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CLE Seminars

Alcohol Blackout CLE (May 2023)

This May 2023 continuing-education handout reviews alcohol blackouts and their relevance to allegations of sexual offenses. It covers memory impairment, blackout types, toxicology, and legal strategies, and includes research abstracts on alcohol-related behavior, blackouts, memory for events, and estimates of drinking.

ASD and Online Sex Offense: seminar handout

This June 2021 State Bar of Arizona seminar handout reviews autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in cases involving online child pornography and outlines issues for defense attorneys and prosecutors. It covers ASD and sexual development, case preparation and evaluation, plea negotiations, pretrial motions and trial, sentencing, treatment, and appendices with diagnostic criteria and research abstracts.

Assessing and Treating Compulsive Internet Use

These lecture materials survey patterns of excessive internet use and discuss cybersex, online role-playing games, social networking, and online gambling as possible areas of compulsion. The 2013 presentation reviews proposed causes and screening instruments, then summarizes treatment approaches including cognitive behavioral therapy, strategies for managing online behavior, and resources for clinicians working with affected clients.

Child Sexual Abuse Allegations: What Every Attorney Should Know

This is a CLE that Dr. Simpson presented for the State Bar of Arizona. The 96-page seminar handout explores:

  • Disclosing child sexual abuse
  • Behavioral “indicators” of abuse
  • Parental alienation
  • Interviewing children
  • Child eyewitness testimony
  • Memory development
  • Suggestibility
  • Misattribution of memory
  • Schema / script memory
  • Therapeutically recovered memories
  • Principles of memory and forgetting

COUNTERING Counterintuitive Testimony (Adult, handout)

Often prosecution utilizes a counterintuitive “expert” to explain away problematic behaviors on the part of the complaining witness. Dr. Simpson offers a CLE training and 85-page handout on how to effectively challenge their expert.

  • Seven specific strategies for cross
  • A cure for a non-problem
  • Accounting for true, unfounded, or false sexual assault claims
  • Symptoms are not falsifiable
  • Motivations for intentional false reporting
  • Failure to account for confounding variables
  • Confirmation bias
  • The devil is in the details.
  • Critique of:
  • Freeze-Flight-Fight and Tonic Immobility
  • Acting normal following the alleged assault
  • Delayed disclosure
  • Continued relationship with the accused
  • Inconsistent, piecemeal, changing or incomplete memories
  • Recantation

COUNTERING Counterintuitive Testimony (Child, handout)

This State Bar of Arizona handout examines testimony about children’s responses and behavior in child sexual abuse cases. It surveys issues including disclosure timing, changing accounts, continued contact, interviewing practices, possible confounds, confirmation bias, and research relevant to evaluating competing explanations.

Memory in the Courtroom: What Every Attorney Should Know

Eye witness testimony is central to almost every aspect of a criminal proceedings. Yet this central dynamic is rarely taught for attorneys. Dr. Simpson has provided this training for the State Bar of Arizona (ten times), for the Pima County Public Defender’s Office, and multiple legal offices for the Air Force and Marine JAGS. This 199-page seminar handout is packed with research regarding:

  • Principles of memory
  • Memory “failures”
  • Suggestibility
  • Eyewitness memory
  • Cognitive interview techniques
  • Child eyewitness memory
  • The NICHD Standard
  • Alcoholic blackout
  • Childhood amnesic barrier
  • Confirmation bias
  • Context effect
  • Cross-race effects
  • Cryptomnesia
  • Egocentric bias
  • Fading affect bias
  • Self-generation effect
  • Hindsight bias
  • Illusion-of-Truth effect
  • Imagination Inflation
  • Leveling and Sharpening
  • Misattribution of Memory
  • Misinformation effect
  • Mood-congruent memory
  • Schema / Script memory
  • Gist memory
  • Telescoping effect
  • Weapon focus

ONLINE OFFENSE: What Every Attorney Should Know.

This is a particularly timely CLE that Dr. Simpson has taught for the State Bar of Arizona, the Iowa Corrections Officers Association, the Pima County Public Defender’s Office, the Arizona chapter of ATSA, and multiple Air Force legal offices. The 133-page seminar handout is packed with essential information which explores the latest research findings regarding:

  • Pedophilia vs. Hebephilia attractions
  • An overview of child pornography laws and culture
  • Assault / contact sex offenses
  • Important distinctions between noncontact Online Offenders vs. traditional Contact Offenders
  • Why online offenders do the things they do
  • Risk assessment tools specific to Online Offenders
  • Characteristics that increase future risk for Online Offenders
  • Importance of polygraph
  • Juvenile sex offenders
  • Intellectually Delayed and online offences
  • Autistic Spectrum Disorder and online offences
  • The ethology of Internet compulsions

Psychosexual Evaluations: What Every Attorney Should Know

This is a CLE that Dr. Simpson has taught for the State Bar of Arizona (four times) and the Pima County Public Defender’s Office. The 131-page seminar handout explores the latest research regarding:

  • Types of psychosexual evaluations
  • Paraphilias in the DSM-5
  • Viewing time measures of sexual interest
  • Risk actuarials
  • Polygraphs
  • Penile Plethysmograph (PPG)
  • Contact child sex offenders
  • Noncontact online offenders
  • Soliciting / luring
  • Adolescent offenders
  • Female sex offenders
  • Intellectual Disabilities
  • Autistic Spectrum Disorder
  • The “why” of sex offense, including the Coolidge Effect and Flow Phenomenon

Role of the Forensic Psychologist: What Every Attorney Should Know

This is a CLE that Dr. Simpson has presented for the State Bar of Arizona, Pima County Public Defender’s Office, and for Air Force legal offices. The handout contains:

  • The “What, Who, and How” of forensic psychology
  • Expert testimony
  • Daubert standard
  • Trial consultation
  • Types of forensic evaluations
  • An in-depth review of psychological assessment tools

Surprising Findings in Science: What Every Defense Attorney Should Know

  • False/Unfounded sexual assault allegations
  • Alcohol and Memory
  • Female initiated domestic violence against men
  • False/Unfounded child abuse allegations
  • Child sexual abuse “symptoms”
  • Child memory and suggestibility
  • Pedophilia vs Hebephilia
  • Age estimation from photography
  • Child pornography offenders and low rates of re-offense
  • Butner study redux
  • False confessions
  • Hyponpompic delusions
  • Sexomnia