Then can you explain why the law specifically addresses the insanity defense, then? Why not just have a rule that the consequences of anything other than a complete acquittal without any extenuating circumstances are not to be discussed?
The contention is that juries are not supposed to consider consequences, merely guilt or innocence. Do you, does ANYONE really believe that juries don’t? They may not freely discuss it, but it certainly weighs on their minds, and simply not talking about it doesn’t prevent that. And in the instance of insanity, you KNOW they are wondering if a not guilty lets the crazy murderer loose on the streets!
Only a couple, and they weren’t really interviews. It was when I was a juror myself, deliberating with other jurors on a murder case. Several other jurors mentioned what they thought the possible penalties where for the charge, 2nd degree murder. I may have speculated myself, it was several years ago.
Of course, this was Florida, not Texas, and I don’t remember any instruction given to us to not consider penalities when deciding on a verdict.
In any case, if there wasn’t an issue with penalties affecting results, why on earth would Texas make the law we’ve been discussing in the thread?
AW, C’mon, EL, you know better if you think about it for two minutes!
Two quick and easy examples:
Psycho mom kills kids: if the jury knows that not guilty by reason of insanity leads to what may ned up being a lifetime in a mental ward, they feel more comfortable with that verdict. If they think it means she walks out the front door, they don’t.
California, land of Stupid Ass 3 strikes laws. Jury knows as clearly as it is possible to know that the guy did in fact steal the $2000 watch while the clerk wasn’t looking, because it was caught on tape. But the jury also knows that convicting the guy means he goes to prison ** for the rest of his life without possibility of parole. ** Jury decides maybe it isn’t him on the tape after all.
Of COURSE knowledge of the consequences can and does play a part, no matter how much we would like to pretend it doesn’t. And damn well should, for my money. I think if more juries knew that they were sending people away for decades for selling pot, we might have fewer people rotting in jail cells right now, and we’d almost certainly end up with fewer violent criminals because we’d be sending fewer non-violent criminals to Crime School, aka prison.
I imagine the rules exists because it is in the procedural rules about the insanity defense. I’d also bet that they add the prohibition just to prevent the sort of thing that you think should happen. I also bet that without such a prohibition, we’d have the defense lawyers assuring the jury that their client will still be locked up for a lifetime, even though no one knows whether that is true.
Juries are already not supposed to consider the circumstances of an acquital. Granted, there’s a good chance that anyone in a jury box will understand that an acquital equals no punishment. I don’t think that this is a draconian rule. I see two problems with juries letting consequences determine whether they find someone guitly. First, if a Bad Guy goes on trial, but the evidence is not strong. Maybe the jury decides to convict him because while they don’t think that he did this crime, he certainly already did something that he’s gotten away with. The second problem is that they lack all the relevant information. The guilt/innocence portion of a trial is about whether the defendant commited the crime and the punishment portion adds to that what kind of a person the defendant is. If the jury tries to decide punishment, they won’t have all the information that they need.
FWIW, here is the subsection of 46.03:
According to a later section, these are some of the consequences of finding a defendant not guilty by reason of insanity:
I’m pretty certain that juries do try to guess the consequences of their guilt/innocence decision. I think that most of this time tis leads them to bad decisions, because their decision is based on incomplete data. If you toss everything at them at once, you either get jury nullification or an unfair trial for the defendant. I don’t thikn either one is a good result.
The guy that I referred to earlier, the one that the venire panel didn’t think should go to the pen. A jury was eventually selected. The evidence showed that the guy had a gram of crack in his underwear. As I understand it, a gram of crack is much more than one person would use normally. The jury found him guilty, even though he looked like a nice kid. I’ll bet that the jury compromised - they agreed to find him guilty, but then they would give him a short sentence or probation. But, I don’t know whether that was true. The defendant had selected the judge to assess punishment. The judge sent the defendant to jail, because the defendant wasn’t eligible for probation and was still on probation for the last time he was caught with a gram of crack. I bet if the jury knew the kid was going to jail, they wouldn’t have convicted him. I also think he should stop selling crack.
Actually, I think that’s exactly the question jury members should ask. I see it this way: before I say if I think the defendant is guilty or not, I want to know what penalty he faces if found guilty. If being found guilty would mean he would be hit with a ridiculously out of proportion sentence, well, I’d rather vote “not guilty” then be guilty of ruining someone’s life for a minor offence. If I had conficence in the criminal justice system to mete out fair sentences, it would be a different matter – but I don’t.
The Anglo American legal system has a long history of jury trials in criminal cases as a matter of right because this is representative of the community vote. Judges and Legislators as members of an institution have a political pull to try to take away as much of the jury’s perogatives as possible and aggrandize those rights to their branches. This business about what the juries can and cannot consider is supposed to keep juries from weighing matters that are illegal or irrelevant to the law being applied. In fact, it is really just a codified assumption that 12 people too dumb to get out of jury duty have no business making any important decisions. :rolleyes:
In my lengthy experience as a trial lawyer and hanger arounder of politicians, I have far more faith in 12 people who want to go home than the vast majority of judges and all politicians. A jury tends to take its duties very seriously, isn’t trying to get re-elected or elevated to a court of appeal or land a job during retirement as a paid arbitrator. About 1 in 10 judges are excellent in all respects in my opinion. About 3 in 10 have no redeeming qualities.:eek:
I think manipulating the jury is often what it’s all about: deciding what they do and don’t get to hear. Also, deciding who gets to be on the jury; each side tossing out anyone they don’t think they can win.
IANAL but IIRC “Three Strikes” only applies to violent crimes (assaults, armed robbery, rape, etc) I was on a jury that convicted a “third strike” offense. We were told that he had prior felonies but not that this would be the magic #3. When we found out a few minutes after our conviction was delivered that this was #3 a few of the jurors were very upset that he was getting i think a min of 35 years for a carjacking. I don’t know if I could have brought myself to drop a guilty on the guy if I had known that and he was not anyone I would want to meet in a dark alley.
I have in several threads voiced my position on drug legalization (pro) but until we change it, we are stuck with the laws as is.
This whole issue could be avoided if the law were changed to guilty but not punishable by reason of insanity. I and perhaps a lot of people have an issue with calling Yates, Hinckley et al not guilty because of insanity. They clearly committed the act. Now, the right thing to do might be to treat their mental illness, but innocent they are not.
I also realize that changing the law in such a fundamental manner would be difficult.
No one in the American legal system is found innocent. The system (quite correctly) doesn’t even address the question of innocence. At issue is whether the state sufficiently proved that the defendant is guilty.
Guilt and commission of an act are two very different things. Guilt means culpability, having the particular mens rea to committed the act with criminal intent (or, sometimes, reckless disregard). In the easiest example, a defendant who admits he killed someone, but did it in self-defense could not and should not be found “guilty but not punishable” or whatever. They are “not guilty”.
People found not guilty by reason of insanity are punished. They are deprived of their liberty right until such time as they are determined to no longer present a danger.
Mandelstam, you are calling into question the whole basis of the insanity distinction in law. Fair enough, but let’s define terms. Legal insanity means inability to tell the difference between right and wrong. It doesn’t mean psychotic, delusional, or anything else. It is all about mens rea - the formation of criminal intent.
Let me give you a (somewhat specious) hypothetical. Two people, both schizophrenics, commit murder. One commits the murder because his delusion was that God told him to do so. The second commits murder because his delusion was that Satan told him to do so.
To your mind, are each equally culpable? Discuss.
MGibson, the consequences of a verdict is definitely a factor in reaching a verdict for a jury. I know this both from juror studies as well as from observation of jury deliberation in (civil) mock trials.
Ideally this wouldn’t be so. The Yates jurors, ideally, would not have none the consequences of either a guilty or a not guilty by reason of insanity vote. Unfortunately, anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes in front of a television knows the consequences of a guilty verdict in a murder trial.
So the jurors already have half of the “forbidden” knowledge. This will affect their deliberations. Admittedly, anyone who’s spent an hour in from of the television likely knows the consequences of a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict. This will also affect their deliberations.
Given that jurors already know, or think they know, the consequences, it is probably best to give them the full and accurate information.
I can understand the balancing test used for the admissibility of evidence that may sway a jury on grounds we do not favor. So, for example, we generally exclude evidence in civil trials that a defendant has insurance that could cover the judgment. Makes sense – we don’t want to discourage people from getting insurance.
The problem I have with the exclusion of potential punishments in criminal trials, however, is that one of the main defenses of criminal punishment is its supposed deterrent effect. That is, jurors should already know not only what conduct is criminal, but also what the potential punishment is, since that supposedly is what in part dictates their conduct in society.
That logic does not really hold for the insanity defense, but in my view, jurors should know going in what the consequences are of committing multiple murders. In the interest of balance, then, they should not be prevented from hearing what the potential results are for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.