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Full-Text Articles in Disability Law

Reforming Competence Restoration Statutes: An Outpatient Model, Susan A. Mcmahon Mar 2019

Reforming Competence Restoration Statutes: An Outpatient Model, Susan A. Mcmahon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Defendants who suffer from mental illness and are found incompetent to stand trial are often ordered committed to an inpatient mental health facility to restore their competence, even if outpatient care may be the better treatment option. Inpatient facilities are overcrowded and place the defendants on long waiting lists. Some defendants then spend weeks, months, or even years in their jail cell, waiting for a transfer to a hospital bed.

Outpatient competence restoration programs promise to relieve this pressure. But even if every state suddenly opened a robust outpatient competence restoration program, an obstacle looms: the statutes governing competence restoration, …


The Strings In The Books Ain't Pulled And Persuaded: How The Use Of Improper Statistics And Unverified Data Corrupts The Judicial Process In Sex Offender Cases, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin Jan 2019

The Strings In The Books Ain't Pulled And Persuaded: How The Use Of Improper Statistics And Unverified Data Corrupts The Judicial Process In Sex Offender Cases, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

An examination of a range of judicial decisions involving sexual offender determinations reveals that, frequently, courts rely improperly on inaccurate and under-developed statistics as well as unverified and outdated information. This reliance, too often, underlies rulings that subject the sex offender to significant sanctions and loss of liberty. Additionally, the continuation of the testimonial script that all sex offenders are high recidivists, dangerous, compulsive and untreatable, contributes to the anti-therapeutic effect of shaming and humiliation. This results in isolation, seclusion, lack of dignity; also, it further trivializes the judicial process, and violates the tenants of therapeutic jurisprudence. Despite the “frightening …


A World Of Steel-Eyed Death: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Failure Of The Strickland Standard To Ensure Adequate Counsel To Defendants With Mental Disabilities Facing The Death Penalty, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Chatt Jan 2019

A World Of Steel-Eyed Death: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Failure Of The Strickland Standard To Ensure Adequate Counsel To Defendants With Mental Disabilities Facing The Death Penalty, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Chatt

Articles & Chapters

Anyone who has been involved with death penalty litigation in the past four decades knows that one of the most scandalous aspects of that process—in many ways, the most scandalous—is the inadequacy of counsel so often provided to defendants facing execution. By now, virtually anyone with even a passing interest is well versed in the cases and stories about sleeping lawyers, missed deadlines, alcoholic and disoriented lawyers, and, more globally, lawyers who simply failed to vigorously defend their clients. This is not news.

And, in the same vein, anyone who has been so involved with this area of law and …