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 common to gather arguments for such an interpretation by interviewing the offender or suspect. However, discriminating between different kinds of amnesia requires the use of sophisticated tests and tasks. Methods: By reviewing clinical, experimental, and psychometric literature, this article addresses several forms of crime-related amnesia and discusses the difficulties that arise when expert testimony about this phenomenon is given. It also emphasizes the importance of technical knowledge about diagnostic quality parameters. Results: A review of the literature shows that dissociative amnesia is not the only or even the most prevalent form of offender amnesia. Experts should at least take the possibility of other forms of amnesia (i.e., organic amnesia; malingered amnesia) into account. Conclusion: Expert testimonies about crime-related amnesia should not rely exclusively on interviews or archival data. Rather such testimonies require tests and tasks combined with good diagnostic interviews (German J Psychia-