An Overview of the Effect of Mental Illness Under U.S. Criminal Law

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul H. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Law

The Royal Road to the Criminal Law’s Concept of the Psychology of Persons

2020 ◽  
pp. 143-204
Author(s):  
Michael S. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Psychological Characteristics ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
As If

One of the most famous excuses from responsibility and defenses to criminal liability is insanity. The doctrines of insanity are the royal road to grasping the nature of personhood presupposed by both morality and the criminal law. This is because the insane are thought to lack that which makes us accountable agents. The doctrines defining legal insanity are thus examined at some length, probing such doctrines for their suppositions about what psychological characteristics sane persons must possess to be responsible agents. Considerable stripping away from standard doctrines of insanity is needed to reveal the defense’s presuppositions about personhood and moral agency. For those standard doctrines treat insanity as if it were an ordinary excuse like mistake or coercion, just one incidentally limited to those offenders who are mentally ill. Whereas in fact insanity excuses independently of both the cognitive excuses of mistake and of the volitional excuses of coercion, and it does so because of the defense’s central focus on mental illness. Because of their mental illness those who are legally insane lack something more basic than the cognitive and volitional defects on which the defenses of mistake and coercion are based; those who are legally insane lack the moral agency possessed by sane adult persons. This is why this sui generis excuse of insanity affords such a unique opportunity to probe law and morality’s suppositions of what persons must be like to be responsible agents.

scholarly journals Criminal Law: Insane Persons: Influence of Mental Illness on the Parole Return Process

1961 ◽  
Vol 59 (7) ◽  
pp. 1101
Author(s):  
David G. Davies ◽  
John H. Hess
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Return Process

scholarly journals An Analysis of the Death Penalty in Indonesia Criminal Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddy Rifai
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Legal Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reaction

This research uses normative juridical approach to study on the analysis of the death penalty executions and the legal policy of death executions in Indonesia. There are delays on death executions for the convicted person since they entitled to using rights namely filing a judicial review (PK/Peninjauan Kembali). Furthermore, the legal loophole in the execution of the death penalty by the publication of the Constitutional Court Number 107 / PUU-XIII / 2015 which assert that the Attorney as the executor can ask the convicted person or his family whether to use their rights or not if the convict clearly does not want to use his rights, the executions will be carried out. Legal policy on threats and the implementation of the death penalty in the draft of criminal code was agreed by draftsman of the bill with the solutions. The draftsman of the bill agrees that the death penalty will be an alternative punishment sentenced as a last resort to protect the society. The bill also regulates that the execution among others include that the execution can be delayed by ten years probations. If the public reaction on the convict is not too large or convict has regret and could fix it or the role in the crime is not very important and there is a reason to reduce punishment, the death penalty may be changed. For pregnant women and the mentally ill convicts the execution can only be carried after the birth and the person has recovered from mental illness. The existence of this solutions is still kept putting the death penalty in criminal law, whereas the effectiveness of the death penalty is scientifically still in doubt to solve crimes and to prevent crimes by the death penalty punishment.

scholarly journals The effect of mental illness under us criminal law

2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-242
Author(s):  
Paul H Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Law

N/A

scholarly journals The problems of psychiatric expert witness by pathological reaction to alcohol

1998 ◽  
Vol 70 (9) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Borislav Kapamadžija
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
The Real ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Forensic Psychiatric ◽  
Condition Diagnosis ◽  
Pathological Reaction ◽  
Psychic Condition

We presented a case of brutal murder in the condition of pathological reaction to alcohol. The author also gives a brief view of forensic-psychiatric literature data on this problem. The conclusion is that clinical descriptions are not precise in details which makes certain unsecurity and confusion in expert witness. The problem is more complicated with the fact that these conditions mostly last for a short period o f time and are transitory, so that expert witness see a man of normal psychic condition. Diagnosis of pathological reaction to alcohol automatically includes the judgement of total inaccountability which is seldom accepted both in criminal law and in public. In that situation expert witness feels insecure, being aware of the reaction of jurisdiction and public to such an expertise. That is the reason why they often are not precisly defined in literature data and have not enough professional and social sourage to make the diagnosis of total inaccountability. Inspite of all these imprécisions, such conditions have some things in common: they are not common and well known condition of "drunkeness" but they present conditions of true psychosis (mental illness) with transitory character. Although we know that alcohol is only the provocative factor, the real cause of these conditions still remains unknown.

scholarly journals Madness and Revolution: The Impact of Radicalism on the Treason Trial of James Hadfield

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Nolen
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Insanity Defense ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Impact ◽  
George Iii

The insanity defense is a doctrine in the criminal law which excuses from punishment defendants who commit crimes as the result of serious mental illness. However, the sorts of mental illness that qualify for the defense, as well as the causal connection required between the illness and the act, have varied widely across Anglo-American legal history. This thesis argues that historians have not sufficiently considered the role that radicalism and social unrest have played in shaping the defense, and explores the 1800 treason trial of James Hadfield for the attempted assassination of King George III, where government fears of the French Revolution and associated English radicals helped to reshape the insanity defense.

The Crime of Attempted Suicide in Uganda: The Need for Reforms to the Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Charlene Lubaale
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Attempted Suicide ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Commit Suicide

Much has been written on the subject of suicide in Uganda, in particular the need to decriminalise it. However, very little is devoted to the issue of whether, in the first place, this offence is grounded in the principles of criminal law. In addition, hardly any literature is devoted to the exploration of defences capable of being relied on to ensure that when persons who attempt suicide are charged, due regard is given to the mental health issues surrounding their conduct. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, to demonstrate that the offence of attempted suicide under Ugandan law lacks foundation in the principles of criminal law. This conclusion is based on the fact that the offence of suicide is not proscribed under Uganda’s laws; therefore, the conduct of attempting to commit suicide cannot constitute an offence. Secondly, to argue that the defence of insanity in Uganda, if widened, could found a basis for persons who attempt suicide to be acquitted by reason of mental illness.

Free Will and Law: Toward a Pragmatic Approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-231
Author(s):  
Greg Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Social Responses ◽  
Mentally Disordered ◽  
Folk Wisdom ◽  
Science Philosophy

Despite its profound significance for notions of legal responsibility, the courts and legal system have tended to avoid direct engagement with the philosophical problem of free will. Focusing on mental illness and the criminal law, I advance here a naturalistic approach that builds on the work of P. F. Strawson, one I believe offers a pragmatic basis from which to address the contradictions and challenges present when folk wisdom, science, philosophy and the law intersect. In this way, I contend that moving dialectically between a reflexive engagement with extant practical attitudes to freedom and the empirical investigation of the participant/object divide affords the opportunity to develop more rational and humane legal and social responses to both the mentally disordered and broader population.

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