Forthcoming Book

• A book authored by Dr. Cunningham on “Best Practices in Capital Sentencing Evaluations” will be published this summer. This text is part of a series on “best practices” in forensic evaluations being published by Oxford University Press and edited by Drs. Alan Goldstein, Tom Grisso, and Kirk Heilbrun.

Special Issue on Capital Sentencing

• Dr. Cunningham was the guest editor of a 2009 special issue of the Journal of Psychiatry and Law addressing capital sentencing considerations. Invited papers address Atkins evaluations, the prison behavior of former death-sentenced offenders, evaluations of competency for execution, and findings from capital jury research.

Accuracy of Violence Predictions by Capital Juries

• Dr. Cunningham and co-investigators Dr. Jon Sorensen and Dr. Tom Reidy presented the findings of a major study on the accuracy of predictions of future violence made by federal capital jurors. This paper appeared in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. Though judgments that a capital offender will be seriously violent in prison have a major influence on death verdicts, the risk predictions of the federal capital jurors were no better than random guesses. These findings have significant implications for the legitimacy of this factor in individualizing the application of the death penalty.

Practice Recommendations for Atkins evaluations

• In a 2009 paper, Dr. Gil Macvaugh and Dr. Cunningham articulate 25 practice recommendations for assessments of mental retardation in capital cases. This is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the considerations and challenges of these evaluations. Another article addressing the Flynn effect is "in press" with Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.

Pending Scholarship

• Dr. Cunningham is leading ongoing research projects investigating inmate assaults on staff, predictive models for prison violence,  and the risk-predictive accuracy of Texas capital juries.