Why the willful ignorance in Texas courts?

Great Debates
1

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20020316/D7I9KMDO0.html

“Under state law, attorneys cannot explain to jurors that a verdict of innocent by reason of insanity doesn’t mean a defendant is immediately free. The defendant would be kept in a state mental hospital until deemed healthy enough to be released.”

Why would a court feel the need to withhold information by law to jurors? I find this concept incredible.

Is the purpose of this law actually a state mandate to keep jurors ignorantly believing the myth that a killer can act crazy in a trial and be let out onto the streets once the court adjourns?

2

WAG – I’d say it’s to keep the jurors from considering the sentence in rendering the verdict.

I.e. - if he’s crazy he’s crazy, damn the consequneces.

I agree that in practice it doesn’t work too well.

3

I would speculate that the law was passed in order to make it easier to get convictions.

I would also speculate that one impetus behind the law’s passage might be that the politicians who proposed the law, and the ones who voted for it, believed that mental instituions could not be relied upon to keep dangerous people locked up. In this, they were, IMO, correct.

If the law says that a person found innocent by reason of insanity is to be institutionalized until they are no longer insane (or no longer dangerous), how can we ever be sure that the person will really be kept inside until he’s really no longer dangerous? Who decides? As far as I know, it’s entirely in the hands of the staff of the institution.

4

Well, for one, it’s entirely possible that a person found not guilty by reason of insanity would be released almost immediately. And why would it be preferable to give the jury an instruction that allows them to use the state hospital as a cop-out instead of focusing on doing their job properly by determining whether or not the defendant was legally insane at the time of the crime?

5

Revtim, this is not an answer to your question, which I’m not qualified to answer. But it is a comment relevant to where, I think, this discussion might end up going (see the Andrea Yates thread).

It seems to me that what’s really behind this determination on the part of Texas and many other states to produce obstacles to a successful insanity defense is a strong investment in punishing. This punitive spirit, which distinguishes American justice from that of many European countries, has gotten stronger in the last couple of decades (viz. executions, three-strikes-laws, harsh jail sentences for non-violent crimes). As it relates to the insanity defense, the idea seems to rest on the assumption that not guilty by reason of insanity means that the defendant is getting away with the crime. In the Yates thread, Minty Green posted a very interesting link that placed this trend (including a majority of states and not just Texas) in the context of public outrage over John Hinkley’s successful insanity plea.

I think what’s so outrageous for some with respect to Yates is that Yates seems so self-evidently insane and the idea of needing to jail her vs. to institutionalize her seems (to some) pointless and inhumane. However, if you look at the thread you’ll see that this feeling is not unanimous at all; possibly not even a majority opinion here on the SDMB. I see it partly as a failure on some people’s part to understand the nature of mental illness; but also as part of this underlying punitive spirit. As Americans we seem always to want to respond to horrific acts in a punitive way, never questioning whether that is always the best response, or what that kind of response might tell us about ourselves. To the extent that this takes us back to Calvinistic origins of American cultural institutions this places us, oddly enough, in a centuries-old mindset (as though we are still living out the morality dramatized in The Scarlet Letter). To me Yates’s recent life was dominated by the inherently punishing severity of serious mental illness; she felt punished enough to make two suicide attempts; and now she is further punished by trial, sentencing and a life in prison. The assumption here seems to be that for justice to be served what horrifies us must always be punished. That another kind of response is never justifiable. Again, that seems to me rather, shall we say, Miltonic.

Anyway, apologies if this response borders on serious hijack.

6

Keep in mind the “spin”. The passage:

Under state law, attorneys cannot explain to jurors that a verdict of innocent by reason of insanity doesn’t mean a defendant is immediately free. The defendant would be kept in a state mental hospital until deemed healthy enough to be released.

could just as honestly have been written:

Under state law, prosecutors cannot explain to jurors that a verdict of innocent by reason of insanity doesn’t mean a defendant will be kept in a state mental hospital for some reasonable length of time to ensure that they won’t pose a threat to the community. The defendant can be released virtually immediately.

7

Yes, but either one would be preferable to … “Shut up and render a verdict – guilty or innocent?”

We all know (or we should know) that this isn’t a black and white world.

8

Information is withheld from juries all the time and the idea is that the jury is deciding guilty or not guilty and they should not consider information which does not concern that issue directly. Prior convictions and other information is routinely withheld from juries on the idea that it is not relevant to deciding guilt in this case. If they are deciding guilt or not, the consequences of their decision should not be considered by them. That’s the idea. If I ask you “Is he guilty” you should not asnwer “depends, tell me what will happen to him if I say he’s guilty”.

9

Very informative and thoughtful answers, thanks all.

I see the point that a jury is there to make a verdict, and what happens to the person because of the verdict should not be an issue.

Unfortunately, I think withholding this info will not make juries disregard consequences as they should; now they will be making their decision based on their incorrect ideas of how the suspect will be punished. It seems like we are ending up with the worst of all possible situations.

10

Well gee, could that be a more screwed up law?

Wouldn’t it be just the teensiest bit more just to write a law that demands that judges explain to juries that a finding of insanity could result in anything from a lifetime in a mental hospital to immediate release, depending upon a variety of factors? Is that so awful, given that it’s true?

The intent of that law seems abundantly clear to me.

Feh.

And my god, ** Mandelstam, ** could you BE any more wise or articulate? As usual, you hit the nail precisely on the head, driving it all the way home in one post.

American’s system of “justice” is less so all the time. I know we are not a nation of morons, why are our laws so incredibly stupid and self-destructive?

Ach… the whole topic of criminal justice in this country gives me a stomachache. The “punitive spirit” as you (kindly) put it, drives me nuts. When will the people who feel this way start to see that this does not elevate us in any way as a society, and that what it really does is contribute to the need for more of it?

Oy…I have to go, but this is a topic for a thread of its own.

stoid

11

It might be of some interest to read how Texas writes this.

As a nitpick to the article, the verdict is “not guilty by reason of insanity” rather than “innocent by reason of insanity”.

Mandelstam and Stoid you are certainly free to look for sinister reasons behind this rule. One imagines that no one could stop you in such a quest. In doing so, you should at least consider that it follows from the bifurcated trials that criminal defendants face. First, a jury decides whether it was proved whether the defendant committed the crime. Second, if the defendant is found guilty, the jury determines punishment. Under this system, the jury isn’t supposed to consider what will happen to the defendant in determining whether the defendant committed a crime.
Revtim’s concern that the jury will consider the consequences anyway is a significant and real concern. I think it is a far more persuasive reason to consider change than the thwarting the sinister machinations that you envisage. Letting a jury know that a defendant might be civilly commited doesn’t help the jury determine whether a crime is committed.

And Stoid, I’ll bet that it could be a more screwed up law.

12

Okay, then I assume the jury WILL know the options during the punishment phase.

A fellow I know who served on a Texas jury thought it was interesting that defense made a point that the jury should not be informed of and should not discuss how soon a person is eligible for parole.
He happened to be the brother of an attorney and he knew the guy could be out in 3 years. But he was not allowed to bring that point up (which he didn’t).

13

Robb, Please allow me to point out that I wasn’t providing any reasons, sinister or otherwise, to explain the rule, a task which I specifically said I wasn’t qualified to do.

I was talking about the spirit of punitiveness in cultural and historical terms. Perhaps you haven’t read the other thread and the relevant post by Minty Green. As I said at first, my response was a bit of a hijack. In any case, I’m sorry if discussing American culture in terms of influential works of literature struck you as dubious proceeding.

Stoid, thanks for your kind words.

14

Then this sentence doesn’t fit very well with your reasserted first sentence. I understood that you suggested a “spirit of punitiveness”. Pragmatism is what I have to offer. I think what is behind it is an odd sense of fairness - if juries decided guilt/innocence and punishment in one deliberation, it would be a great deal easier to inflame them. It seems to me that you see this rule as among a group of rules that are designed to disproportionately punish people.
Unless everything you wrote after the first sentence really is irrelevant to the OP. If that is true, you have my apologies.

15

In Texas jurors are not suppose consider the punishment of a suspect when it comes to determining guilt.

Marc

16

I realize that Marc, I just don’t believe it actually happens.

17

You’re probably right Revtim, but I only have anecdotes to that effect. I think that it is a good bet that a jury is going to try to guess the effects of their decisions. I once watched a a case where a young man was charged with possessing about a gram of crack. During vior dire, before the jury knew anything other than the charge and which person was the defendant, several people had already decided that the defendant shouldn’t go to prison.

18

And how many interviews with jurors did you read to come to that conclusion?

Marc

19

Robb, I think I erred by addressing my post with readers of the previous Yates thread in mind. Without that context it would, indeed, be difficult to see where my post was coming from. Apologies.

“I understood that you suggested a “spirit of punitiveness”.”

I was suggesting that a spirit of punitiveness is what explains, not this particular rule (which may have a complicated legal history that I’m not qualified to speak to), but the (by now) commonplace fact that the insanity defense is very difficult to pull off in Texas and–as I learned in the other thread–in the majority of states in the US.

“It seems to me that you see this rule as among a group of rules that are designed to disproportionately punish people.”

Incorrect. I see this rule as potentially among a group of rules (and statutes) that makes it very hard to effectively plead not guilty by reason of insanity. And I see that as speaking to a deep cultural investment in punishing, and one that has, in the last decade or two, become even more exacerbated.

I take it be debatable whether it is necessary to punish (rather than simply to isolate and to treat) someone who killed her children because she was psychotic. I also take it to be debatable whether it is necessary to punish (rather than to offer treatment programs to) drug offenders who are not guilty of any crimes harming others. In these and other respects (esp. regarding the death penalty), the US justice system tends to diverge, sometimes quite sharply, from those of Europe.

“Unless everything you wrote after the first sentence really is irrelevant to the OP.”

For the third time, Robb, it was, is and remains a hijack. Related only, as in most hijacks, in a tangential way to the OP.

(Can someone perhaps help out Robb by point him to a dictionary of netiquette so he can learn what is meant by the word “hijack.”)

In addition, Robb, if you care to debate further the matter of the spirit of punitiveness in the US–historically or otherwise–feel free to start a thread on it. Or perhaps stoid would like to. Otherwise I’d like to let Revtim’s thread proceed without further comment from me.

20

I don’t understand why anyone would want the jurors to know precisely what a guilty or innocent verdict would mean, punishment-wise. No, it is not a black and white world, but it is a black and white decision: guilty or not. More than that is deliberately clouding the issue. In fact, it seems to me that informing a jury exactly what could result from a verdict would promote punishment.

If the jury doesn’t think the person did it, then obviously they don’t feel the person should be punished or sentenced in any way. If they think they did it, what purpose would understanding the punishment possible from a guilty verdict serve? They can’t say, “Your Honor, this man is double-plus guilty” in order to really punish the guy.

We charge the jury to make a black and white decision. It might be a lossy compression, but it is the only fair compression I can envision.