Professor Kappes presents on "Identifying Insanity-Qualified Jurors" at 30th Annual Symposium in Forensic Psychology

Professor Bruno Kappes, Ph.D., recently presented a paper entitled "Identifying Insanity-Qualified Jurors" at the 30th Annual Symposium in Forensic Psychology in San Diego, California, March 26-30, 2014. Professor Kappes and several of his students, including Aaron Silverbook, Elynnie Batin and Hilda Mejia-Aguilar, from the Departments of Psychology and Justice assisted in the data collection and analysis.

It is well documented that typical jurors often neither understand nor trust insanity defenses. Since there exists much evidence of pre-existing negative myths, bias and/or confusion with insanity as a complex legal definition that varies across states, is it possible to obtain a fair trial? If jurors need be death-qualified (a willingness to render a verdict of capital punishment or legal death as sanctioned by state law) for example, should an insanity defense voir dire insist jurors be insanity-qualified (a willingness to render a "not guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI) verdict)? Their research study investigated the knowledge, attitudes, opinions and several essential questions regarding 337 subjects' responses to rendering either a not guilt by reason of insanity (NGRI), guilty but mentally ill (GBMI), not guilty or guilty verdict for James Holmes, accused perpetrator of the July 2012 movie theatre mass murder in Colorado.

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