I wrote about this a fair bit last year. The legal standing of hypnosis does serve for a metaphor of how perceptions change so much — especially with regards to hypnosis. I mean, in the Ukraine, it is illegal to hypnotise groups of people — my self-hypnosis seminars would be banned! Ha!
Add to that — hypnosis is no longer accepted in court cases in Canada and some US states… Yet here today, I want to point out two high profile court cases under way where hypnosis is featuring, and I wonder why…
Ok first up, this article at the QC Times is reporting on the Mohr murder trial and quite near to the article states:
Jurors made the same ruling in Mohr’s first trial after learning that while under hypnosis Mohr recalled Sutton slapping him after she woke and found him in her room. He allegedly punched her in the nose before they ended up in a struggle on the floor.
You do not go under when in hypnosis. I may sound pedantic, the truth is you just do not go under anything. Anyway, I am digressing…
Then this article at WIS News 10 adds this at the end of the article:
Derrick says he never saw the tag number. Investigators put him under hypnosis to see if that would trigger his memory.
In court Tuesday, there was legal wrangling about whether the tape of his hypnosis is admissible. The judge said in his 17 years on the bench he’d never seen hypnosis before, but that prosecutors could present it. We expect that later this week.
Firstly — “to see IF that would trigger his memory” ? What? They did not know? Were they conducting an experiment in the middle of a high profile court case?
Secondly, if the judge had never seen hypnosis in his previous 17 years, then how does he have anything to compare it to, or how does he know what the use of his application is?
I tend to think that if hypnosis is going to be used, then some real educational guidelines need to be given as to how it is admissable. What’s more, if so many other places are finding that it should not be llowed in court, then surely anyone just needs to bring that fact up to render it seemingly useless as evidence.
There are many, many brilliant applications of hypnosis. Heck, I use many of them every single day in my consulting rooms. Yet this sort of use of hypnosis just serves to taint it as a phenomena because there are no parameters and no clearly defined objectives to how it is used and what it’s value is.
It really annoys me to see these wishy-washy type of uses in legal rooms where the public perception is altered and created.
Hahahaha… I just used the expression wishy-washy in my blog. Now there’s a first. 🙂
I got emailed this by Don Robertson earlier today at Facebook and thought I’d post his comment here for you too:
The reason hypnosis is often prohibited in police investigations, e.g., as the UK Home Office recommend, is because of the voluminuous evidence showing that it significantly increases the risk of distorting recalled memories. In 1933, Clark Hull, in the first major scientific textbook on experimental hypnosis, concluded that regression therapy carried a series risk of distorting memory, based on a series of laboratory studies on hypnotic recall. Since the 1980s research in this area has grown more sophisticated and grown to the extent that it influences the written policies of various professional bodies.
Even Hull seems to recognise that this risk is inherent and cannot be prevented merely by phrasing suggestions carefully, etc.
Personally, though a passionate supporter of hypnosis, I think it should probably be kept out of police investigations, and out of courtroom testimony, as our Home Office and the BPS guidelines recommend.
Don
Also, I’d like to add that the delightful Ellie, AKA “The Transparent Hypnotist” covered this a wee while back too – go have a read about what she said in relation to this: http://transparenthypnotist.blogspot.com/2008/01/admissable-hypnosis.html
Thanks for the mention, Adam. Have you heard anymore about the out come of the Moore trial?
Last I heard Ellie, the case had been overturned for second time:
http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2008/01/25/news/local/doc479a2266d1efc594834033.txt?sPos=2