of witnesses and on confessions, and the prevention of crime. In 1900,
Alfred Binet, the French psychologist who developed the first standard-
ized intelligence test, the Stanford-Binet, testified in court about the
use of psychological tests with delinquents and criminals. These tests
were later used in large scale for screening potential police as well as
criminals and by World War II in the 1940's, were used in many different
ways to classify and design treatment for soldiers. In fact, the use of
scientific psychometric tests has continued to be one of the strong
assets the psychologist can bring to the law. In 1911, a Belgium
psychologist, Varendonck testified that child witnesses did not have the
mental capacity of adults and their testimony should not be admitted in
courts. That same year, a German psychologist, Carl Marbe testified
about proximate cause in a civil lawsuit. He described the psychological
experiments used to determine that alcohol can have a negative impact on
a person's reaction time and subsequent behavior. In the United States
the introduction of expert witness testimony took a similar route. In
1921 a case called, State v. Driver recognized that a psy- chologist
could be an expert on juvenile delinquency, but the court rejected that
psychologist's testimony, anyhow. One of the first cases that set the
standards of admitting all experts, including psychologists, called the
Frye standard was decided in 1923.
