Justices Decline ‘Zoloft Defense’ Case
Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot notes that the Supreme Court denied cert. in the "Zoloft Defense" case, Pittman v. South Carolina.
Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot notes that the Supreme Court denied cert. in the "Zoloft Defense" case, Pittman v. South Carolina.
Walter Olson over at Overlawyered points out that when it comes to school bullies, sometimes the victim isn't so innocent:
Could there be another side of the story, you may wonder? Well, as a matter of fact, there is. To find it you need to consult the local paper, the Northwest Arkansas Times (Scott F. Davis and Dustin Tracy, "Who's the bully?: Police, school records raise questions about claims made by Fayetteville High student", Apr. 3)(via Childs). One may argue about whether Wolfe's own alleged exploits in victimizing other kids, as catalogued in the NWAT article, will or should affect the disposition of his family's legal claims. What seems beyond dispute is that the NYT's story would have been very different in the emotional reactions it evoked -- and much less effective in promoting the particular "cause" it was advancing -- had it included that other side of the story.
School bullying has received a lot of attention in the past few years since it was identified by many experts as "the cause" of school shootings. It has become an intellectual fad in some ways - and like most fads - encourages lazy thinking.
Regular readers of this blog know of my interests about science, law, and policy. The Last Psychiatrist has two great posts (here and here) discussing the recent flap about the cholesterol drug Vytorin and the Enhance study (basics here).
Also off topic, but noteworthy: Ed Silverman at Pharmalot notes that two years after Health Canada warned about prescribing antidepressants to children, a new study reports that the number of children and teens who died by suicide increased 25 per cent after years of steady decline.
As mentioned before, there's been a lot of discussion -and spin- about the dangers associated with antidepressants use in children.
Doug Berman highlights a potential case that might be granted cert by the Supreme Court involving a 30 year sentence for a teen who killed his grandparents when he was 12 years old. Ed Silverman adds an interesting twist to the case: apparently the convicted defendant, Christopher Pittman, was taking the antidepressant Zoloft at the time of the killings. There's been a lot of allegations that antidepressants have the propensity to cause suicides, particularly in children. Yet there's strong evidence against this notion (including an international study). The link between antidepressants and violence against others is even less compelling (View image)
Update: The Last Psychiatrist has this very good post about the misinterpretation of a study examining the perception of violence, kids, and mental illness:
I had thought the entire infrastructure of psychiatry rested on the very foundational idea that psychiatric disorders, especially depression, are responsible for increased risk of violence to the self. And these quotes are even more weird given that they come from Ohio and Indiana-- the two states responsible for over half the increase in female youth suicides in the whole country. You know, the increase that everyone is blaming on antidepressants.But words are lies, and you can use loose language like "violence" and "dangerous" and "youth" and "kids"-- bending its meaning to whatever you need it to mean at that moment-- to make any point you want. The actual arguments for this position can be be flipped when necessary (e.g. Nasrallah saying a school shooting isn't "evil" but "medical illness.") You can do this if you manipulate words, e.g. conflating school shooting and suicide to "violence," and then making "violence" mean what you need it to mean at that moment.
Jane Brody has this piece in the New York Times which discusses recent findings regarding how teenagers perceive and deal with risk:
Is it that teenagers think that they are immortal or invulnerable, immune to the hazards adults see so clearly? Or do they not appreciate the risks involved and need repeated reminders of the dangers inherent in activities like driving too fast, driving drunk, having unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, binge drinking, jumping into unknown waters, you name it?None of the above, says Valerie F. Reyna, professor of human development and psychology at the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell. The facts are quite the opposite. Scientific studies have shown that adolescents are very well aware of their vulnerability and that they actually overestimate their risk of suffering negative effects from activities like drinking and unprotected sex.
That's funny, I thought the psychological community was in agreement that "the characteristics of adolescents" were "as a group, are not yet mature in ways that affect their decision-making." At least that was the position of the American Psychological Association when it came to the juvenille death penalty. Indeed, the APA stated in it's brief that during adolescence the "brain has not reached adult maturity, particularly in the frontal lobes, which control executive functions of the brain related to decision-making." What they failed to mention, however, is that the process of myelination (which is what the APA brief was alluding to) is not complete until around age 50.
A good reason why institutions like APA should not take such strong positions on issues like the juvenile death penalty is because the science is rarely as settled as they make it out to be. We have a lot yet to learn about the human brain and development. Yet, when science enters the legal and political arena it risks its credibility when later discoveries, like those mentioned in the Times article, undermine positions that were so strongly held in the past.
"Children." That is how the soft-on-crime crowd likes to refer to people under 18 when they commit crimes. Of course, when teenagers are victims of crimes, that word is completely inappropriate. The 14- and 16-year-old girls raped and murdered by Jose Medellin were "young women," i.e., adults, according to counsel for Medellin. Is there any other context in modern society where people routinely refer to teenagers as "children"? Try standing in front of a class of high school seniors and saying, "Good morning, children," and see what kind of reaction you get. When we want to refer to all persons below the age of majority, we generally say "minors" or "juveniles."
Of course, teenagers are neither children nor adults. This is a transition stage of life, and we need to consider it separately. On the question of whether teenagers who commit crimes should be tried in regular criminal court or juvenile court, the correct answer is, "It depends." This AP story by Helen O'Neill provides a prime example of a case where juvenile court was absolutely the wrong answer.
As I mentioned before, there's an interesting twist to the sex offender problem which involves the growing recognition that women can be sex offenders as well as men. This story from Interested-Participant, however, gives me pause:
The trial of 41-year-old mother-of-two, Phill Raije Rian, for sexual assault of a 16-year-old neighborhood boy concluded this month. Rian allegedly performed oral sex on the teen, who she knew because he mowed her lawn, on three occasions, each of which lasted between 15 and 30 minutes.
Rian was reportedly sentenced to 23 years in prison for these crimes. Being hard on sex offenders is understandable and right in most cases. But when the crimes involve the facts that this case does, one wonders whether this is the best sentence for all involved, especially when we consider that many offenders convicted of homicide crimes do not receive such lengthy sentences.
Many death penalty proponents are quite skeptical of social scientists and this article (subscription required) in the current issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law should add to that skepticism. The article, titled, Brain Imaging, Culpability, and the Juvenile Death Penalty by Jay D. Aronson of Carnegie Mellon University, at first blush, appears to offer a refreshing opposing view of the death penalty in a journal notorious for its bias on the death penalty issue (more on that in a moment). The abstract begins thusly:
In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18 years. Central to Simmons’s defense was new brain imaging evidence suggesting that the regions of the brain responsible for decision making and impulse control are not as well developed in adolescents as in adults, thereby rendering adolescents less culpable for the crimes they commit. Although these images were not explicitly cited in the Court’s decision, they were hailed by anti-death penalty advocates as the wave of the future. However, legal advocates and scientists should be cautious in using cutting-edge neuroscience for criminal justice purposes for several reasons. First and foremost, no definitive link between brain structure and deviant behavior has been established. Furthermore, very little is known about the developmental threshold that separates juvenile decision-making ability from adultlike decision-making ability.
Sounds promising? But once the reader delves into the details of the actual article, one realizes that this is just one more one-sided, uncritical, biased view of neuroscience and the law. Why? Let's count the ways:
This post by David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy reminded me of a new book that I'm currently reading, The Case Against Adolescence by Dr. Robert Epstein. Since I haven't finished the book I can't offer my opinion on the subject, but if Epstein's argument holds true, then perhaps our efforts of protecting young adults through the increasing maze of laws and regulations is unwise. Additionally, many of the arguments proffered by my fellow psychologists for the prohibition of the juvenile death penalty (and given credence by the Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons) may be faulty. The immaturity that juveniles express about matters as serious as life and death could be a creation of our own modern culture or do not really exist at all. One thing that is likely true is that our understanding of childhood development is surely influenced by our cultural expectations and demands of how we want adolescents to behave. Immaturity may indeed call for more responsibility rather than less.
The new issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law is now available on-line and is freely available for the time being. There are two articles worth noting.
The first profiled here is a new paper examining the myth surrounding the notion of antipsychotic drugs as "mind controlling" agents. That paper has been published here.
The second paper by Thomas Grisso, Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Law-Psychiatry Program titled "Progress and Perils in the Juvenile Justice and Mental Health Movement" explores the ever-changing field that is the juvenile justice system.
Continue reading "Mental Health and the Juvenile Justice System" »
Dr. Helen Smith has this post over at her blog, Dr. Helen, about the quandary that men face when they wish to volunteer for programs like Big Brother. As she suggests, many men are afraid to volunteer for fear of being accused of having an improper interest in other people's children. This is a very unfortunate sign of our times, since so many young boys need good male role models given the decline of active fatherhood in our society. In my experience as a law guardian and counsel in family court, many children -- especially young boys -- are desperately in need of their fathers to set the right examples. This includes how to be a proper gentleman and learning to treat women with respect. I suspect that much of the juvenile crimes that boys engage in (and adult crimes when they grow-up) could be tempered or reduced if more good men were available as role models for young boys. It's easy in these times of biological psychiatry to forget that environment plays a vital role in the development of children. While it is certainly understandable that our society is fearful of men who wish to be involved with other people's children, we must keep in mind that most of these men have good intentions and would not think of harming a child.
Hill Execution. Ron Word of AP reports here that the Supreme Court denied a stay on Wednesday, Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissenting.
Stats. OJJDP has released "Juvenile Offenders and Victims 2006 National Report," available here.
L.A. Skid Row. The Los Angeles Times has this story on a proposed settlement between the City and the ACLU on the enforcement of a city ordinance against sitting, lying, or sleeping on sidewalks.