ABSTRACT

Practicing clinical neuropsychology in the criminal forensic setting is a unique endeavor (Denney & Wynkoop, 2000; Martell, 1992). The examiner must understand specific legal standards for a given jurisdiction and apply his or her understanding of a specific individual’s neurocognitive strengths and weaknesses to those standards. It is also a unique setting because clinicians often see combinations of neuropathology and psychopathology not commonly seen with typical neuropsychological evaluations performed in hospital or community settings (e.g., psychopathy, violence, and extreme cluster B personality disorders). Lastly, all of this activity occurs in the context of the criminal adversarial venue, a situation ripe for symptom exaggeration and a situation that often requires specialized assessment methods. This case exemplifies each of these areas.