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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 …