The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience (39 page)
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Authors: Kent A. Phd Kiehl
However, before the verdict could be read, one or more of the jurors requested permission to restart deliberations. The judge notified the defense and prosecution that the jury was resuming deliberations, and then he sequestered the jurors for the night in a hotel. The judge did not give judicial notice that a signed verdict had been received. It is unclear whether the judge read the verdict on the sheet or not, and the bailiff claimed he had not been able to read it because he did not have his glasses.
The following morning the jury deliberated for two hours and then returned a second verdict: death.
Until the television interview that evening, Greenberg had had no idea that more than one signed verdict was in existence. The next
morning Greenberg appeared before the judge and secured the original verdict sheet voting for a life sentence.
An immediate appeal was filed with the Illinois Supreme Court. The mitigation team felt that the case was going to be overturned and a new sentencing trial would be ordered.
It might be the most convoluted murder case in US history.
As Dugan’s appeal worked its way through the judicial hierarchy, another legislative milestone occurred in Illinois. Citing the large number of wrongly convicted men on death row and the enormous cost of litigating death penalty cases, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill to abolish the death penalty in Illinois on March 9, 2011. And since the bill was not retroactive, Quinn commuted the sentences of the fifteen men on death row, including Brian Dugan, to life without the possibility of parole.
Dugan could have kept the courts tied up for years litigating the errors in his case, but in what is likely one of the only altruistic acts of his life, he voluntarily dropped all his appeals. He was removed from the death row prison and sent back to his home institution, where he will spend the remainder of his life.
The Brian Dugan case illustrates how a heinous crime can alter the lives of so many people. The abduction, rape, and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico forever changed the town of Naperville in DuPage County, Illinois. The crime brought out the best, and worst, from police officers, prosecutors, media, politicians, public defenders, defense attorneys, judges, law professors, and the general public.
The case also illustrates the ways the new neuroscience of individuals with severe emotional and behavioral disturbances challenges our beliefs about free will, punishment, and justice.
Since my experience with Brian, people often ask me if I am
pro death penalty or anti death penalty. I answer that I am “pro prevention.” Treatment programs, informed by the best evidence-based research, are one way to curb the tide of crime and violence that plagues our society. For if society can implement cost-effective treatment programs like that at the pioneering Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center (MJTC), perhaps we can prevent crimes that lead to victims like Jeanine. Indeed, by all accounts MJTC has been a resounding success. I have the utmost respect for the founders, Drs. Michael Caldwell and Greg Van Rybroek. They are true pioneers. They ignored centuries of dogma that psychopaths could not be treated or managed. They developed a treatment program that has saved millions of dollars and untold numbers of lives. They are the true psychopath whisperers.
I’d like to close by thanking the reader for allowing me to share my journey into the mind and brain of the psychopath. I hope this book will stimulate discussion about how to make a better and safer society for everyone. As for me, well, I have more work to do—it’s time for me to go back to prison.
To my wife and daughter
, friends and family, current and former staff and students, collaborators and colleagues, teachers and mentors, and my agent and editor—this book would not have been possible without you. Drinks are on me.
Chapter 1: Maximum Security
1.
Dr. Robert Hare first published the Psychopathy Checklist in 1980: Hare, R. D. (1980). A research scale for the assessment of psychopathy in criminal populations.
Personality & Individual Differences
1 (2), 111–119. He subsequently published the manual for the Hare Psychopathy Checklist in 1991 and a revision of the manuscript in 2003 with updated research findings: Hare, R. D. (1991).
Manual for the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems; Hare, R. D. (2003).
Manual for the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
(2nd ed.). Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.
2.
Porter, S., Brinke, L., & Wilson, K. (2009). Crime profiles and conditional release performance of psychopathic and non-psychopathic sexual offenders.
Legal and Criminological Psychology
14 (1), 109–118.
3.
Monahan, J. D. (1981).
The Clinical Prediction of Violent Behavior
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4.
Hart, S. D., Kropp, P. R., & Hare, R. D. (1988). Performance of male psychopaths following conditional release from prison.
Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology
56 (2), 227–232; Hare, R. D., & McPherson, L. M. (1984). Violent and aggressive behavior by criminal psychopaths. Special Issue: Empirical approaches to law and psychiatry.
International Journal of Law & Psychiatry
7 (1), 35–50.
1.
As of January 1, 2013, the population of the world is approximately 7,100,000,000 (3,550,000,000 males). The rate of psychopathy is between one half of a percent and 1 percent in males or 17,750,000 to 35,500,000 (average 26,625,000). In women, the rate of psychopathy is about one
tenth of 1 percent or 1,775,000 to 3,550,000 (average 2,662,500). Taking the average number of male and female psychopaths from the estimates above, we get a total of 29,287,500 psychopaths in the world today.
http://www.usarightnow.com
2.
Seabrook, J. (2008). Suffering souls.
The New Yorker
, November 10, 2008.
3.
Koch, J. L. A. (1888).
Kurzgefasster Leitfaden der Psychiatrie mit besonderer Rucksichtnahme auf die Bedurfnisse der Studierenden, der praktischen Ärzte und der Gerichtsärzte
. Ravensburg: Dorn.
4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Deuteronomy
; written in Jerusalem in the seventh century BCE in the context of religious reforms advanced by King Josiah (reigned 641–609 BCE) (last visited 11/16/11).
5.
Widiger, T. A., Corbitt, E. M., & Million, T. (1991). Antisocial personality disorders. In A. Tasman & M. Riba (Eds.),
Review of Psychiatry
(vol. 11). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
6.
Murphy, J. M. (1976). Psychiatric labeling in cross-cultural perspective.
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7.
Widiger et al., Antisocial personality disorders.
8.
Pinel, P. (1801).
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. Wien, Austria: Carl Schaumburg.
9.
Very rarely will a patient with a psychotic disorder, like schizophrenia, also meet criteria for psychopathy. I’ve interviewed over one hundred patients with schizophrenia who have been convicted of violent crimes, and only one met criteria for psychopathy using the Psychopathy Checklist. This patient was very odd, and the delusions that pervaded his thinking inflated his ego, made him grandiose, and contributed to the crimes he committed. He did not present like the typical psychopath during our interview, but nevertheless sticking to the rigorous procedure for assessing psychopathy, this patient did score over the diagnostic threshold. It’s been my experience (also shared by many other scientists) that psychopaths rarely experience psychotic symptoms. The one caveat is that psychopaths sometimes experiment with psychedelic drugs. But we don’t consider short-term psychotic symptoms associated with drug use to be of the same quality and severity as such symptoms experienced in patients with schizophrenia.
10.
Rush, B. (1827).
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Prichard, J. C. (1837).
A Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind
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Maudsley, H., & Harry Houdini Collection (Library of Congress). (1875).
Responsibility in Mental Disease
. New York: D. Appleton and Co.
13.
Ray’s
A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity
(1838) was the first systematic treatment in English of the problem of mental illness in relation to crime and punishment (cf. Overholser, 1962). Ray, I. (1838).
A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity
. Boston: Freeman and Bolles.
14.
It’s noteworthy that the term
psychopathy
may have first been used by the Austrian physician and author Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849), who in 1845 wrote the first psychiatric textbook in Austria,
The Principles of Medical Psychology
(English translation 1846). However, it wasn’t until Koch’s work that the term became popular.
15.
Birnbaum, C. (1909). Über Psychopathische Personlichkeiten. Eine psychopathologische Studie.
Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebrens
. Wiesbaden.
16.
The full list of symptoms articulated at Karpman’s first meeting on psychopathy were:
1. Despite normal intellectual functions, behavior is radically abnormal.
2. Mendacity—inability to keep to the truth, without any motive for lying. Also referred to as pathological lying or untruthfulness.
3. Lack insight into how their behavior impacts others.
4. Behavior resistant to change.
5. Punishment ineffective in changing behavior.
6. No evidence of psychotic symptoms (no hallucinations, delusions, or aberrant thinking); this differentiates the psychopath from the individual with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
7. Profound failure in emotional domains; described variously as emotional instability, emotional flatness, reduced expression and range of emotions, emotionally disconnected from others; inability to form long-lasting emotional bonds with people.
8. Inability to feel empathy or love.
9. Guiltlessness—feelings of guilt seem to be lost or absent.
10. Developmental—conditions above are present from childhood, continue to manifest themselves in adolescence and adult life.
11. Delinquency common from an early age.
12. Aberrant and/or promiscuous sexual behavior.
13. Use of substance abuse and alcohol in excess, but use is different from alcoholics and addicts.
17.
Alport, G. (1955).
Becoming
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18.
Cleckley, H. (1941).
The Mask of Sanity
. St. Louis: Mosby.
19.
Hare, R. D. (1980). A research scale for the assessment of psychopathy
in criminal populations.
Personality & Individual Differences
1 (2), 111–119.
20.
Hare, R. D. (1991).
Manual for the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.
21.
Hare, R. D. (2003).
Manual for the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
(2nd ed.). Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.
22.
It is possible to assess psychopathy in the absence of an interview with the client, provided there is sufficient collateral file information. Wong, S. (1988). Is Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist reliable without the interview?
Psychological Reports
62, 931–934.
But see: Serin, R. C. (1993). Diagnosis of psychopathology with and without an interview.
Journal of Clinical Psychology
49 (3), 367–372.
And note that generally to do the Psychopathy Checklist without an interview requires substantial detail in the collateral files.
Grann, M., Langstrom, N., Tengstrom, A., & Stalenheim, E. G. (1998). Reliability of file-based retrospective ratings of psychopathy with the PCL-R.
Journal of Personality Assessment
70 (3), 416–426.
23.
The official scoring criteria for the items on the Psychopathy Checklist are protected by copyright and cannot be disclosed in detail in this book.
24.
Offenders who commit sex crimes are particularly difficult to score on psychopathy. This is especially true in the civil commitment procedures where sex offenders are being considered for lifelong commitment for future dangerousness. Clinicians have to be properly trained in the assessment of psychopathy if they are going to get the diagnosis correct and make the most accurate recommendation. Note that if a sex offender doesn’t score high on psychopathy, that does not mean he is not a high risk to reoffend. Other risk factors need to be considered. And certainly as in the case of sex crimes against children, offenders who meet criteria for pedophilia may pose a different risk for reoffending than those who do not meet criteria for a paraphilia.
25.
Hare, R. D. (1998). The Alvor Advanced Study Institute. In D. J. Cooke et al. (Eds.),
Psychopathy: Theory, Research and Implications for Society
. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. See Livesley, W. J., & Schroeder, M. L. (1991). Dimensions of personality disorder: The
DSM-III-R
Cluster B diagnoses.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
179 (6), 320; Widiger, T. A., & Corbitt, E. M. (1995). Antisocial personality disorder. In W. J. Livesley (Ed.),
The DSM-IV Personality Disorders
. New York: Guilford Press.
26.
Widiger, T. A., Cadoret, R., Hare, R. D., Robins, L., Rutherford, M., Zanarini, M., et al. (1996).
DSM-IV
antisocial personality disorder field trial.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
105 (1), 3–16.
1.
From 2000 to 2010 there were over 16,000 murders per year in the United States. Psychopaths constitute approximately 20 percent of the prison population, and using a linear estimate this would indicate over 3,000 murders are committed by psychopaths each year. Note that some studies suggest that over 44 percent of murders of law enforcement personnel in North America are committed by psychopaths, and Hare estimates 50 percent of violent crime is due to psychopaths (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist
).
2.
Hayes, H. G., Hayes, C. J., Dunmire, A. J., & Bailey, E. A. (1882).
A Complete History of the Life and Trial of Charles Julius Guiteau, Assassin of President Garfield
. Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros.
3.
Ogilvie, J. S. (1881).
History of the Attempted Assassination of James A. Garfield
. New York: J. S. Ogilvie & Company.
4.
Cleckley, H. (1950).
The Mask of Sanity
(2nd ed.). St. Louis: Mosby, pp. 370–371.
5.
Johns, J. H., & Quay, H. C. (1962). The effect of social reward on verbal conditioning in psychopathic and neurotic military officers.
Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology
26, 217–220.
6.
New York Times
, July 2, 1882, interview with Mr. Harold Emmons, lawyer who had lent office space to Guiteau.
7.
Hayes et al.,
Complete History
, p. 83.
8.
Hayes et al.,
Complete History
, pp. 116–117.
