Our judicial system is heading - where?
By Marianne Haslev Skånland,
professor, University of Bergen, Norway
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This article appeared in the Norwegian newspaper "Drammens Tidende - Buskerud Blad" (DTˇBB), published in the city of Drammen in eastern Norway, on 12 May 1998, while the Swedish alleged serial murderer Thomas Quick was being prosecuted in Stockholm, Sweden, for the murder of the Norwegian girl Therese Johannessen. Therese came from Drammen, and the court case was therefore extensively covered in DTˇBB. In the newspaper coverage, the Drammen police stated that they had learned important methods of investigation from their collaboration with the Swedish police over this case. They would not, however, reveal what these methods are. At the same time as the Stockholm case, the case against Birgitte Tengs' cousin for the murder of Birgitte, in the west coast district of Karmøy/Haugesund, took place in Gulating lagmannsrett (Gulating Appeal Court) in Stavanger. In both cases the prosecution made use of psychological/psychiatric opinions which were strongly criticised for being unreliable and without any basis in science or facts. |
The present case against Thomas Quick is not unique. It is only one in a series of frightening court cases in which anti-scientific psychology is central and is accepted by police and courts. Such use and acceptance is frequently repeated in the claims made by the state or municipality in child care cases; in sex abuse cases; it turns up in custody disputes; and now, as we see demonstrated in the Quick trials: in murder cases. No doubt through educational courses and co-operation with psychologists who give the impression of being able to look into people's minds, our police and our judges seem to have been offered simple solutions to difficult problems and they now talk fluently of therapy, regression, repression, dissociation and traumatic childhood. The question is therefore whether or not such concepts and ditto methods support the purpose of having a public system for the administration of justice: to serve the community by carrying through settlements of right and wrong in a civilised way.
There is ample indication that currently favoured procedure rather leads to the persecution of innocent people and to clearly wrong verdicts. In the present Quick case, DTˇBB has fortunately brought reports from Stockholm, which are thorough and detailed enough for the readers to have some possibility themselves of assessing the procedure and the quality of proofs. For instance: We read that Quick stated at first that he remembered that Therese's hair was white/fair, later that it was black (DTˇBB 30 April 1998). Such examples are difficult to accept as a confirmation that Quick possesses genuine knowledge of the facts of the case. Rather, in something like the expression of the reporter: Quick "gradually meanders in the direction of" the answers. The only aspect of Quick's own performance which strongly correlates with criminality is actually his propensity to lie so much. But then plenty of other people who are not killers are accomplished liars, innocent and mentally normal people included.
In view of the fact that Thomas Quick is claimed to suffer from repressed memories each time he does not give the correct answer about circumstances connected with killings he claims, and is claimed, to have committed, it may be of interest to the Drammen district to follow the appeal court proceedings of the Birgitte Tengs case. There, the police have made use of psychologists in order to develop methods and explanations which have made professor of criminal law Ståle Eskeland sound the alarm. There, too, Kripos (the criminal police), the public prosecutor and a psychiatrist (Ulf Åsgård) claim that the accused has repressed the memory of the killing. Sixty years of research, however, have not been able to show that repression exists (cf. D.S. Holmes (1990): "The Evidence for Repression: An Examination of Sixty Years of Research", in J. L. Singer: Repression and Dissociation, the University of Chicago Press).
Professor Lennart Sjöberg, called as an expert witness by the defence in the lower court, in his account furthermore points out that Åsgård has evidently based his interpretion of the conduct of the accused on the assumption that he is guilty. Also, Åsgård includes such circumstances as the accused having said in January of 1997 that he had eaten corn flakes before going to bed on the night of the murder, while 20 months earlier he had claimed to have eaten fruit and yoghurt - apparently as an example of the accused not being very trustworthy. In the lower court Åsgård stated that the accused had infantile characteristics in his personality. As evidence of this: the fact that he read "Donald Duck" in prison. Now, in the appeal court, we are informed that while in prison he has, in spite of the ordeal of the case, passed a university exam in history with good result - hardly a sign of particularly childish interests or attitudes. The public prosecutor's reaction to this? He is ready with a new interpretation: He finds that the accused has an unusually strong ability to repress unpleasant facts.
We must truly hope that it is not this type of knowledge and methods which are referred to by the Drammen police, and which they claim to have learned and intend to use in other cases (DTˇBB 5 May). Secret methods smack of secret police. Rather, effort should be concentrated on tasks described in two excellent letters to the editor (DTˇBB 30 April by Ivar Larsen and 4 May by Eva Hansen): We must get quack psychology out and away from all its strongholds and positions of power, and all who have taken part in the tragic miscarriages of justice must be called to account.