Yes, what do you mean by that, Jim B.? Please elaborate.
I am in Jim’s neighboring state and echo the calls for elaboration. To be sure I am not familiar with the details of Michigan’s system, but where I am at this is just not true. There is a robust competency and restoration to competency system. Yes, those with mental illness are not found to be mentally ill and then set free. But their ability to know what they did and be responsible for their past and future actions is a major consideration.
Sorry about the late reply. I thought the discussion would be over with by now.
I am not sure I fully understand your questions. But I will tell you how stories like these usually go.
I don’t read every story. But I do know, the insanity defense is very rarely brought up. I certainly can’t think of any recent news story where the defendant has even considered the insanity defense, even when he/she was clearly mentally ill, at the time of the crime. And stories of mentally ill committing acts of violence are quite common in Michigan, as I am sure they are elsewhere. Most mentally ill are not violent. But that is a different topic, for a different discussion.
I also know, I am old enough to know when this wasn’t the case. Even in the early 80’s (which I am old enough to remember–although I was in grade school and hs at the time), things seemed different. As soon as a mentally ill person was accused of a crime, the public just assumed that he would use the insanity defense. I even remember this one story (I forget the details), in the early 80’s, where this mentally ill patient killed another patient in a local state hospital. The authorities literally had to go out of their way, I remember, to assure the public he could not validly use the insanity defense. Because he knew what he was doing, and it wasn’t even related to his mental illness (the murder, that is).
So things have changed a lot, even in my short lifetime.
Does that answer your question?
I think the problem is that you started off with an implicit criticism and unfounded assumptions instead of just asking whether jurisprudence towards the mentally ill is different in other countries.
From a factual perspective, in the early 80’s the insanity defense was a matter of public attention and debate because John Hinckley Jr used it successfully following his assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. This led to widespread outrage over the perception that criminals could easily escape punishment by invoking the defense and it led to new laws that tightened the criteria and raised the burden of proof for someone attempting to claim insanity. Which, again, I think is a good thing.
I would respond then, that “mentally ill”, by itself, not a sufficient basis to excuse someone from criminal liability, for all the reasons eloquently stated by A Hunter3. There is a very wide range of mental illness and not all mental illnesses should excuse an individual from criminal responsibility.
The basic presumption of the criminal law is that all individuals are liable for their actions. Exceptions to that principle are strict and usually require that the accused for some reason did not have the capacity to form the criminal intent.
The usual formulation for mental disorder defences is that the accused did not appreciate what he was doing (eg was so delusional that he thought he was killing an animal, not a person), or did not appreciate the circumstances (eg knew he was killing a person but did do because he erroneously thought the person was about to kill him.)
That’s the standard common law formulation of the test, found in some form in most common law countries.
It’s meant to be a rigorous standard, because if a person has a mental disorder that still allows him to appreciate the nature of his acts and the circumstances, why shouldn’t that person be criminally liable, just like any other person?
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The cites clairobscur and I provided for civil law countries which do consider a possible “insanity defense” are similar. Having a psychiatric diagnosis does not mean you’re incapable of understanding - like the saying goes, “I’m crazy, not stupid!”. Some countries also accept as possible partial defenses “not understanding the law”; that doesn’t mean people get an automatic “get out of jail” card on account of for example being a foreigner, or not being a lawyer.
In jurisdictions whose jurisprudence derives from the M’Naghten rules, 4 or 5 concepts are in play.
The legal principles do not map onto the medical principles very clearly for reasons which will become apparent. Shortly put, the courts are making moraljudgments; medical ones are only a step along the way.
Thus, there must first be a mental disease or natural mental infirmity (like intellectual impairment) by whatever name one articulates these things.
Why a “disease”, especially since the DSM V doesn’t really talk about disease any more? Because the disease model of mental ill-health parallels the physical model - there needs to be a disease process that can be conceived of as external to the conscience or character of the accused in order for there to be moral justification for an excuse. I accept that definitions in this regard are less than clear practically and philosophically, and indeed the disease model of mental illness may not be much more than a metaphor derived from physical illness, but if there was not this requirement for a disease, then ordinary psychological states like rage might serve to deprive a person of one of the capacities discussed below. In practice, typically, florid psychotic illnesses are the ones relied on - schizophrenia, bipolar disorder etc to pass this base level requirement.
Next, the accused must be deprived of one of a number of capacities. Never mind what the capacities are for now - the concept of deprivation usually implies complete deprivation. The reasoning seems to be that if a person retains some of the capacity, they ought be punished to the extent that they still possessed power over their actions.
Next, the capacities. They are not always articulated in exactly the same words, but they most often come down to some or all of the below (again assuming the fairly pervasive M"Naghten model).
- To control ones actions (for example, frequently encountered in command hallucination cases)
-To know the nature of their actions (strangling a statue is materially different morally from strangling a human, and if the patient can’t tell, then the question of the utility of the criminal law once again arises - such a patient does not “know what he is doing”.)
- To know they ought not to do the act (typically religious delusions can lead a person to believe that they have a special moral exemption from obeying the law).
Note that these capacities are all essentially moral issues.
Thus, a mere diagnosis of, say, schizophrenia does not automatically grant a defence. The patient may not be deprived of a capacity - they may have residual control, knowledge or understanding.
Their manifestation of the disease may not in fact affect issues of control, etc. Lots of people believe psychotic things that do not engage these particular capacities. If a person believes she is a supermodel, for example, she is not really likely to lose any of the particular capacities at hand.
And not all diagnoses are conceived of by the courts as “diseases”. Many are conceived of as just variants of “normal”. Thus, the personality disorders like OCD or borderlne PD or antisocial PD might be unpleasant and distressing and cause them and people around them grief, but these diagnoses are more a description of the person’s personality rather than a diagnosis of a disease that is conceived of as distorting the personality by a process external to the ordinary functioning of the sufferer’s mind. Similarly, paraphilias such as paedophilia are considered aspects of the person’s personality and amenable to choice, not “diseases” that radically distort personality.
So - merely having a diagnosis of schizophrenia or whatever is not a get out of jail free card by itself. And as others have pointed out, an acquittal on the ground of insanity typically does not mean you go home - you go to a psych hospital, and forensic psych hospitals are, with the best will in the world on the part of the staff, deeply horrible places to be.
There was a strange (and actually appalling) case in Görlitz, Germany, in 1998: A man from Kazakhstan shot and killed two German customs officers in cold blood. The perpetrator did not have to stand trial because he had been, according to forensic psychiatrists, suffering from an acute psychosis. Less than one year later, he was declared cured, released from the mental institution and a free man from then on (he was deported to Kazakhstan).
→ Todesschütze bald wieder frei? - Hamburger Abendblatt (in German)
Jurisdictions tend to differ in the sense of confidence they (or at least the psychiatrists who dominate the forensic psychiatry culture) have in the safety of their conclusions.
Of course in principle a person should be released as soon as their recovery is sufficiently complete that it is safe to do so. But in my country, in one state murderers found insane will spend 8 years in hospital before it is thought safe to release them, and in another state, 4 years. This depends in large measure on the liberality of the key psychiatrists and (shamefully) funding. If they are forced to bundle people out because they don’t have enough beds for new people, that can dictate time spent in hospital.
Heaven help them in Thailand. What routinely happens here is some police shlub will announce that obviously the perp was not mentally ill, because he was not a drooling, mumbling idiot. Then that’s taken as an expert opinion by the courts. Really.
Actually, wouldn’t Hinckley have been much more likely to have been paroled by now if he had been found guilty?
An example of a case in Germany (today’s news; German language article): in July 2015 a man killed 2 random people on the street (missing two others) in a spree shooting lasting one and a half hours while he drove around. Now at the conclusion of the trial the prosecution asks for the defendent to be found not criminally responsible and to be committed to mental care. Apparently he has paranoid schizophrenia and took the people he shot at for vampires and werewolves.
I can’t say for certain. It is possible that he could have been given the possibility of parole, or the judge could have thrown the book at him.
Regardless, the issue at hand is the *perception *that being not guilty by reason of insanity allows the criminal to escape punishment for their crime. As others have pointed out, this is not necessarily true. Americans in general tend to believe that inflicting punishment, rather than rehabilitation, is the primary purpose of the criminal justice system. Whether one agrees with this or not is an entirely separate question.
Extremely doubtful. Squeaky Fromme didn’t get paroled for 34 years after trying to shoot Gerald Ford, and her gun didn’t even go off. Hinckley actually shot 4 people, including Reagan. If he’d been convicted of four counts of attempted murder he’d probably still be in jail.
Interestingly, when James Brady died a few years ago, his death was ruled a homicide, based on his injuries from the shooting. So if Hinckley had been convicted & released of attempted murder, they could have pulled him back into court for a new murder charge.
The Crown in Canada can also raise the issue of mental competence by reason of mental disorder.
I’m still not following the opening line in the OP, that the mentally ill aren’t cut any slack in the US. What exactly do you mean, Jim B.?
I still don’t understand your question. As I said in my reply, things have gotten harder for them over the years.
Maybe you should make your question more clear:).
You haven’t demonstrated that this is so – that’s what people are saying.
I haven’t cited any reports, it’s true (that would be hard to do anyways–it is a general trend, not something that one article would be written on). I did cite the fact the treatment of mentally ill has changed over the years, and everyone seemed to agree with that. John Hinckley, Jr. would be sentenced to life in prison now. One poster mentioned that.
Again, I don’t know what more I can say. Maybe I don’t understand question, because it has only been stated generally.
Do you all want a specific cite? An article? Some statistics? I don’t have any of that now, at least.
Actually that is indeed the kind of thing that articles and doctoral theses are written about so yes, some cites would be good.