NEW ORLEANS, USA - ''Evil'' is not a word most psychiatrists like. But some are trying to find a way to measure it.
During a symposium Thursday at the American Psychiatric Association convention, Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist, asked more than 120 psychiatrists to help create a depravity scale which could be used by the courts to judge criminals.
Every day, judges ask juries to decide whether crimes are heinous, atrocious, cruel, outrageous, wanton, vile or inhuman - aggravating factors which can increase sentences and even lead to the death penalty in some states.
But there are no universal standards to define such terms, Welner told the overflow audience. The interpretations often depend on judges' and jurors' emotions and biases, and politics or media attention can influence whether a prosecutor asks for execution, he said.
In his effort to create a scale to measure depravity in defendants, Welner, who has testified as both a prosecution and defense witness, created a list of 26 indications of intent, actions and attitudes which could be used to rate crimes.
Among the intents are whether the person meant to cause emotional trauma, cause permanent disfigurement, or terrorize or target the helpless. Actions include whether an attack was unrelenting or the attacker prolonged the victim's suffering. Attitudes include blaming the victim, having disrespect for the victim or taking satisfaction in the crime.
Welner is asking judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, psychiatrists and theologians to go to his Web site and rate each indicator for whether they believe it is especially, somewhat or not at all representative of depravity.
The object is to find indicators which all or most experts agree on, a ''consensus morality'' which could be used in court.
Thursday's symposium, titled ''How Psychiatry Defines Evil,'' was held on the final evening of the convention.
Dr. Michael Stone of Columbia University also showed slides of nearly three dozen killers and others whom he considers evil.
A woman who burned one of her three daughters alive and starved another to death was ''at the extreme edge of evil ... one of the most clearly evil persons'' of more than 400 whose biographies he has read, Stone said.
However, he added that ''the bulk of evil on a world scale is committed by ideologues and their followers.'' Wars and persecutions, from the Spanish Inquisition to the fighting in Bosnia, show people are capable of ''bottomless cruelty to those outside the tribe, especially in times of hardship and hunger,'' he said.
Welner also discussed other research that has highlighted problems with trying to measure depravity in criminals, primarily that some traits associated with people who cannibalize, mutilate or torture their victims also can be found in people who don't commit such crimes.
Dr. Cleo Van Velsen, a forensic psychiatrist from London who was in the audience, said another challenge is determining why people commit acts that can be described as evil.
''We know they exist, but not why they are produced,'' she said.
Dr. John L. Young of New Haven, Conn., said he found ''depravity'' a more acceptable term than ''evil.''
Trying to create a fairer, more reliable measurement for a word used in court is one thing, he said, but ''I'm not holy enough, not saintly or godly enough to tamper with evil.''
AP-NY-05-11-01 0252EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.