Forensic Evaluation of Deaf Individuals: Challenges and Strategies

ABSTRACT

Forensic evaluation of deaf individuals presents unique challenges due to many examinees’ fund of information deficits, potential for language deprivation, and examiners’ frequent lack of creativity regarding communication methods. This article describes challenges most frequently encountered in competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility evaluations and offers strategies for overcoming them. The value of employing multiple communication methods, especially the use of illustrations, is emphasized. Suggestions also are offered regarding preparing evaluation reports and effectively communicating “key deaf fundamentals” to legal personnel. Encouragement is offered for qualified, sign-fluent professionals to engage in forensic work.

KEYWORDS:

• American sign language
• competency
• criminal responsibility
• deaf
• deaf and hard of hearing
• evaluation
• forensic
• legal
• mental health

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Meghan Fox, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who conducted a literature review that was helpful in preparing this article.

Notes

¹I have sometimes been criticized for accepting work from attorneys who are engaged on the side of a case that is “against” a deaf plaintiff or defendant. Such criticism is typically based on the incorrect assumption that my concluding opinions will therefore also be “against” the deaf person. The responsibility of an expert is to provide opinions in one’s area of expertise without regard to who hires you and whether or not your opinions support or refute the agenda of the side that hired you. Without exception, every time my opinions have differed from what the attorneys who hired me were hoping for, they were grateful for my input and often used it, for example, to negotiate a settlement rather than go to trial. Attorneys value a trustworthy and honest expert, even when the expert’s opinion is unfavorable to their case.

²CDIs are deaf individuals who are adept at communicating with deaf individuals who have compromised language or cognitive abilities. They do so through a combination of native-fluency sign language and very skilled gesturing, miming, and other visual methods of communication. CDIs almost always work in tandem with hearing sign language interpreters. That is, the hearing interpreter listens to what a hearing speaker says and translates that into ASL for the CDI, who then conveys the information in his or her particularly skilled and flexible manner to the deaf consumer. Similarly, statements emanating from the deaf consumer are interpreted and communicated by the CDI (in ASL) to the hearing sign language interpreter, who then translates the CDI’s ASL into spoken English for the hearing consumer.

³Gaining insight into an evaluation subject’s literacy abilities might result from formal psychological testing procedures (see Pollard & Fox, in press, for detailed examples) or from observations of what is evidenced as more or less successful as one is interacting with the subject, implementing and adjusting writing and other methods of communication while inquiring about and observing the individual’s comprehension and preference for various communication methods.

⁴Sign names are single signs that represent someone’s entire name or a proper noun, such as the name of a city, state, company, or school. Sign names often consist of a person’s first initial, often produced at some location on the body that is a unique reference to a characteristic of that person (e.g., their curly hair, a dimple, or a birthmark).