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Full-Text Articles in Law
God Said To Abraham/Kill Me A Son: Why The Insanity Defense And The Incompetency Status Are Compatible With And Required By The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities And Basic Principles Of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin
Articles & Chapters
Interpretations of the General Comments to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — that command the abolition of the insanity defense and the incompetency status — make no theoretical or conceptual sense, disregard the history of how society has treated persons with serious mental disabilities who are charged with crime, and will lead to predictable torture of this population in prison, at the hands of both prison guards and other prisoners. Such interpretation also flies in the face of every precept of therapeutic jurisprudence. Support of this position exhibits a startling lack of understanding of the …
Merchants And Thieves, Hungry For Power: Prosecutorial Misconduct And Passive Judicial Complicity In Death Penalty Trials Of Defendants With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin
Merchants And Thieves, Hungry For Power: Prosecutorial Misconduct And Passive Judicial Complicity In Death Penalty Trials Of Defendants With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin
Articles & Chapters
In spite of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Ford v. Wainwright (1986), Atkins v. Virginia (2002), and Hall v. Florida (2014), persons with severe psychosocial and intellectual disabilities continue to be given death sentences, in some cases leading to actual execution. Although the courts have been aware of this for decades -- dating back at least to the infamous Ricky Rector case in Arkansas -- these base miscarriages of justice continue and show no sign of abating. Scholars have written clearly and pointedly on this issue (certainly, more frequently since the Atkins decision in 2002), but little has changed.
I …
The Right To Voice Reprised, Christopher Slobogin
The Right To Voice Reprised, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article appears in a symposium issue of Seton Hall Law Review on courtroom epistemology. In Proving the Unprovable: The Role of Law, Science and Speculation in Adjudicating Culpability and Dangerousness, I argued that criminal defendants ought to be able to present speculative psychiatric testimony if the expert has followed a routinized evaluation process that addresses the relevant legal criterion, an argument based in part on the position that the Constitution can be read to entitle defendants to tell their exculpatory mental state stories. In a recent essay, Professor Lillquist takes aim at this latter rationale, which I called the …
Rearranging Deck Chairs On The Titanic: Why The Incarceration Of Individuals With Serious Mental Illness Violates Public Health, Ethical, And Constitutional Principles And Therefore Cannot Be Made Right By Piecemeal Changes To The Insanity Defense, Jennifer Bard
Jennifer Bard
The author argues that the problem of adjudicating the mentally ill who commit crimes is too large a societal issue to be resolved by refining the insanity defense. Since this is a threat to the public's health, it is fair to describe the current situation as a public health crisis. First, by not providing adequate mental health resources we create conditions in which people with mental illness find themselves in situations where due to their illness they have the opportunity to commit criminal acts which are causally related to the impairment of their thought process. Second, when people with mental …
A Healer Or An Executioner: The Proper Role Of A Psychiatrist In A Criminal Justice System, Gregory Dolin
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 …
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 …
Cognitive Dissonance: Have Insanity Defense And Civil Commitment Reforms Made A Difference, John Q. La Fond, Mary L. Durham
Cognitive Dissonance: Have Insanity Defense And Civil Commitment Reforms Made A Difference, John Q. La Fond, Mary L. Durham
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
Observations On The Insanity Defense And Involuntary Civil Commitment In Europe, John Q. La Fond
Observations On The Insanity Defense And Involuntary Civil Commitment In Europe, John Q. La Fond
Seattle University Law Review
There are several perspectives from which one could analyze the insanity defense and involuntary civil commitment in foreign legal systems. However, the comparative perspective on which this Essay is based focuses on: a) how foreign legal systems formulate and administer the insanity defense; b) how the power of the state is defined to civilly commit mentally ill persons; c) who makes the important decisions and when and how they are made; and d) what happens to offenders who are considered mentally ill and to others who are considered mentally ill and suitable for involuntary commitment.