For more than four decades, Santa Clara University School of Law Professor Emeritus Alan Scheflin used his expertise in law to entrance his students, as well as in his research, authorship, and work as an expert witness on mind and behavior control, suggestibility, memory, and hypnosis. His work inspired generations of SCU law students and helped free the wrongly convicted.
Much changed in the world from the time Scheflin first taught on the Mission campus in 1973 until his retirement. By the time he left SCU School of Law, Scheflin had changed his corner of the world. He had shaped hundreds of students and set the bar for legal thinking on suggestibility, writing or co-authoring seven books, 51 articles, and 13 book chapters.
Scheflin served as an expert witness more than 42 times. In one such trial, his testimony in a homicide case helped the Wisconsin Innocence Project argue their client had ineffective counsel because a witness had been improperly hypnotized. The judge at trial was on record as saying he was a friend of the psychologist-hypnotist.
In Scheflin’s day-to-day work on campus, he inspired. Omar Habbas J.D. ’85 told SCU Law’s magazine that Scheflin made his students better attorneys. “He was absolutely brilliant,” Habbas recalled. “He would hold your feet to the fire. He was fair. … but you had better be prepared.”
Scheflin died on his 81st birthday, Aug. 27, 2023. He is survived by his wife, Jamie Caploe ’85, and their daughter.