disorder (47%). Axis I or II diagnoses were more common (78%) among defendants over age 40. Although 37% of the sample had prior psychiatric treatment, only 8%...

Sexual (Lust) Homicide Definitional Constructs, Dynamics, and Investigative Considerations

February 21, 2019October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

This chapter discusses the historical definitional origins of sexual homicide (lust murder), the dynamics of sexual homicide injury, offense definition constructs and their limitations, and key presumptions of injuries associated with sexual homicide offense models. The chapter concludes by arguing for the clarification of concepts, characterizations, linkages, and research into the offense dynamics and offender motivations of sexual (lust) homicides.

INTRODUCTION

Violent interactions in which people are engaged are based on experiences and expectations of reality. For that reason, an understanding of violence and its extremes must consider the offender’s construct of reality. As Skrapec noted, “behavior is the product of one’s own sense of reality regardless of the degree to which that reality matches the objective facts of that person’s life” (1, p. 51–52). The mental representations of an offender’s realities are acted upon and acted out, and they may be presumed to be detectable and specifiable in the...

On the Plausibility of Adaptations for Homicide

February 20, 2019October 13, 2017 by admin

1 Introduction

1. People kill other people in every known culture around the world. The question is why. This chapter presents our theory of Evolved Homicide Adaptations, and contrasts this theory with two competing conceptions of why people kill: The Byproduct Hypothesis and the Evolved Goal Hypothesis. Prior to presenting these competing views of homicide, we discuss the concept of “innateness” from an evolutionary perspective in relation to our conception of evolved homicide adaptations.

2. The Concept of Innateness from the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology The term “innateness” is used to refer to a multitude of different phenomena (see Elman, Johnson, & Bates, 1996). Our conceptualization of innateness falls in line with the standard definition of the innateness of adaptation. It is clear that selection has acted on genes that pattern human ontogeny. These genes provide the blueprint for the development of adaptations. Like the blueprints to a house,...

Religious Affiliations and Homicide: Historical Results from the Rural South

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Durkheim had argued that Protestantism decreased homicidal tendencies while Catholicism tended to increase it. However, other writers have maintained that fundamental Protestantism may increase the tendency toward homicide. This study examines the question by relating religious affiliation data by race obtained from a 1916 Census Department study to homicidal rates in the rural South for 1920, and finds that both Protestant and Catholic affiliations for whites are related to less homicide, while for blacks religious affiliation is unrelated to the homicide rate. For the case of the South, these results tend to refute Durkheim's position that Catholicism increases the tendency toward homicide.

Multiple Homicide Offenders Arbitrary Cut-Off Points and Selection Bias

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

On Christmas Eve in 2008, an unemployed aerospace engineer dressed as Santa Claus entered his ex-wife’s parents’ home in Covina, California and proceeded to shoot indiscriminately at the 25 or so partygoers inside. He then planned to light the house on fire using a homemade blowtorch, but an unexpected explosion foiled his detailed plans and ultimately quashed his plot to escape. The house, now engulfed in flames, burned to the ground and hid the gruesome fates of those inside. Nine people, including the man’s ex-wife and her parents, died as a result of the gunfire and/or fire. The badly burned offender retreated to his brother’s house some 30 miles away and decided the odds were against him ending his own life with a single gunshot to the head.According to police, Bruce Pardo had no prior criminal record or history of violence. To those who knew... nicest guy” who “always had a smile.”

Acute Opioid Withdrawal Precipitated by Blood Transfusion in a 21-Year-Old Male

February 21, 2019October 13, 2017 by admin

To the Editor:

Cancer patients can be among the most challenging groups in which to maintain pain control. At our institution, many cancer patients are managed with patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) opioids, sometimes on an outpatient basis. These patients frequently undergo multiple surgeries as well as courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and, as a result, often require multiple blood product transfusions. According to the American Association of Blood Banks standard,1 blood transfusions should not be co-administered with any intravenous drugs or fluids apart from 0.9% sodium chloride. For many cancer patients, it is difficult or impractical to establish additional intravenous access solely for blood product administration, and therefore, the practice at our institution has been to disconnect any current intravenous infusion for the duration of blood product transfusion. Here, we describe a case of severe opioid withdrawal after disconnection of intravenous hydromorphone PCA and initiation of a blood transfusion....

A History On The Use Of Blood Transfusions In Cycling

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

The recent revelations by the Dutch newspaper De Volksrant concerning the PDM team's doping regime at the 1988 Tour de France raise more questions than they answer, particularly with regard to the use of blood transfusions in 1980s cycling. Here we consider what is known about the use of transfusions in general and some of the questions these latest PDM revelations raise in relation to the history of blood doping in cycling.

Part I

What is known about the use of blood transfusions in sport, particularly in cycling? Most people will be able to tell you that the Finnish middle-distance runner Lasse Virén is said to have made use of transfusions when winning at the Munich and Montreal Olympics in 1972 and 1976. Most people will also be able to tell you that Francesco Moser broke Eddy Merckx's Hour Record in 1984 with the help of blood transfusions....

Medicolegal Assessment Of Blood Transfusion Errors–an Interdisciplinary Challenge.

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Given a current total incidence of erroneously administered blood transfusions of 1:12,000-1:36,000 (AB0 incompatible 1:38,000), the percentage of lethal outcomes ranges between 2 and 5%; i.e. the sole fact of an erroneous transfusion does not mandatorily result in a causal connection with lethal outcome, which can give rise to problems in the medicolegal assessment. We report on the conception and results of a novel interdisciplinary approach to assess the lethal significance of blood transfusion errors. Besides autopsy, histological investigation and immunohistochemical detection of AB0 incompatible foreign red blood cells in autopsy specimens, transfusion medicine investigations offer the opportunity to assess several immunohaematologic features. We assessed the immunohaematologic gel card ("microcolumn") technique for suitability in the forensic assessment of an AB0 incompatible transfusion incident in a septic patient, who had had no history of previous blood transfusions, with lethal outcome. After such an erroneous transfusion had been simulated in vitro, pre-transfusion...

Affective Neuroscience Of Pleasure: Reward In Humans And Animals

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Introduction Pleasure and reward are generated by brain circuits that are largely shared between humans and other animals.

Discussion Here, we survey some fundamental topics regarding pleasure mechanisms and explicitly compare humans and animals.

Conclusion Topics surveyed include liking, wanting, and learning components of reward; brain coding versus brain causing of reward; subjective pleasure versus objective hedonic reactions; roles of orbitofrontal cortex and related cortex regions; subcortical hedonic hotspots for pleasure generation; reappraisals of dopamine and pleasure-electrode controversies; and the relation of pleasure to happiness.

Introduction Affective neuroscience has emerged as an exciting discipline in recent years (Berridge 2003a; Damasio 2004; Davidson et al. 2003; Davidson and Sutton 1995; Feldman Barrett and Wager 2006; Kringelbach 2005, 2008; LeDoux and Phelps 2000; Leknes and Tracey 2008; Panksepp 1991; 1998; Rolls 2005). Many important insights have been gained into brain mechanisms of affect, motivation, and emotion through studies of both animals and humans....

Please Don’t Say Anything: Partner Notification and the Patient-Physician Relationship

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

Commentary by Ronald Epstein, MD, James C. Thomas, PhD, MPH, and Gregory W. Rutecki, MD

On Dr. Singh's recommendation, one of her patients, Mr. Henry Roland, consented to be tested for HIV and had a positive test result, which he feared but suspected. Mr. Roland has a longtime girlfriend, Lisa, whom he sometimes mentions to Dr. Singh. When talking to Mr. Roland about his positive test result, Dr. Singh brought up the topic of notifying Mr. Roland's past and present partners so they could be tested themselves. Mr. Roland refused to agree to tell Lisa, or even allow Dr. Singh to notify the health department so they could call her to suggest that she be tested.

"If she's positive, she'll know it was me. Please don't say anything or she'll know I gave it to her."

Mr. Roland told Dr. Singh that he intended to continue having sexual relations with Lisa,...

y-Hydroxybutyrate Concentrations in Pre- and Postmortem Blood and Urine

November 21, 2018October 13, 2017 by admin

To the Editor:

With γ-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) becoming popular as a drug of abuse in the US and elsewhere (1), we are receiving increasing requests for the analytical determination of GHB in blood or urine in criminal investigations, especially in sexual assault cases. In a recent report of a fatal poisoning with GHB, the victim had a postmortem blood GHB concentration of 27 mg/L (2), and another three GHB-related fatalities were reported with postmortem blood GHB concentrations of 52–121 mg/L (3).

As a part of a validation study before instituting a GC-MS method described by others (4), we tested for GHB presence in a series of forensic specimens submitted routinely to us by law enforcement agencies and medical examiner offices in cases not known to be GHB-related. No GHB was detected (detection limit, 1 mg/L) in the blood or urine of living persons or in postmortem urine, but very substantial concentrations,...