The media has been abuzz in the last two weeks about the capture of Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch national charged in the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores of Peru. van der Sloot was also a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old Alabama resident who disappeared on a high school graduation trip in Aruba.

Stephany Flores was killed in a Lima hotel on May 30th, 2010; five years to the day after Natalee Holloway disappeared. van der Sloot was arrested twice in the Holloway case but was freed for lack of evidence.

Another forensic psychology blog featured an article written by Arthur Grahame in 1935. The article was published in the May 1935 edition of Popular Science magazine and discusses psychopathy. It’s an interesting read, and while some of the information has been disproved, a good portion of the article describes psychopathy within similar constructs of today’s standards.

Interestingly, the article also discusses the dilemma of housing mentally ill persons in prison settings while occasionally treating psychopathic individuals in mental institutions. This is still a common occurrence today; as state psychiatric hospitals continue to close down, the mentally ill are redirected into the correctional system. As a result, there are more mentally ill people in the correctional system than in hospitals.

In its third Miranda ruling this session, the Supreme Court ruled today that a suspect must “unambiguously” state his or her desire to invoke their Miranda rights (referring to the right to remain silent in this case) in order for those rights to be protected.

This case came to the Supreme Court after the lower courts conflicted on whether a confessional statement from a suspect, who remained mostly silent throughout a three plus hour police investigation, was valid in court.

Specifically, in this case, the suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, offered little verbal response throughout his interrogation, but three hours into his interrogation, he implicated himself in the crime by giving an affirmative answer to one of the officer’s questions. He later tried to revoke his confessional statement by stating that he was using his right to remain silent, hence why he was so quiet throughout the rest of the interrogation.