Capital juror questionnaires in death-penalty cases: A study of attitudes, denials, and deceptions.

The Sixth Amendment right to an "impartial jury" should guarantee fundamental fairness that in capital cases may literally be a matter of life and death. For ecological validity, the current study focuses on capital jury questionnaires (CJQs) employed in actual death-penalty cases. Study I examined 248 undergraduates and their responses to death-penalty relevant questions. As an MTurk investigation, Study II consisted of 259 community members potentially eligible for capital trial jury trials. Misrepresentations were operationalized as either denials (concealing their true views) or outright deceptions (dissembling the opposite viewpoint). Both studies found that CJQ items were very susceptible to both types of misrepresentation, irrespective of support-life or support-death views. Nearly 30% of undergraduates openly acknowledged that they would misrepresent close to half their CJQ responses. Overall, community members were much more willing to engage in denials and outright deceptions. The discussion focuses on how CJQs could be improved to promote candor about death-penalty views.

Faking Good: An Investigation of Social Desirability and Defensiveness in an Inpatient Sample With Personality Disorder Traits.

Accurate interpretations of psychological assessments rely heavily on forthright reporting. However, researchers and practitioners recognize that examinees can easily invalidate their test results by underreporting symptoms or overstating positive attributes. Rogers (2008) delineated two distinct but related forms of positive impression management (PIM): defensiveness (denying symptoms and psychological impairment) and social desirability (putting forth an exaggeratedly positive image). Although these two have often been combined in past research, this study sought to investigate each separately via a mixed within- and between-subjects simulation design. Simulation scenarios included a special rehabilitation program for the defensiveness (DF) condition and a competitive job for social desirability (SD). The study used the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012) and recruited 106 inpatients from a psychiatric hospital. As expected, inpatients with prominent personality traits substantially suppressed them under both PIM conditions. Having shown the susceptibility of the PID-5 to intentional distortion, two empirically derived and conceptually based validity scales were next developed to address this important concern. Pending further validation, they might contribute to screening PIM presentations, thus promoting the PID-5's clinical utility. Continued research is needed across multiscale inventories for differentiating PIM presentations.

The MRCI with juvenile detainees: optimizing performance or emphasizing ecological validity?

The Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments (MRCI) are intended to be administered to legally involved youths in a setting free from distractions and stressors with the explicit goal of assessing the examinee's best understanding. However, marked disparities have been observed between juveniles' MRCI performance and their unassisted recall of a representative Miranda warning. We hypothesized that youths' very strong MRCI performance might be partially due to prompts and clarifications used whenever incomplete or ambiguous answers are provided. In this archival study, we systematically re-scored three MRCI instruments from 231 legally involved youths to evaluate their original responses (i.e., non-queried scoring). This approach is viewed as more ecologically valid because actual Miranda warnings are typically provided in a routine manner without assistance following each Miranda component. For the large majority of legally involved juveniles, only small differences were noted between standard and non-queried scoring. However, some dramatic decrements were observed, especially on the Comprehension of Miranda Rights-II (CMR-II). More specifically, 15.7% of CMR-II percentiles dropped precipitously by 60% or more, when using the non-queried scores. The results are discussed within the context of optimized performances versus ecological validity as applied to Miranda evaluations.

Dodging Self-Incriminations: An Examination of Feigned Miranda Abilities on the SAMA.

Forensic assessments must always consider whether examinees are putting forth genuine effort or seeking to feign legally relevant incapacities. Miranda abilities are no exception when a putatively invalid Miranda waiver might result in the full suppression of an outright confession. Using a within-subjects simulation design, jail detainees were administered a representative Miranda warning and two Standardized Assessment of Miranda Abilities (SAMA) measures: Miranda Vocabulary Scale and Miranda Quiz. As expected, detainees have no difficulty in feigning severe deficits in their recall of the Miranda warning and portraying markedly impaired abilities on both SAMA measures. However, using floor-effect detection strategies, several feigning indicators proved effective at identifying likely feigned Miranda abilities. As an ancillary issue, the Inventory of Legal Knowledge was found to be very effective using both the traditional and revised scoring.

Evaluating juvenile detainees' Miranda misconceptions: The discriminant validity of the Juvenile Miranda Quiz.

Most juvenile arrestees in custodial settings waive their Miranda rights almost immediately, and many then provide incriminating statements, if not outright confessions. Forensic practitioners are then asked to provide retrospective determinations regarding whether these waivers were effectuated knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently. At present, the forensic assessment instrument for juvenile Miranda issues consists of the Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments (MRCI)-which as its name implies-focuses mostly on Miranda comprehension with a de-emphasis of Miranda reasoning. In partially addressing this gap, the current study investigated the clinical utility of the Juvenile Miranda Quiz (JMQ) for evaluating key Miranda misconceptions, a critically important component of Miranda reasoning. Using data from 201 juvenile detainees, we evaluated the JMQ's discriminability with regards to cognitive variables and MRCI scales. Many moderate effect sizes in the predicted direction were found for the JMQ Primary Total and Juvenile Total scores. Finally, these detainees were tested using a mock crime scenario with a representative Miranda warning plus a brief interrogation to evaluate whether they would waive their rights, and if so, whether they would confess. Using Miranda measures to predict problematic outcomes (i.e., impaired waivers followed by confessions), the JMQ Juvenile Total proved the most successful. These findings are discussed within the context of the "intelligent" prong of Miranda waivers. (PsycINFO Database Record

Validity and Representative Data of the MRCI With Legally Involved Juveniles.

Recognized for nearly four decades, most juvenile suspects waive their Miranda rights and almost immediately provide self-incriminating evidence. Miranda-specific measures were eventually developed to understand their capacities and limitations. With extensive revisions, the Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments (MRCI) were normed and validated. Beyond reliability, the current study addresses the convergent and discriminant validity of the MRCI. In response to Frumkin and Sellbom's criticism of the MRCI's norms, the current research provides representative data on 245 legally involved juveniles with percentiles to facilitate the interpretation of MRCI data. The current investigation is also the first MRCI study to link directly Miranda comprehension (i.e., the knowing prong) to Miranda reasoning (i.e., the intelligent prong) of waiver decisions.

One American Perspective on the Rights of Accused: An Initial Survey of Miranda Rights in a Broader Context.

In the wake of countless police dramas, commonly held misperceptions endure that the American public knows both Miranda warnings and concomitant rights. Past research has tested public knowledge of Miranda per se, without evaluating additional misconceptions. The current investigation utilizes the European Union's much more all-encompassing safeguards, as delineated in the EU's 2012 Directive and Letter of Rights. Besides knowledge of Miranda, the advisability of these enhanced rights and protections was also assessed. In order to obtain a cross-section of the community, 619 participants were recruited from actual jury pools. Interestingly, they believed that Miranda afforded arrestees many more protections than it actually does. In general, nearly all (>90%) agreed that the accused should be given accurate information (e.g., charges and alleged criminal acts) coupled with an absence of police deception. The potential implications of these findings are discussed as they relate to police practices and due process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.