Ethical and Diagnostic Difficulties of the Cohabitation Tests in the Forensic Expertise

The determination of the sexual cohabitation capacity may be required by the legal authorities in cases where persons suspected of committing sexual crimes declare themselves as being impotent, alleging their preexisting sexual impotence. In such cases it is compulsory to scientifically evaluate the existence or absence of the sexual impotence at the time of the presumed sexual offense. In this sense, various diagnostic tests are used, the intracavernous injection of papaverine (ICIP) being accepted by the judiciary system in Romania. During our forensic activity carried out at the Institute of Legal Medicine Cluj-Napoca we have applied this diagnostic test to a number of four male inmates in Gherla Penitentiary. The results obtained allowed us to evaluate the status of the inmates’ impotence at the time we had performed those tests. However, the ICIP, as assessor of the cohabitation capacity in men raises numerous diagnostic and nonetheless ethical issues. Among the most significant we might mention the following: difficulties in assessing the state of impotence depending upon the degree of the erection, the association of the test with sexual stimuli, the value of test according to the specific type of impotence diagnosed, the psychiatric aspect regarding the possibil ity of existence of a degree of needle phobia, the risk of complications.