Robert Roberson faces execution in Texas on Oct. 16 for the 2002 homicide of his younger daughter Nikki Curtis. For years, a rising pool of supporters — from the lead detective in his case to Dr. Phil — have argued Roberson is harmless. They are saying docs and prosecutors blamed him for Nikki’s demise by a defective prognosis of shaken child syndrome.
However that was not the one prognosis that despatched Roberson to demise row. After he was discovered responsible, a psychologist named Thomas Allen interviewed him utilizing the Psychopathy Guidelines-Revised. Generally referred to as the “Psychopath Take a look at,” it measures traits like an individual’s impulsivity and lack of regret. Allen gave Roberson a excessive rating, informed the jury he was a psychopath, and in contrast him to Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein. The implication was that Roberson would proceed to be harmful, though Allen stated the chance was a lot smaller if he have been in jail.
There’ll at all times be some mysteries right here: There aren’t any accessible recordings of Allen’s interview with Roberson or the jury’s deliberation in regards to the prognosis. However as Texas prepares to execute Roberson, a rising variety of researchers and legal professionals are questioning whether or not the phrase “psychopath” is getting used too usually in courts, terrifying jurors into harsher punishments based mostly on stereotypes from tv and films.
A Marshall Mission evaluate of courtroom data discovered greater than a dozen demise sentences handed down in instances way back to 1998 that concerned courtroom testimony based mostly on the psychopathy guidelines. As a result of nobody tracks such instances in a complete manner, there are doubtless many extra. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court docket declined to listen to Texas prisoner Quintin Jones’ argument that the guidelines had falsely recognized him as a psychopath. Jones was executed quickly afterward. Like many on demise row, he had admitted his guilt. However Roberson has maintained that he didn’t kill his daughter, elevating the query of whether or not an harmless man was recognized as a psychopath on his path to execution.
The guidelines in query was designed by Canadian psychologist Robert Hare within the Nineteen Seventies. The 40-point scale measures character traits and previous conduct. Hare and his college students discovered that the identical individual may get the same rating from a number of evaluators, despite the fact that some classes, like “superficial allure,” may seem subjective.
Not everybody who scored excessive on the guidelines was essentially violent. Hare himself co-wrote a e-book referred to as “Snakes in Fits” on why psychopaths achieve some company environments. However the public was captivated by the picture of the charming and remorseless killer, as seen most clearly in motion pictures like “The Silence of the Lambs.” A collection of research discovered that folks in jail who scored excessive on the guidelines appeared extra prone to commit new crimes after launch. In 1991, Hare agreed to promote the take a look at to be used by prisons, courts and parole boards.
A 2014 examine discovered the guidelines was exhibiting up everywhere in the U.S. It had turn into so prevalent that it was unimaginable for Hare or anybody else to trace or regulate the guidelines’s use. Prosecutors used excessive scores to ship younger folks from juvenile courts to grownup courts. Parole boards relied on excessive scores to maintain folks in jail. However essentially the most consequential use was in demise penalty trials.
Hare has lengthy advocated for cautious requirements within the guidelines’s use and extra analysis on its affect in courtrooms. He informed a Canadian journal in 2001 that the guidelines shouldn’t be used when the demise penalty is on the desk.
“I’d be appalled if a call of life or demise have been based mostly on the [checklist],” he informed The Marshall Mission, including that it ought to by no means be “the only real, and even the first, foundation for a call with critical penalties for a person.” He lamented the issue of “employed weapons” within the courtroom, however added that he couldn’t be held answerable for each use of his invention, evaluating the guidelines to a blood stress monitor.
The guidelines emerged after an period through which professional witnesses relied on little aside from their very own judgment. Essentially the most well-known was psychiatrist James Grigson of Dallas, usually nicknamed “Dr. Dying.” In 1977, Grigson recognized a person named Randall Dale Adams as an “excessive psychopath,” convincing a jury to ship the person to demise row, just for him to later be confirmed harmless and freed.
Critics of the guidelines say it has not been an answer. Ideally, the prognosis needs to be based mostly on somebody’s well-documented life historical past, however some evaluators fail to get a full image and depend on what prosecutors inform them. The result’s that jurors may get a misunderstanding that the prognosis is impartial. In 2003, a longtime professional witness named Thomas Ryan disavowed his previous use of the guidelines for prosecutors in demise penalty instances. He acknowledged there was no stable proof that the guidelines may predict violence inside prisons, the place folks would spend the remainder of their lives if not executed. Some researchers additionally started finding out therapy choices, undermining the older notion that psychopaths couldn’t be helped.
“The guidelines makes the testimony sound a lot much less subjective than it truly is,” says Texas A&M College professor John Edens, who has studied the guidelines for years and been employed by protection legal professionals in search of to problem it in courtroom. “Your evaluation is at all times contingent on what you recognize or simply imagine about any individual.”
In 2002, Roberson informed the police in Palestine, Texas, that he awoke within the early morning to search out his 2-year-old daughter crying and bleeding. He later informed police that he wiped the blood from her chin, waited till she appeared effectively, and went again to sleep.
When he awoke once more, Nikki was unresponsive, and he took her to the hospital. Nurses and police later described Roberson’s uncommon conduct and lack of emotion, a few of which has since been tied to his autism prognosis. A collection of docs and police concluded Roberson’s daughter died as a consequence of bodily abuse. Within the years since, his legal professionals have cited quite a few docs who argue Nikki was ailing with pneumonia and fell away from bed, inflicting her deadly accidents.
After a jury convicted him of homicide, Roberson met with Allen, a forensic psychologist employed by the prosecution. Allen gave him a rating of 34 on the guidelines, above a standard cutoff rating of 30 for psychopathy. “I feel he’s going to blow up, be explosive, with folks with whom he thinks he can get away with it,” Allen informed the jury. He testified that Roberson confirmed an “absolute lack of regret” — a well known characteristic of psychopathy on the guidelines. He targeted on how Roberson had fallen asleep after first noticing Nikki’s damage.
On the identical time, Allen stated, if Roberson have been sentenced to life in jail, he could be a “minimal” danger to others, partially as a result of he would now not have the ability to spend unmonitored time with kids.
However “he’s nonetheless a psychopath,” Allen stated. For instance the idea, he named others he believed to be psychopaths, together with Hitler, Hussein, and Ted Bundy. He additionally named former President Invoice Clinton, though he stated he was kidding about that instance.
In a 2010 petition, Roberson’s legal professionals unsuccessfully challenged Allen’s testimony as prejudicial and “junk science at its worst.” They wrote that Allen relied on accusations that Roberson sexually assaulted his daughter and one other lady. These accusations have been by no means dropped at courtroom as a consequence of a scarcity of proof; the girl requested prosecutors to dismiss the cost in opposition to Roberson in her case.
Hare himself learn elements of the petition not too long ago and referred to as Allen’s testimony a “gross misuse of the instrument and utterly out of line with the circumstances for the usage of the PCL-R, which have been amply and broadly articulated over the previous 30 years.”
In a Marshall Mission interview, Allen defended his use of the guidelines as cautious and moral. He stated it was not his job to independently examine Roberson’s guilt, and that his testimony in all probability had little impact: “Frankly, while you’ve bought somebody who kills a child, was discovered responsible of that, it doesn’t matter what I say.”
However Allen and Hare agree with critics of the guidelines on one level: Allen’s testimony might have been much less persuasive if Roberson’s personal legal professionals had requested sharper questions in regards to the prognosis at his trial. Psychologist Henry Richards, who has used the guidelines to guage folks in different instances, learn an excerpt of the trial transcript for The Marshall Mission, and referred to as the cross-examination cursory and light-weight. The lawyer accountable, Stephen Evans, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Roberson’s new legal professionals weren’t so certain {that a} fiercer cross-examination would have been sufficient. They wrote of their 2010 petition that “It’s unimaginable to take away the tough stain from the jury field as soon as a psychologist throws the label ‘psychopath’ on the defendant.”
