Profiling Defendants: Article Analysis

Once the person has been arrested he/she appears in court in order to determined by the court if the person is guilty or not. The defendant is made aware of their legal rights and if they are found not guilty during the initial appearance no further action is needed. However, if the defendant is found guilty then he/she either is released on a bail bond or kept in detention depending on the seriousness of the crime till the trail takes place.

Prejudice can often be formed without one even realize they are prejudiced, many of the characters in 12 Angry Men, have done as such, allowing their prejudice to not allow them fully evaluate the case unbiasedly. Jurors three, ten and seven are swayed by their prejudiced beliefs against the accused, as the deliberate the accused fate, juror ten states “his type are no good”(12 Angry Men). This prejudice which all of them share, justifiers their neglecting to inspect the evidence and testimony given rather than simply accepting it at face value. The film 12 Angry Men conveys how difficult it can be to set aside prejudiced views through jurors three, seven, and ten. The film also enables the reader to see how prejudice such as past experiences, ingnorance or misinformation, and stereotyping can cloud ones judgement.

Defendants generally are given plea bargaining negotiations “for one or more of the following reason: (a) reduce a charge, (b) elimination of a possible waiver to the criminal court, and (c) agreement for dispositional program… Any plea deal must be entered voluntarily and intelligently, or the conviction could be overturned on appeal (Siegel & Welsh, 2009, p. 504) There are many pleas that a defendant may choose to enter in court. Guilty, not guilty, an Alford Plea, and also nolo contendere, also known as “no contest”. A guilty plea is when the defendant is admitting their guilt to the crime, and giving up their rights to the trial, “more than 90 percent of defendants plead guilty (Siegel & Welsh, 2009, p. 504).” When a defendant pleads not guilty they are saying that they believe that they did not do anything wrong. An Alford Plea is when a defendant is pleading guilty but still claims their innocence.

Fred is drunk and driving his dad’s car. Fred is a 21 year old student at Columbia College. Fred rams into a parked car at 10th and Rogers. Thinking no one saw him; Fred moves his car and parks it on an adjacent lot. He sprints to his dorm room in Miller Hall. A neighbor saw the wreck and Fred running to the dorm. Police are called and they arrive ten minutes after the wreck. The officers see several empty beer cans and a bottle of tequila (half full) in the front seat. The tags are traced to Fred’s dad, who is called by police. Dad says that Fred is a student at Columbia College. Police run Fred's record and determine that he has two prior DWIs within the past five years. The third DWI in 10 years is a felony. Police contact

Overall, this study was about experimenting the influence of defendant gender either it is male or female, on juror decision in rating the likelihood of guilty in different types of crime

Judgment is a fundamental function of the human brain. On a daily basis one judges their peers for their actions, whether it be good or bad. In the novel, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, a young boy named Steve Harmon is put on trial for felony murder; he shares his experiences of what is going on throughout the case and how he is being perceived by his peers. The jury has to make a decision, marking Harmon guilty or not guilty. The jury must make a judgment about him, about who he is. Evidently, it is revealed that judgment is determined by one’s traits, actions, and appearance.

Criminal profiling has become a very popular and controversial topic. Profiling is used in many different ways to identify a suspect or offender in a criminal investigation. “Criminal profiling is the process of using behavioral and scientific evidence left at a crime scene to make inferences about the offender, including inferences about personality characteristics and psychopathology” (Torres, Boccaccini, & Miller, 2006, p. 51). “The science of profiling rests on two foundation blocks, basic forensic science and empirical behavioral research. Forensic science includes blood spatter analysis, crime scene reconstruction, and autopsy evidence. Empirical behavioral research identifies offender typologies, relates crime behaviors to suspect

In the United States of America, there is a system referred to as the criminal justice system. This system assists in managing crime and helps to control society through rules and regulations. If these guidelines are disobeyed, there are consequences that follow. These consequences consist of being arrested by law enforcement, going to court to pay a fine or to be sentenced, and even going to jail or prison (Bohm & Haley, 2014).

Leaders of the criminal justice system need to think strategically. A challenge for public administration in the 21st century is to recognize the relevance of these

Criminal profiling is another subject of criminal and forensic psychology, which is probably one of the oldest studies of forensic science. Criminal profiling has been called many things, such as behavioral profiling, crime scene profiling, criminal personality profiling, psychological profiling, and more recently even criminal investigation analysis. Criminal profiling’s history has come from a history of criminal behavior, the study of mental illnesses, and forensic examinations.

Defendants base their Section 2-619 motion to dismiss on Section 2-201 and 2-109 of the Tort Immunity Act, which immunizes public employees from liability where the injury claimed is the result of a "discretionary policy determination."Hascall v. Williams, 2013 IL App (4th) 121131, ¶ 23. A "determination of policy" are those decisions that require the governmental entity or employee to balance competing interests and to make a judgment call as to what solutions will best serve each of those interests. Id. However, although the Defendants may have made a discretionary policy determination, Illinois courts have held that public entities still have a duty to maintain public property in a reasonably safe condition for intended and permitted users.

Psychological research has shown that the attractiveness can influence jury decisions with studies demonstrating an ‘attractive bias’ in that attractive defendants tend to receive more lenient sentences for similar crimes carried out by less attractive people. For example, Castellow et al (1990) aimed to test the effect of the attractiveness of a defendant on guilty verdicts. This was done by conducting a lab experiment in which 145 students were given details of a sexual harassment case and then shown images of a defendant & victim. These images had been previously categorised as attractive/unattractive by a panel as perceptions of attractiveness are mainly consistent between genders and races (Eisenthal et al. 2006). It was found that the combination of an attractive victim & unattractive defendant created the highest percentage of guilty verdicts (83%) when they were asked whether the defendant was guilty of sexual harassment. However, only 41% guilty verdicts were reported when the defendant was

The assigned reading this week by Doob, A. & Kirshenbaum, H., Singall, H. & Ostrove, N., Diamond, S., and Mook, D., discussed different aspects of jury research. Doob & Kirshenbaum (1973), as well as Singall & Ostrove (1975) wrote experimental research papers where they examined a jury's decisions and point of view when it comes to determining a defendants guilt. One discussed this in the terms of whether a jury can determine creditability, and not guilt, based on a defendants past criminal history; while the other considered whether beauty interferes with a jury's decision for a defendant to receive a more lenient or harsher punishment. With these, the paper by Diamond (1997) explained how jury research usually lacks certain characteristics that make these experiments unreliable. Mook (1983) took another standpoint and discussed how things like naturalness of the experiment and generalizability cannot determine reliable results, and that a lack of a real life settings can sometimes produce stronger results.

Summary: Profiling isn’t only used to find suspects; it can also be used in civil courts. Families that may want to rule their loved ones’ death as an accident & not suicide can rely on a profiler to prove this in order to receive benefits from their life insurance. There are two paths to admissions of evidence. First path of attorney tries to introduce the original report prepared by the profiler to demonstrate or propose to a jury that the defendant matches or doesn’t match. When defense attorney introduces a profile, it is to convince that the profiler does not match their client. In the second path profilers report the comparison for two or more crimes, case linkage. In trail courts, judge and juries hear and weight evidence and decide

David Gail Meirhofer’s case was the first of its kind to be solved by using the technique of criminal offender profiling. David was born June 8, 1949 to Eleanor Virginia Meirhofer and Clifford David Meirhofer in Manhattan, Montana.