Mary Catlin

• Master of Science
• Research Assistant at George Mason University

Objective: Some exonerees receive compensation and aid after being exonerated of their wrongful convictions, and some do not. Looking beyond differences in state statutes, we examined possible reasons for biases in receiving compensation (via statutes or civil claims) and other reintegration services. More specifically, we examined how two unique t...

Background False confessions are often the product of an interrogation process, and the method by which an interrogation is conducted likely affects both the rate of truthful confessions and false confessions. An optimal interrogation method will maximize the former and minimize the latter. Objectives The current study was a partial update and ext...

This chapter begins with an outline of legitimacy, as understood through neo-institutional theory. We then apply the concept of legitimacy to the post-incarceration relationship between prosecutors and exonerees by establishing that legitimacy is a scarce resource post-incarceration that prosecutors and exonerees cannot both obtain. Next, we highli...

The wrongful conviction of innocent individuals is a growing problem for those unjustly convicted and the integrity of our legal system, with exonerees often struggling post-exoneration. Yet, too little is known about the long-term impact of wrongful convictions on those unjustly convicted. Thus, we investigated the effect of wrongful conviction on...

Victims of sexual violence are often punished by the legal system when their version of the incident—or fact finders' perception of their version—violates expected sexual violence schemas. We investigated the influence of sexual violence schemas on mock jurors' ability to accurately recognize facts presented in a hypothetical case. Participants ( N...

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objective is to assess the effects of interrogation approach on confession outcomes for criminal (mock) suspects.

The field of psychology–law is extremely broad, encompassing a strikingly large range of topic areas in both applied psychology and experimental psychology. Despite the continued and rapid growth of the field, there is no current and comprehensive resource that provides coverage of the major topic areas in the psychology–law field. The Oxford Handb...

Objectives The “cheating paradigm” is an often-used procedure that randomly assigns participants to cheat (guilty) or not cheat (innocent). However, not all participants conform to their assigned condition. We investigated the potential impact of including non-conformers in analyses under an intent-to-treat model (ITT) on decisions to confess, plea...

Being a victim of a violent crime is a traumatic experience. Sexual victimization, in particular, may be powerful enough to change presumably stable worldviews like just world beliefs. Across two large samples, we examined the influence of sexual victimization on just world beliefs. Results of Study 1 (N = 727) indicated that victims of sexual aggr...

Exonerees are stigmatized, especially those who have falsely confessed. False confessions prompt a series of negative perceptions that ultimately undermine people’s willingness to support reintegration aids. We extended the nascent body of literature on exoneree stigma by exploring first whether false guilty pleas can precipitate a similar series o...

When researchers and helping professionals interview children about a target event, how long should they tolerate silence before delivering another prompt? In other words, at what point are children so unlikely to begin talking again that continued silence would likely be unproductive? To test the reasonableness of a 10-s wait time guideline during...

Individuals often tend to irrationally blame victims for their plight. This research incorporated a bounded rationality framework to examine first-person perspectives (rather than third-person) of both victims’ and nonvictims’ perceptions and judgments of acquaintance and stranger sexual violence. Upon completing individual difference measures, inc...