Seattle University Collaborative Projects - International Academy of ...

Valerie R. McClain, Neurology and Physical Therapy Centers of Tampa Bay, USA,(vraemac@aol.com)This presentation will focus broadly on mitigation practices typically applied to death penaltycases from a forensic psychological perspective to include: (1) the identification of commonfactors qualifying as mitigators in the defendant’s life history from a legal standpoint; and (2)how to present these factors when assisting in death penalty cases. As a related and far reachingissue, the application of mitigation on an international level will be addressed by presentingcurrent international human rights perspective on the reformation and restriction of the deathpenalty.“I Hear Einstein and Freud Corresponding in the Ether”J. Tyler Carpenter, FAACP, Hyde Park, USA (jtcarpenter30@hotmail.com)The UN Declaration of Human Rights rose phoenix-like out of the ashes and war crimes trials ofthe shared global tragedy that was World War II. Like all true creativity and progress, thedeclaration was created by the tensions of individual authors' mutual cultural differences,sustained through 60+ years of intermittently incendiary and destructive nationalist conflict andbreakdowns; and now it struggles to manifest itself in the evolution of a common framework forinsuring these individual rights through the collective construction of processes which define thenature, treatment, and therapeutics of criminally and mentally deviant behavior. This brief talkwill introduce the basic elements of this challenging and evanescent process, how it is bothabstracted and concretized, and encourage a group discussion of basic principles.Brain Injuries and Criminal LawIan Freckelton, Monash University (I.Freckelton@vicbar.com.au)The impact of brain injuries (BIs) upon criminal responsibility and criminal culpability has beeninadequately recognised by courts in many countries. Utilising cases, particularly from Australia,the author argues that there needs to be greater consciousness amongst expert assessors and bythe courts of the subtle disinhibiting and potentially exculpating aspects of ABIs. He drawsattention too to the problematic phenomenon of foetal alcohol syndrome and its relevance to thecriminal conduct of numbers of indigenous persons in a number of countries, includingAustralia, as well as to the lack of appropriate treatment and care facilities in many jurisdictionsto persons who neither conform to the mentally ill nor intellectually disabled stereotypes ofcriminal offender of which there is greater awareness and to which there tends to be greaterresponsiveness.492