Criminal Responsibility (Insanity Defense)

Psychiatric aspects of criminal responsibility: insanity and mitigation.

Forensic psychiatry expertise may be useful to criminal courts in several ways, including evaluating competence (e.g., to stand trial, waive Miranda rights, confess, plead, represent oneself, or be sentenced), assessing responsibility for alleged criminal behavior, and clarifying mental or psychosocial factors that may mitigate criminal charges or the form and severity of punishment. This colum...

In Defense of Cultural “Insanity”: Using Insanity as a Proxy for Culture in Criminal Cases

Courts in the United States do not recognize a formal “cultural defense” for criminal acts committed by defendants belonging to other cultures. This means that courts ostensibly do not take foreign cultural practices, customs, or beliefs into account in evaluating the guilt of individuals who break U.S. laws. Nonetheless, courts have repeatedly permitted cultural evidence to be introduced as an...

On Criminal Insanity

Criminal Responsibility

are not always evident to the man in the street and are particularly easy to neglect when involved in the highly sensational atmosphere of a murder trial; this is of course particularly so if the details are horrific or sexual or both and if a plea of insanity is raised in defence. It may therefore be helpful to re-state the points at issue. The first point is that lawyers and doctors talk in d...

Reducing stigma of criminal insanity

Andrew Axer1, Robert C. Beckett2, Jennifer Jones3: 1Johnson Creek Secure Treatment Facility, Columbia Care Services, Inc. 2808 SE Balfour Street Milwaukie, OR 97222; 2Columbia Care Services, Inc. 2015 NW 507 Flanders St., Portland, Oregon 97209 USA; 3Office 3587 Heathrow Way Medford, OR 97504; Correspondence address: Andrew Axer, Columbia Care Services, Inc.; 2015 NW 507 Flanders St., Portland,...