Commentary: A response to Wortzel and Arciniegas about amnesia and crime.

Amnesia and crime: a neuropsychiatric response.

Bourget and Whitehurst's "Amnesia and Crime," published in a prior issue of the Journal, addresses a conceptually complex and clinically challenging subject. Their treatment emphasizes psychiatric conditions in which memory disturbances may arise that are relevant to criminal proceedings. However, their consideration of the neurobiology of memory, memory disturbances, and the neurobiological ba...

Combat veterans and the death penalty: a forensic neuropsychiatric perspective.

With our nation's present conflicts, a new generation of veterans are returning home, many of whom have substantial psychopathology and are encountering significant barriers in accessing care. Headlines from around the nation reflect that some of these wounded warriors go on to commit offenses that are potentially punishable by death. Existing circumstances speak to the urgency with which the s...

Should Priority Setting Also Be Concerned About Profound Socio-Economic Transformations? A Response to Recent Commentary

I can’t remember Your Honor: Offenders Who Claim Amnesia

Objective: Persons who claim memory loss for the crime of which they are suspected represent a problem for the legal system. When such claims emerge, the court often relies on expert testimonies. Mental health professionals who act as experts in these cases often assume that the memory loss is caused by a combination of strong emotions and abundant substance use (e.g., alcohol). It is also comm...

Symptom validity testing of feigned amnesia for a mock crime.

Perpetrators sometimes claim loss of memory for the crimes they have committed. For the neuropsychologist, the veracity of such crime-related amnesia is difficult to assess. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether Symptom Validity Testing (SVT) can be used to detect feigning of crime-related amnesia. Undergraduate students (N = 39) were instructed to commit a mock crime and aske...