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The Integrationist Alternative To The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Exculpatory Scope Of Mental Illness In The Wake Of The Andrea Yates Trial, Christopher Slobogin
The Integrationist Alternative To The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Exculpatory Scope Of Mental Illness In The Wake Of The Andrea Yates Trial, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates took the lives of her five children by drowning them, one by one, in a bathtub. At her trial on capital murder charges nine months later, she pleaded insanity. Despite very credible evidence that she had long suffered from serious mental disorder, a Texas jury convicted Yates of murder and sentenced her to life in prison. Her tragic and controversial case led many to question whether the so-called "M'Naghten" test for insanity, which forms the basis for the insanity defense in Texas, adequately defines the exculpatory effect of mental disorder. This article is based …
What Atkins Could Mean For People With Mental Illness, Christopher Slobogin
What Atkins Could Mean For People With Mental Illness, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article, written for a symposium on Atkins v. Virginia - the Supreme Court decision that prohibited execution of people with mental retardation - argues that people with severe mental illness must now also be protected from imposition of the death penalty. In labeling execution of people with mental retardation cruel and unusual, the Atkins majority stressed that mentally retarded people who kill are less blameworthy and less deterrable than the average murderer, an assertion that can also be made about people with severe mental illness. As it had in previous eighth amendment cases, however, the Court also relied heavily …