One of the things that scares me about the US criminal justice system is that it relies almost entirely on magical thinking and torture to secure convictions. I don’t believe anyone is guilty unless they were literally photographed holding the bloody knife while standing over the body and even then I’ll need some convincing to rule out potential mitigating circumstances.
There was a criminology professor at the university I attended that achieved minor renown for a book he had written on abnormal psychology and serial killers. He often flew around the country providing expert trial testimony for prosecutors.
During the DC sniper attacks the fucking guy must’ve been invited on 50 national broadcasts in the span of a week (and according to him was even tapped by the FBI) to leverage his “expertise” and provide a suspect profile. Every appearance his claims would become more and more outrageous and sensationalized until he was basically just describing Vincent D’Onofrio from that shitty 2000 movie The Cell.
Man, I thought it was funny when the suspect was revealed to be suspect(s) and basically the exact opposite of his expert profile in every way.
I also recall reflecting on the likelihood that this was probably not the first time he had ever been so absolutely wrong. I wonder how many people with harmless sex things or autism or just run of the mill weirdos have been locked up for murder without a shred of physical evidence because a criminal psychologist phantasied a profile to fit them?
The one time I’ve really heard of a profile being accurate is Richard Chase(Big CW if you google him for mutilation, sexual assault and harming children), and thats cause some random cop who took a course in profiling once just made some kinda reasonable guesses like “this guy is probably really fucking filthy and covered in blood!” or “he’s probably white cause if he was black and skulking around white middle class neighborhoods we would have been called immediately” and “he’s probably done something weird and fucked up before this”.
And the profile also literally didn’t even fucking matter or make a difference in the slightest, because he just flat out left handprints and shoeprints all over, plus he was wandering around in a blood caked jacket, so IIRC someone just gave a tip about this dirty blood smelling weirdo going around bothering people and they checked him out. What a success story for the field of criminal profiling!