Abstract
BackgroundHealth and justice have to communicate whenever the question of legal responsibility is raised with respect to a person accused of a serious crime. Both recommendations and practices on expert report design and content vary widely.MethodsThis paper briefly reviews the characteristics of 27 reports accepted as persuasive in contested New Zealand cases.Results and conclusionsRelative brevity, presenting the opinions within a court friendly structure, and emphasising the information available around the time of the events, as opposed to information clinically or legally reconstructed, all appear to be important.
Highlights
Health and justice have to communicate whenever the question of legal responsibility is formally raised with respect to a person accused of a serious crime
To assist the Court, both defence and prosecution seek independent psychiatric opinions on the applicability of criteria prescribed in section 23 of the New Zealand (NZ) Crimes Act (1961) and subsequent, relevant, case law
Where the reports were at the request of the Crown (Prosecutor), but their conclusion favoured the defence argument for not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) (n = 10), in subsequent Court proceedings the psychiatric evidence was no longer contested
Summary
Health and justice have to communicate whenever the question of legal responsibility is formally raised with respect to a person accused of a serious crime. Psychiatric evidence is presented to the court by expert witnesses whose opinions are separately sought by both the prosecution or the defence. In NZ (population 4.5 m; forensic psychiatrists, 45), Allnutt and Chaplow (2000) have argued that psychiatrists should resist giving opinions on the ultimate legal issue even when encouraged to do so by legal participants in the justice system They note that it is frequently necessary to obtain collateral information (such as family, development, health and other observations) from third parties and review other sources such as previous psychiatric notes, but they do not refer to using other witness statements or the police interview in the days immediately following the event, despite the Court’s critical interest in the person’s mental state at the time of the alleged offence. The following could be seen as characteristics of those 27 reports
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