Law Commons^™

The Treatment Of People With Mental Illness In The Criminal Justice System: The Example Of Oneida County, New York, Alexander Black '19, Kylie Davis '18, Kenneth Gray '20, Connor O'Shea '18, Alexander Scheuer '18, Samantha Walther '18, Nico Yardas '18, Frank M. Anechiarico, Ralph Eannace, Jennifer Ambrose

Student Scholarship

This publication is two-fold: an executive summary and the report itself. The executive summary provides a general overview of the larger report, on the criminalization of the mentally ill. It begins by summarizing three case studies from the report that concern the intersection of mental health issues and the criminal justice system in Oneida County in New York State. It then provides a brief historical overview of mental health issues and the criminal justice system before going on to discuss the current best practices in addressing the criminalization of the mentally ill, including law-enforcement mechanisms, mental health courts, and reintegration …

Assumed Sane, Fatma Marouf

Scholarly Works

In 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) held in Matter of G-G-S- that a noncitizen’s mental health status at the time of an offense is irrelevant to determining whether the offense is a “particularly serious crime” for immigration purposes. Since a “particularly serious crime” is a bar to asylum and withholding of removal, it can result in a noncitizen’s deportation to a country where he or she faces a serious risk of persecution. In deciding that immigration judges “are constrained by how mental health issues were addressed as part of the criminal proceedings,” the BIA failed to recognize the …

Confine Is Fine: Have The Non-Dangerous Mentally Ill Lost Their Right To Liberty? An Empirical Study To Unravel The Psychiatrist’S Crystal Ball, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine the reverse trend in civil commitment laws in the wake of recent tragedies and discuss the effect of broader civil commitment standards on the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, and the 2012 Aurora movie theatre shooting have spurred fierce debates about the dangerousness of mentally ill and serve as cautionary tale about what happens when warning signs go unnoticed and opportunities for early intervention missed. This piece will explore the misconception about the role medication and inpatient civil commitments should play in prevention …

Abusing State Power Or Controlling Risk?: Sex Offender Commitment And Sicherungverwahrung, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

This article addresses a paradigmatic risk-based collateral sanction, the so-called civil confinement. In contrast to many other collateral sanctions, it does not follow automatically but is judicially imposed following a hearing. In Hendricks v. Kansas (1997) the Supreme Court specifically upheld involuntary confinement following a criminal justice sentence for a sexually violent predator. The Kansas statute mandated confinement based on an assessment of dangerousness which had to result from a mental abnormality. Once it characterized the sanction as civil, the Court concluded that procedural protections traditional in the criminal context, such as double jeopardy, do not apply. The narrow majority …

A Healer Or An Executioner: The Proper Role Of A Psychiatrist In A Criminal Justice System, Gregory Dolin

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that despite the benefits of ridding the criminal justice system of some uncertainty and ignorance with respect to mental health issues, the very close involvement of psychiatrists in the criminal justice system as practiced in the United States is not only illogical and bad policy, but also unethical from the viewpoint of medical ethics. Part II of this article will lay the groundwork for the argument by discussing the history of the insanity defense, and of science's involvement with criminal justice; while Part III, will look into the association of science and the administration of justice in …

Insane Fear: The Discriminatory Category Of "Mentally Ill And Dangerous", Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article considers the constitutional and moral implications of the distinction the law draws between different classes of dangerous people, depending upon their status as mentally ill or mentally well. Those who are mentally well benefit from the right to freedom from incarceration unless and until they commit a crime. By contrast, dangerous people who are mentally ill are subject to potentially indefinite "civil" preemptive confinement.

In a relatively recent case, Kansas v. Hendricks, the United States Supreme Court upheld the post-prison civil confinement of Leroy Hendricks, a man who had served prison time after pleading guilty to child molestation. …

California's Sexually Violent Predator Act: The Role Of Psychiatrists, Courts, And Medical Determinations In Confining Sex Offenders, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

No abstract provided.

“Endgame”: Competency And The Execution Of Condemned Inmates—A Proposal To Satisfy The Eighth Amendment's Prohibition Against The Infliction Of Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The first section of this Article provides a brief historical overview of the proscription against executing the incompetent and the proffered rationales. This section also examines key factors contributing to the increase in the number of mentally dysfunctional condemned inmates. Then the Article explores the traditional competency-to-execute model that remains in use. This analysis will include a discussion of specific issues, such as: the term used to describe the requisite mental affliction, how that term is defined in order to identify who may ultimately benefit from the rule in Ford v. Wainwright, what standard is appropriate to determine whether …

The Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict: An Idea Whose Time Should Not Have Come, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The guilty but mentally ill verdict has received increasing attention. Several states had already passed or were seriously considering legislation establishing a guilty but mentally ill verdict before John Hinckley's 1982 acquittal vaulted the idea into national prominence. Today at least twelve states have adopted some version of the verdict and perhaps twenty others have considered or are considering similar statutes.

Yet despite the popularity of the guilty but mentally ill scheme, the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards, the American Psychiatric Association Statement on the Insanity Defense,' and the National Mental Health Association's Commission on the Insanity …