New research demonstrates that it is quite possible to discern the age and gender of someone posing as a child online. Researchers cite a 2007 case where an alleged pedophile identified in online sting operations said he knew all along he was talking to a middle-aged man rather than a teenage girl and so he was simply role-playing. A jury acquitted him.

For the study in today’s blog, researchers divided 46 undergraduate and graduate students ranging in age from 18 to 38 years of age into two groups with the intent to have them lie about their gender and age in internet chats with each other. One group was told to pretend to be a 13 year old girl in the internet chat of up to 30 minutes that followed. Following the chat, all participants estimated the age and gender of their unknown chat partner.

None of those pretending to be a 13 year old girl was successful in the ruse. No one even thought they were 16 years old or less. When questioned about how they determined their internet chat partner was not a young teenage girl–reasons were given that had to do with both style of communication (i.e., language used, emoticons used, syntax and colloquialisms) and content of communication (i.e., chatting about football teams, shopping or television shows).

So how, say the researchers, can covert operatives become better liars? Likely by learning the content information their gender and age would be likely to know (and reading magazines and watching TV shows those girls would watch). Even better, though researchers imagine the “middle aged men who are covert operatives” would complain, they could practice chatting with adolescent females to observe content and style first-hand. In other words, being an impostor is not a job for an amateur.

When it comes to litigation advocacy, there are likely two ways this study is potentially useful.

First, if you are actually prosecuting someone caught in an internet sting operation–this research would say it’s a good defense for them to say they knew the ‘teenage girl’ with whom they were chatting was in reality, a balding, 45 year old man. This research says we simply are pretty good at intuiting gender and age of our chat partners (or we are not very good at pretending to be what we have not been for years or even ever). Conversely, if you are attempting to prosecute pedophiles through the use of internet chat-room impostors, you might want to assess the credibility of their ‘skills’ by validating their effectiveness in a blind study, to avoid the defense that resulted in the acquittal in 2007.

Second, it reminds us of a way to teach jurors about increasing their likelihood of identifying deception. Tell them to use more than one source of information. Not only the apparent credibility of the speaker (which is often linked to likability), but what does s/he say, how does s/he say it, and does the language used seem to fit the person speaking?

Generally speaking, we are not that good at identifying deception. While we have given you some ways to identify a psychopathic killer, in general, it simply isn’t that easy. But seemingly irrelevant research, like improving covert operatives performance in internet chat rooms, can often give you ideas for helping jurors ‘see’ deception more effectively than they might on their own.

Lincoln, R., & Coyle, IR (2012). No-one knows you’re a dog on the internet: Implications for proactive police investigation of sexual offenders. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.

Image taken by Rita Handrich

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Yes, you saw that right. Some new research mirrors the findings of research conducted three decades ago!

If you were a black criminal defendant in Florida between 2000 and 2010, with an all white jury you were convicted 81% of the time. On the other hand, if you were a white criminal defendant with an all white jury, you were only convicted 66% of the time. If, however, there were African Americans (even just one) on your jury–the difference in conviction rates between black and white defendants almost disappeared.

Justice is not intended to be a random event and one of the researchers speaks to that in a story on the research.

“The findings imply that the application of criminal justice is “highly uneven,” Bayer said, because conviction rates vary substantially with random variation in the racial composition of the jury pool.  

“Simply put, the luck of the draw on the racial composition of the jury pool has a lot to do with whether someone is convicted and that raises obvious concerns about the fairness of our criminal justice system,” Bayer said.”

There are clearly issues that need to be addressed and it likely is not only in Florida. While there are ways to reduce these sorts of verdict discrepancies by raising jurors’ awareness of the need to behave in a non-biased fashion, it is disturbing that the difference between conviction of white and black defendants is demolished by having a single juror of color.

If you are a defense attorney, this is likely a good article as evidence that, even in 2012, your African American client is less likely to get a fair trial with an all-white jury.

Anwar, S., Bayer, P., & Hjalmarsson, R. (2012). The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127 (2), 1017-1055 DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjs014

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Karyn Kay was a 63-year-old single mom who worked as a teacher in midtown Manhattan. Her 19-year-old son (Henry Wachtel) has epilepsy. Their relationship was positive and there was no history of either abuse or violence between them. After Henry cut his arm on a cup during a seizure, Karyn had always held him in her arms when he had seizures in her presence.

As Henry’s seizure commenced, Karyn placed a call to 9-1-1. She reported her son was having a seizure and requested assistance. Fifty-eight seconds into the call, the 9-1-1 operator heard what sounded like an assault with grunting and screams. When the police arrived at the apartment, Henry let them in saying “It was a mistake” and the police found Karyn Kay “sprawled in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.” She was dead.

The police, believing no one could be “accidentally beaten to death” arrested Henry and charged him with murder. Medical experts reviewed the 9-1-1 tape and and report they think Henry was having a ‘grand mal’ seizure and concluded Henry would not have had “conscious intent” to kill or harm his mother.

Contrary to the typically hostile comment sections for internet news articles, comments relating to this story were consistently sensitive and sympathetic to Henry Wachtel’s plight. Instead of cruel skepticism, they raised questions that conscientious jurors might also have in deliberations. One commenter wrote that Henry’s childhood was much more complex than described. An article in the NY Times raises questions about whether there is more to the story. The original article does indicate Henry was on Keppra (a medication that has been linked to increases in rage outbursts) and Prednisone (which also has been associated with rage reactions). He also acted in a film called “Our Time” about disillusioned teens with disturbed parents, which now cannot be separated from what we know of what ultimately happened.

It’s a complex picture but not with the pretty foreword painted by the Daily Beast article. Despite the 9-1-1 call, which shows the violence likely took place during or shortly after the seizure itself, when intent cannot be formed–the reality is that Karyn Kay was killed by her own son. It is a horribly sad story. And if Henry Wachtel is ultimately freed from legal responsibility–is there a risk to society? It’s a question we always ponder in the “my brain made me do it” defenses. And of course, for the huge numbers of people with epilepsy who will never display the slightest hint of epilepsy-related rage or aggression, the cloud of public ignorance surrounding their condition is even more burdensome.

We’ve written on this blog about sex crimes committed while the perpetrator was allegedly asleep or otherwise consciously not aware. Some of those defendants were acquitted and a few were found guilty. Is there a difference in culpability if the ‘offense’ is a sex crime rather than physical battery or murder?

If we think of the comments section as a (non-randomly selected) focus group–it is clear there is sympathy for Henry Wachtel. What about sympathy for Karyn Kay? Will she be seen as having a disturbed relationship with her son, as hinted at by some commenters? Is this just “one of those things”? It certainly is an area where there are no easy answers. We are grateful to the practicing physicians who wrote the original article on how to assess the validity of the “epilepsy defense” and grateful to Karyn Kay for placing the 9-1-1 call [which allows us to hear what was transpiring], as one of the final loving and responsible acts of her life.

Wortzel HS, Strom LA, Anderson AC, Maa EH, & Spitz M (2012). Disrobing associated with epileptic seizures and forensic implications. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 57 (2), 550-2 PMID: 22150773

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