Balancing Individual Needs with Public Interest: An Investigation into the Extent to Which Depressive Illness Can Provide Evidence for Diminished Responsibilities

Abstract

As a partial defence to murder, the diminished responsibility defence was introduced to allow defendants suffering from a range of mental health conditions to receive a conviction more proportionate to their level of culpability for their crime. However, reflecting the need to balance individual needs with the interests of the public, determining an appropriate boundary for this defence can be difficult in practice. Focusing on this particular tension in the law, this paper reviews the extent to which depressive illness can provide sufficient evidence of diminished responsibilities in criminal trials, finding that in such cases, the impact of bias on case outcomes is notable. It is submitted that such bias exists not only because of the nature of the condition, particularly its likening to ‘normality’ and the difficulty in its diagnosis; but also as a result of inconsistencies in the application of the diminished responsibility defence itself, that has generated uncertainty and hence has facilitated the proliferation of biased influences.