Law and Psychology Commons^™

The Relationship Between Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder And Criminal Responsibility, Taylor A. Chille

Psychology Doctoral Specialization Projects

This original contribution to practice explores the significance of schizophrenia spectrum disorder, one of the most severe psychiatric disorders recognized in the DSM-5. This condition affects over 50 million people worldwide and is amongst one of the most common psychiatric illnesses diagnosed in criminal responsibility evaluations to date. Nonetheless, there is limited comprehensive literature specifically examining the relationship between schizophrenia and the insanity defense. Information provided in this literature review aims to fill that gap and act as a resource for clinical forensic practitioners who may encounter related cases. Specifically, this document will begin by introducing schizophrenia spectrum disorder and …

“Champion Man-Hater Of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, And Property Rights In 1940s America, Magdalene Zier

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the …

Recognizing The Need For Mental Health Reform In The Texas Department Of Criminal Justice, Kara Mchorse

St. Mary's Law Journal

The ways in which mental health care and the criminal justice system interact are in desperate need of reform in Texas. The rate of mental illness in Texas is higher than the current state of mental health care can provide for. While state hospitals were once the primary care facilities of those with mental illness, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has taken on that role in the last few decades; and when the criminal justice system becomes entangled with mental health care, it often leads to “unmitigated disaster.” If Texas continues to allow the TDCJ to act as …

Contractual Incapacity And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Sean M. Scott

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The doctrine of contractual incapacity allows people with mental disabilities to avoid their contractual liability. Its underlying premise is that the law has an obligation to protect people with such disabilities both from themselves and from unscrupulous people who would take advantage of them; mental incapacity provides this protection by rendering certain contracts unenforceable. The Disability Rights Movement (“DRM”), however, has challenged such protective legal doctrines, as they rest on outmoded concepts about people with mental disabilities.

This essay argues that the mental incapacity doctrine undermines the goals of the DRM and the legislative goals of the Americans with Disabilities …

Mental Disorder And Criminal Justice, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper is a chapter that will appear in REFORMING CRIMINAL JUSTICE: A REPORT OF THE ACADEMY FOR JUSTICE BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN SCHOLARSHIP AND REFORM (Erik Luna ed., Academy for Justice 2018). The criminal law treats some people with severe mental disorders doctrinally and practically differently at virtually every stage of the criminal justice process, beginning with potential incompetence to stand trial and ending with the question of competence to be executed, and such people have special needs when they are in the system. This chapter begins by exploring the fundamental mental health information necessary to make informed judgements …

Criminal Responsibility: Meta-Analysis And Study Space, Lauren E. Kois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Criminal responsibility (CR; i.e., sanity) has garnered significant research attention over the years. While some variables predicting insanity outcomes are consistent, others are not. Study-level characteristics, such as sample selection, variability in the operational definition of insanity, or other unknown influences may explain discrepant findings. It is critical to consolidate these variables and systematically assess differences in methodology to understand the state of the literature and to guide future research. As such, I conducted the first meta-analysis and study space analysis (see Malpass et al., 2008) in this area. Only 16 studies met inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. Summary effects …

Neuroscience In Forensic Contexts: Ethical Concerns, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a chapter in a volume, Ethics Challenges in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology Practice, edited by Ezra E. H. Griffith, M.D. and to be published by Columbia University Press. The chapter addresses whether the use of new neuroscience techniques, especially non-invasive functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the data from studies employing them raise new ethical issues for forensic psychiatrists and psychologists. The implicit thesis throughout is that if the legal questions, the limits of the new techniques and the relevance of neuroscience to law are properly understood, no new ethical issues are raised. A major ethical lapse …

Not Fit To Be Tried: Due Process And Mentally-Incompetent Criminal Defendants, J. Thomas Sullivan

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

A mentally-impaired accused who cannot comprehend the nature of the proceedings or assist his counsel in presenting his defense to the criminal charge cannot be tried as a matter of due process of law. In Jackson v. Indiana, 1 the United States Supreme Court held that due process concerns also bar the never-ending jeopardy resulting from an inability to restore an impaired accused to competence for purposes of proceeding to trial. When an Arkansas circuit court ordered the dismissal of pending criminal charges against an impaired accused who could not be restored to fitness for trial, the Arkansas Supreme Court, …

Book Review: The Role Of Psychiatry In Law, Leslie J. Martin

Akron Law Review

If you ask the man on the street about his views on the criminal law, typically his response will include a commentary on some notorious crime. What impresses him most about that crime? Commonly his answer will be that he was amazed that the "murderer" was able to escape conviction by invoking the defense of insanity. This view is remarkably prevalent. It is the same view which led Queen Victoria to ask Parliament to formulate the rigid M'Naghten Rule in 1843. This test of insanity survives to the present day, perplexing many members of the legal profession and alienating most …

Rationality, Insanity, And The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Limits Of Reason, Theodore Y. Blumoff

Theodore Y. Blumoff

Individuals who suffer from chronic paranoid ideations live with deeply embedded conspiratorial delusions that are sometimes accompanied by unwanted visual and/or auditory stimuli, sometime neither: just psychotic delusions in which they feel as if they have lost control of their lives – and of course they have, albeit not from the performances of foreign forces. When those perceived forces persevere for even a fairly short period of time, they can dictate the performance of evil deeds that the individual ultimately feels helpless to oppose. What observations and findings from neuroscience make clear is that such individuals do not lack knowledge, …

Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Amanda C Pustilnik

Can constructs of social meaning lead to actual criminal confinement? Can the intangible value ascribed to the maintenance of certain social norms lead to radically inefficient choices about resource allocation? The disproportionate criminal confinement of people with severe mental illnesses relative to non-mentally ill individuals suggests that social meanings related to mental illness can create legal and physical walls around this disfavored group. Responding to the non-violent mentally ill principally through the criminal system imposes at least 6 billion dollars in costs annually on the public, above any offsetting public safety and deterrence benefits, and imposes terrible human costs on …

Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

Mental disorder among criminal defendants affects every stage of the criminal justice process, from investigational issues to competence to be executed. As in all other areas of mental health law, at least some people with mental disorders, are treated specially. The underlying thesis of this Article is that people with mental disorder should, as far as is practicable and consistent with justice, be treated just like everyone else. In some areas, the law is relatively sensible and just. In others, too often the opposite is true and the laws sweep too broadly. I believe, however, that special rules to deal …

Too Stubborn To Ever Be Governed By Enforced Insanity: Some Therapeutic Jurisprudence Dilemmas In The Representation Of Criminal Defendants In Incompetency And Insanity Cases, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Little attention has been paid to the importance between therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the role ofcriminal defense lawyers in insanity and incompetency-to-stand-trial (IST) cases. That inattention is especially noteworthy in light of the dismal track record of counsel providing services to defendants who are part of this cohort of incompetency-status-raisers and insanity-defense-pleaders. On one hand, this lack of attention is a surprise as TJ scholars have, in recent years, turned their attention to virtually every other aspect of the legal system. On the other hand, it is not a surprise, given the omnipresence of sanism, an irrational prejudice ofthe same …

Fitness For Trial In The District Court: The Legal Perspective, Darius Whelan

Darius Whelan

The Uneasy Entente Between Legal Insanity And Mens Rea: Beyond Clark V. Arizona, Stephen J. Morse, Morris B. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

There is uneasy tension in the criminal law between the doctrines of mens rea and the defense of legal insanity. Last term, the Supreme Court addressed both these issues, but failed to clarify the relation between them. Using a wide range of interdisciplinary materials, this article discusses the broad doctrinal, theoretical, and normative issues concerning responsibility that arise in this context. We clarify the meaning of mental disorder, mens rea and legal insanity, the justification for and the relation between the latter two, and the relation among all three. Next we consider the reasoning in Clark, and for the most …

Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Faculty Scholarship

Can constructs of social meaning lead to actual criminal confinement? Can the intangible value ascribed to the maintenance of certain social norms lead to radically inefficient choices about resource allocation? The disproportionate criminal confinement of people with severe mental illnesses relative to non-mentally ill individuals suggests that social meanings related to mental illness can create legal and physical walls around this disfavored group. Responding to the non-violent mentally ill principally through the criminal system imposes at least 6 billion dollars in costs annually on the public, above any offsetting public safety and deterrence benefits, and imposes terrible human costs on …

Who Is Andrea Yates? A Short Story About Insanity, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her four children in a bathtub. At Andrea’s trial, in Harris County, Texas, the prosecution’s star expert, Patrick Dietz, appeared particularly adept at persuading the jury to accept the prosecution’s assertion that Andrea was sane and acting intentionally when she killed her children. This Article analyzes the problematic aspects of Dietz's testimony in an effort to contribute some balance to the Andrea Yates story. Despite the long history of expert witnesses in criminal trials, the justice system should question the fairness and efficacy of such an unregulated storytelling process. Part I of this …

For The Misdemeanor Outlaw: The Impact Of The Ada On The Institutionalization Of Criminal Defendants With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This article argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Olmstead v. L.C., 119 S. Ct. 2176 (1999), finding a qualified right to community treatment and services for certain institutionalized persons under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), causes us to reconceptualize state policies that mandate that all defendants in four categories - those being evaluated for competency to stand trial, those found permanently incompetent to stand trial under the Supreme Court's decision in Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715 (1972), those being evaluated for insanity, and those found not guilty by reason of insanity - be treated and housed in …

Insanity And The Rule Of Law, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes the effects of the construct of insanity on the rule of law.

The Definition And Determination Of Insanity In Colorado, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.

Psychiatric Assistance For Indigent Defendants Pleading Insanity: The Michigan Experience, Paul Zisla

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The federal government and many states already provide psychiatric assistance to indigent defendants pleading insanity. Michigan's statutory scheme for delivering this service presents an opportunity to evaluate an approach that generally favors defendant interests in areas left unresolved by Ake. This Note undertakes that evaluation. Part I summarizes the Ake decision, key problem areas, and the research methodology. Part II describes the Michigan statutory system. Part III evaluates that system using data from interviews with legal and psychiatric practitioners and considers the consequences of Michigan's approach to the issues posed by Ake. The evaluation shows that Michigan's system …

Ford V. Wainwright, Statutory Changes And A New Test For Sanity: You Can't Execute Me, I'M Crazy, Steven J. Huff

Cleveland State Law Review

In Ford v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of an insane inmate. In answering this query, the Court created a constitutional right not to be executed while incompetent. However, the Ford decision is not only important for its creation of a "new" constitutional right, it also has the potential of nullifying several state statutes in regards to the due process requirements of hearings addressing the issue of insanity at the time of execution. The Ford decision also requires that a new test of sanity be created the test of whether …

Equality, "Anisonomy," And Justice: A Review Of Madness And The Criminal Law, Andrew Von Hirsch

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Madness and the Criminal Law by Norval Morris

The Insanity Plea: The Uses And Abuses Of The Insanity Defense, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Insanity Plea: The Uses and Abuses of the Insanity Defense by William J. Winslade and Judith Wilson Ross

Evaluating Michigan's Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict: An Empirical Study, Gare A. Smith, James A. Hall

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Because Michigan's GBMI statute has been in effect for several years, enough data exists to assess the statute's use and practical effect. The purpose of this Project is to evaluate the statute and thus provide guidance for those legislatures considering similar proposals. This Project concludes that the new verdict has completely failed in its intended purpose. Part I describes the statute's history, legislative purpose, and procedural mechanics. Part II analyzes the displacing effect of the GBMI verdict on other verdicts, and sets forth empirical data on the disparate characteristics of defendants who raise the insanity defense and are subsequently found …

The Constitutionality Of Michigan's Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict, John M. Grostic

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article will assess the constitutionality of the statute providing for a GBMI verdict by examining the likely, impact of this statute on the constitutional rights of legally insane defendants. Part I will briefly outline the relevant provisions of the GBMI statute. Part II will consider whether legally insane defendants have a constitutional right to an insanity defense. Part III will then argue that some defendants, though legally insane at the time they committed allegedly criminal acts, will nevertheless be found GBMI rather than NGRI.

Constitutional Law - Due Process - Prior To Voluntary Commitment By A Parent Or Guardian To A State Mental Institution, Children Under The Age Of 18 Are Entitled To Specific Procedural Due Process Rights Which Cannot Be Waived By The Committing Adult, Mark J. Levin

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, And The Law, Russell P. Norman

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disposition Of The Irresponsible: Protection Following Commitment, Travis H. Lewin

Michigan Law Review

Each year more of our fellow citizens are involuntarily committed to a mental institution of one sort or another than are incarcerated for the commission of a crime. To those committed, the walls and barred windows of the hospital, as well as the treatment and mode of living, are probably not significantly different from those of a prison. This is particularly the case with those confined for treatment by court order or by some special statutory procedure following acquittal of a crime on grounds of insanity. Yet these mentally ill, even after perpetrating what would otherwise have been a criminal …

Legislation Requiring Child To Support Mother In State Asylum Is A Denial Of Equal Protection-Department Of Mental Hygiene V. Kirchner, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The California Department of Mental Hygiene brought suit under section 6650 of the state's Welfare and Institutions Code, a provision commonly known as a relative support statute, against the administratrix to recover 7,500 dollars from the intestate's estate. This amount represented the cost of food, housing, and treatment received by intestate's mother in a state mental hospital during the four years she had been confined there following a civil sanity hearing. Plaintiff was granted judgment on the pleadings. On appeal to the California Supreme Court, held, reversed. Since mental hospitals serve a proper public function, it is a denial …