Amnesia and criminal responsibility

INTRODUCTION Under common law, criminal responsibility usually distinguishes between intentional act and accident, andmost serious criminal offenses consist of both a voluntary act and a guilty mind.1 This treatment presumes that no defendant should be held criminally responsible without a finding of fault. Despite this long-standing conceptual commitment to fairness, criminal law continues to punish defendants who cannot remember the crime that they allegedly committed. Some evidence shows a high frequency of crime-related amnesia, and the medical community finds the phenomenon legitimate. This note will first explore standards used to evaluate criminal responsibility in general, crime-related amnesia from themedical perspective, and how courts currently address amnesiac criminal defendants. This note will further argue that current legal treatment is problematic, because amnesia is both procedurally and substantively relevant to criminal responsibility.