The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) remains one of the most widely used instruments in forensic psychology, routinely introduced in legal proceedings to inform violence risk assessment, sexually violent predator commitments, and parole determinations. Research conducted under controlled conditions has consistently demonstrated strong interrater reliability, with intraclass correlation coefficients for total scores ranging from .86 to .94. Yet a growing body of field research tells a different story. When the PCL-R moves from the research lab to the courtroom, reliability drops substantially, scoring variability increases, and the consequences of those inconsistencies land on real people facing real decisions about their liberty. For forensic psychologists who use this instrument in high-stakes evaluations, understanding the gap between research reliability and field reliability is a professional and ethical imperative that shapes how scores should be obtained, reported, and defended.