Stalking, Competence to Stand Trial, and Criminal Responsibility

Abstract

In the 1990s, stalking emerged as a new category of criminal offense and a distinct type of disordered behavior. A substantial fraction of stalkers suffer from delusional disorders or other severe mental illnesses, and many persons charged criminally with stalking adduce irrational beliefs to explain and justify their conduct. Such beliefs pose special challenges for mental health professionals who assess or help restore an accused stalker’s competence to stand trial, or who evaluate an accused stalker’s criminal responsibility. This chapter explores the clinical and forensic problems that arise when severe psychiatric symptoms—in particular, disruptions in reality testing (e.g., erotomanic delusions)—affect legal determinations concerning competence to stand trial, mens rea, and insanity. The term “stalking” unites under a single rubric behavioral patterns that until recently might have been regarded variously as manifestations of erotomanic delusions (Esquirol, 1845/1976), harassment (Jason, Reicher, Easton, Neal, & Wilson, 1984), or quaint expressions of courtly love (Singer, 1987). Beginning in the early 1990s, a confluence of social trends and news events—including heightened fears of stranger violence, increasing fragility of interpersonal relationships, and the stalking and murder of actress Rebecca Shaeffer—led the English-speaking world to construe stalking as a major mental health problem and a new category of criminal offense (Mullen, Pathé, & Purcell, 2001a). In turn, the existence of stalking as a distinct offense led to increased public recognition of the problem and, in some jurisdictions, to the filing of an unexpectedly large number of criminal stalking charges (Nadkarni & Grubin, 2000). The acts that constitute stalking bear a superficial similarity to common (if annoying) behaviors in which “normal” people engage and that may have roots in human evolution (Brüne, 2003). Familiar examples include awkward attempts to start a dating relationship, persistent and insistent requests for attention or services, and unwanted pursuit by a former lover who hopes to rekindle a relationship (Mullen, Pathé, Purcell, & Stuart, 1999; Mullen et al., 2001a). By contrast, the types of persistent stalking toward which antistalking laws are directed involve approaches and intrusions repeated over weeks, months, or even years, in which the victim reasonably experiences fear and psychological distress.