Five of the six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray are now in police custody

[Jackpine Radical]

45. I was actually replying to MsToad, who DID use the term, and

that was all I was talking about. Sorry about the misplaced remark.

And it's just as well you didn't use the term "sociopath" as a "professional diagnosis" because it doesn't exist as a professional diagnosis. It's neither in the DSMIV-TR or 5 nor ICD9 or 10. And, while it may be conceptually somewhat similar to ASPD, it is not correct to confuse the two as your offered definition does. ASPD is a proper diagnostic category, while "sociopath" is not, and has no standardized definition.

Neither is the term "psychopath" in any currently recognized diagnostic lexicon, although it has been (variously) operationalized by Hare's PCL-R, the PPI-R, and the lesser-known Levenson Psychopathy scale. There is, by the way, an ongoing and rather hot scientific debate on the factor structure of psychopathy (conceived as a trait complex rather than as a disorder). The Hare, for example, seems to break down into 2 major components, each of which has 2 sub-factors, while Lilienfeld's PPI seems to have a 3-factor structure.

All of that is by way of suggesting that, after a couple of decades as a criminal forensic psychologist, having conducted psychological evaluations of something more than 2500 criminals and criminal defendants, I may not be entirely in need of a refresher on a topic I have testified about as an expert in several hundred cases. In fact, I kinda resent it.

And incidentally, I did not mean to suggest that there was no mens rea on the part of the cops in that case. As I have argued at some length elsewhere (see 32 above), I think the cops are fully culpable, knew what they were doing, and at least the driver, surely at least some of the others, and maybe all of them completely meet the "depraved heart" test. Only the fact that they used a method that does not guarantee a kill saves them from 1º murder charges.

Verstanden?