Alcoholic blackout for criminally relevant behavior.

Some criminal suspects claim to have had an alcohol-induced blackout during crimes they have committed. Are alcoholic blackouts a frequently occurring phenomenon, or are they merely used as an excuse to minimize responsibility? Frequency and type of blackout were surveyed retrospectively in two healthy samples (n = 256 and n = 100). Also, a comparison of blood alcohol concentrations was made between people who did and those who did not claim a blackout when stopped in a traffic-control study (n = 100).