PsychWorld

Beginning in the 1960s, the mentally ill were kicked out of mental hospitals to take care of themselves. Without the needed supervision of health care workers, a large portion of individuals with mental disorders became homeless or went to prison. Today, we still don’t have an effective system to deal with the mentally ill. It is therefore encouraging to see that at least one judge, Judge Doug Skemp, is attempting to find an effective way to help non-violent mentally ill defendants according to The Dallas Morning News.

A boyfriend leads his girlfriend over a bridge he knows is unsafe, but she ends up crossing without incident. On a seven-point scale – one being unacceptable and seven being acceptable – how morally acceptable is the boyfriend’s behavior? For most people, this is a no-brainer. It is clearly morally unacceptable for the boyfriend to put his girlfriend into a dangerous situation. However, researchers at MIT have recently discovered that magnetically altering the moral center of your brain can alter your moral judgment to rate this scenario as completely acceptable.

Greg Taylor was recently released from prison after serving a 16-year sentence for a crime he didn’t commit according to News Observer. Taylor was sentenced to life in prison in 1993 for murdering prostitute Jacquetta Thomas. During the trial, another prostitute claimed she saw Thomas with Taylor, although she wouldn’t bet her life on her recollection. A different witness testified she saw the victim with Taylor, although she described a scenario that would have been physically impossible. These eyewitness testimonies supported the police’s suspicion that Taylor was the murderer based on his truck being found near the crime of the scene. An estimated 77,000 people per year are charged with crimes solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony according to a 1989 study by A.G. Goldstien. Would you want eyewitness testimony to be the only reliable evidence against you?