The psychology department welcomes Professor Barbara Spellman as the third speaker in its 2025-2026 lecture series, The Psychology of Law. She will present on "The Psychology of Wrongful Convictions."
In the early 2000’s, as DNA technology greatly improved, the legal community in the United States was dumbfounded by the number of wrongful convictions that DNA evidence revealed. The psychology community was less surprised. Psychology researchers had been reporting for years about, for example, the frailties of eyewitness testimony; impediments to jury fairness, including methods of jury selection, jury size and non-unanimous requirements and the dangerous, biased, “tunnel vision” of police. Yet, for various reasons, that research was largely ignored.
This talk addresses (1) some of the countless ways in which the criminal justice system’s procedures, people and evidence can contribute to wrongful convictions and (2) the evolving relation between law and psychology that may help to ameliorate some of those problems.
Barbara A. Spellman, J.D., Ph.D., is professor of psychology and professor of law at the University of Virginia (UVA). After receiving a law degree from New York University in 1982, then practicing law in New York City for five years, she relocated to the University of California at Los Angeles to study cognitive psychology. Her research focused on memory, analogical reasoning, and causal reasoning.
Spellman’s academic career began in psychology departments (University of Texas at Austin, then UVA), but she soon recognized that psychology had much to say to law students and faculty that wasn’t being said. She moved to the UVA law school in 2008. Now she writes about reasoning by judges and juries, problems with forensic science, the psychological underpinnings of evidence law, and the breadth of the importance of psychology to law in general. She teaches evidence and various courses on the intersection of psychology and law (e.g., Empirical Methods in Law; Negotiation; Behavioral Decision Making and Law). She often teaches a seminar on The Psychology of Wrongful Convictions, the topic of today’s talk.
This event may be used to satisfy the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC206 and PSYC493/494.
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