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We all like to think that we have good memories for events and that if we were to be witness to a crime or incident that we would be able to recall in detail the events of the day. However our memories are not that reliable at all.  This has implications on many levels, but [...]

This is a review of an article from The Times – The dubious rise of ‘neurolaw.  The article links in well with the Raine et al. study.  I’ve written before about studies looking at the effect of brain damage on behaviour and if this could mitigate criminal behaviour and it seems that in some cases [...]

“I remember Mattingburg’s most famous case: the case of the bloody knife. A man was found next to a murdered body, he had the knife in his hand, thirteen witnesses that seen him stab the victim, when the police arrived he said, “I’m glad I killed the bastard.” Mattingburg [...]

The practice of jury selection, choosing those people who are going to be the ‘representative’ group of peers that are there to judge the defendant. Is this process becoming more of a dark art or is it a science based on the lawyers previous experience?
“Despite all the reforms of the latter half of the [...]

In the Crime module in psychology of the courtroom we look at what factors influence juries decisions and one of the studies that I use is the Castello et al. study which looks at how the attractiveness of a defendant in relation to that of the plaintiff may be a variable in a guilty verdict [...]

We look at eye witness testimony in the first year looking at Loftus and Palmer and investigate the reliability of witnesses and what can effect witness recall in the Crime module of the second year. Many studies have investigated the reliability of children as witnesses and this is even a sub-topic in the course; [...]