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Full-Text Articles in Disability Law
An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia's Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, Lauren Sudeall
An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia's Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, Lauren Sudeall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, the Court explicitly left to the states the question of which procedures would be used to identify such defendants as exempt from the death penalty. More than a decade before Atkins, Georgia was the first state to bar execution of people with intellectual disability. Yet, of the states that continue to impose the death penalty as a punishment for capital murder, Georgia is the only state that requires capital defendants to prove …
The Criminalization Of Mental Illness: How Theoretical Failures Create Real Problems In The Criminal Justice System, Georgia L. Sims
The Criminalization Of Mental Illness: How Theoretical Failures Create Real Problems In The Criminal Justice System, Georgia L. Sims
Vanderbilt Law Review
When Andrea Yates drowned her five children, she believed she was preventing Satan from infiltrating their souls. Rusty Yates blamed both the mental health system and the criminal justice system for his wife's actions and also for her initial conviction. Andrea Yates suffered from post-partum depression and psychosis; had attempted suicide twice; had been hospitalized on several occasions for psychiatric treatment; and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in her 2006 retrial.' Although Yates likely will spend the rest of her life in a mental institution, she will receive mental health treatment throughout her time at the facility. …
Emotional Competence, "Rational Understanding," And The Criminal Defendant, Terry A. Maroney
Emotional Competence, "Rational Understanding," And The Criminal Defendant, Terry A. Maroney
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Adjudicative competence, more commonly referred to as competence to stand trial, is a highly under-theorized area of law. Though it is well established that, to be competent, a criminal defendant must have a "rational" as well as 'factual" understanding of her situation, the meaning of such "rational understanding" has gone largely undefined. Given the large number of criminal prosecutions in which competence is at issue, the doctrine's instability stands in stark contrast to its importance. This Article argues that adjudicative competence, properly understood, asks whether a criminal defendant has capacity to participate meaningfully in the host of decisions potentially required …
An End To Insanity: Recasting The Role Of Mental Disability In Criminal Cases, Christopher Slobogin
An End To Insanity: Recasting The Role Of Mental Disability In Criminal Cases, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article argues that mental illness should no longer be the basis for a special defense of insanity. Instead, mental disorder should be considered in criminal cases only if relevant to other excuse doctrines, such as lack of mens rea, self-defense and duress, as those defenses have been defined under modern subjectively-oriented codes. With the advent of these subjectively defined doctrines (a development which, ironically, took place during the same period that insanity formulations expanded), the insanity defense has outlived its usefulness, normatively and practically. Modern official formulations of the defense are overbroad because, fairly construed, they exculpate the vast …