Insanity Cases Research Articles

Examining the effect of religiosity, moral disengagement, personal attribution, comprehension and proximity on juror decision making regarding insanity pleas

Legal attitudes, religion, and attributions relate to insanity defense attitudes and legal decisions in insanity cases. Religious fundamentalism has consistently predicted punitiveness associated with insanity; however, the current research focuses on moral disengagement as an explanatory link in the fundamentalist and insanity chain. Additional exploratory interests examined how defendants’ perceived proximity to jurors might act as a potential moderator. The current study uses factorial survey design to examine the relationships between the variables using a mock jury insanity trial. Results suggest religious fundamentalism is related to harsher verdicts and sentences, and these relationships are mediated by moral disengagement attributions, authoritarian attitudes towards the persons with mental illness, and negative attitudes towards the insanity defense. Based on findings, prosecution and defense should consider moral and religious themes presented in their arguments. Additionally, defendants pleading insanity should be aware of how juror attitudes and biases might affect the trial and verdict processes.

Limitations Using Neuroimaging to Reconstruct Mental State After a Crime.

Neuroimaging offers great potential to clinicians and researchers for a host of mental and physical conditions. The use of imaging has been trumpeted for forensic psychiatric and psychological evaluations to allow greater insight into the relationship between the brain and behavior. The results of imaging certainly can be used to inform clinical diagnoses; however, there continue to be limitations in using neuroimaging for insanity cases due to limited scientific backing for how neuroimaging can inform retrospective evaluations of mental state. In making this case, this paper reviews the history of the insanity defense and explains how the use of neuroimaging is not an effective way of improving the reliability of insanity defense evaluations.

What's in the Box? Punishment and Insanity in the Canadian Jury Deliberation Room.

In insanity cases, although the defendant's eventual punishment is legally irrelevant to the jury's decision, it may be psychologically relevant. In this three-part mixed-methods study, Canadian jury eligible participants (N = 83) read a fictional murder case involving an insanity claim, then took part in 45-min deliberations. Findings showed that mock jurors who were generally favourable towards punishment had a lower frequency of utterances that supported the Defence's case. A qualitative description of keyword flagged utterances also demonstrated that mock jurors relied on moral intuitions about authority, harm, and fairness in justifying their positions. These findings may have application in crafting effective Judge's instructions and lawyer's opening statements.

The influence of defendant race and mental disorder type on mock juror decision-making in insanity trials

This study examined the joint influence of defendant race (Black/White) and mental disorder type (schizophrenia/depression) on mock juror decisions in a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) case. We reasoned that unwillingness to vote for insanity would be more pronounced for a Black defendant with schizophrenia, given overlapping dangerousness and criminality stereotypes associated with those groups. Online community participants (N = 216) read a fictional second-degree murder case in which we varied mental disorder type and defendant race, then provided a verdict (guilty/NGRI) and answered questions regarding the trial. In line with hypotheses, participants were significantly more likely to vote guilty for a Black defendant with schizophrenia as compared to depression, but there were no significant differences for the White defendant. Results of this study suggest that bias in insanity trials can be exacerbated for a racialized defendant.

The Insanity Defence: How Do We Handle Doubt?

This paper discusses how the legal definition of criminal insanity has been altered several times in the Norwegian criminal law, most recently in June 2019. There are difficulties in communicating between psychiatric experts, legal experts, and lay judges, since the description and understanding of psychotic cognition as well as the definition of legal terms are not equally understood.
 Not all insanity cases are clear-cut. The Norwegian forensic experts must not conclude that the charged person is considered ‘psychotic’ in the legal sense if they are not clinically sure of this. The courts, on the other hand, must not conclude that a person is ‘sane’ if there is doubt about this. This paper discusses how there is little practical knowledge of how experts and courts handle such doubts, and highlights the lack of discussion of these questions in the legal sources.

Mental state at time of offense in the hot tub: An empirical examination of concurrent expert testimony in an insanity case.

The role of experts and their presentation of testimony in insanity cases remain controversial. In order to decrease possible expert bias associated with this testimony, a number of different alternatives to adversarial presentation have been suggested. Two such alternatives are the use of court-appointed experts and the use of concurrent testimony (or "hot-tubbing"), in which opposing experts provide testimony concurrently and converse with each other directly. An experiment using a sample of venire jurors (n=150) tested the effect of these alternatives. Results indicate that participants' pre-existing attitudes towards the insanity defense had significant effects on their comprehension of expert testimony, their evaluations of the two opposing experts, and their eventual verdicts, over and above the presentation format (i.e., concurrent vs. traditional testimony) or the use of court-appointed experts (vs. traditional adversarial experts). When concurrent testimony was presented, defense-favoring experts were perceived by jurors as more credible than their traditional counterparts, though comprehension of the testimony did not increase; nor did the presentation format or the affiliation of the experts affect verdicts. The legal and policy implications of the incorporation of the hot-tubbing procedure to US courts are discussed.

Discerning bias in forensic psychological reports in insanity cases

This project began as an attempt to develop systematic, measurable indicators of bias in written forensic mental health evaluations focused on the issue of insanity. Although forensic clinicians observed in this study did vary systematically in their report-writing behaviors on several of the indicators of interest, the data are most useful in demonstrating how and why bias is hard to ferret out. Naturalistic data were used in this project (i.e., 122 real forensic insanity reports), which in some ways is a strength. However, given the nature of bias and the problem of inferring whether a particular judgment is biased, naturalistic data also made arriving at conclusions about bias difficult. This paper describes the nature of bias - including why it is a special problem in insanity evaluations - and why it is hard to study and document. It details the efforts made in an attempt to find systematic indicators of potential bias, and how this effort was successful in part, but also how and why it failed. The lessons these efforts yield for future research are described. We close with a discussion of the limitations of this study and future directions for work in this area.

Putting negative attitudes on the agenda? Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act publicity and juror decision-making

The current study examined the effect of publicity about Canada's recent Not Criminally Responsible (NCR) Reform Act – legislation surrounding accused in insanity cases that purportedly aims to enhance public safety – on juror decision-making. In line with agenda-setting theory, we expected that NCR Reform Act publicity might reinforce certain fears about the insanity defence, dependent on whether it had either a positive or negative evaluative slant. Contrary to previous work on the insanity defence, participants in this study generally favoured a NCR verdict. The evaluative slant of the NCR publicity had no effect on verdict decisions or insanity defence attitudes, but there was a significant difference in participants' evaluations of the fairness of the Reform Act, such that those exposed to a positive or control article viewed the act as fairer than those exposed to a negative article. This study may aid future researchers in evaluating potential unintended consequences of the NCR Reform Act.

Religious fundamentalism, religiosity, and priming: effects on attitudes, perceptions, and mock jurors’ decisions in an insanity defense case

ABSTRACTJurors are asked to use their personal knowledge and experience to make verdict decisions; thus, it is no surprise that their religious beliefs might influence their decisions. During legal insanity trials, jurors might also be exposed to religious stimuli (e.g. crucifix, prayer, Bible, etc.), which could evoke (prime) religious beliefs and thus influence decisions. Two studies examined whether dimensions of religiosity and religious beliefs relate to attitudes and decisions concerning mental health defenses, testing social identity theory against Allport and Ross’s religiosity hypothesis. In Study 1 (attitudes survey) and Study 2 (mock juror decision-making paradigm), religious fundamentalist beliefs consistently predicted punitive attitudes and decisions related to mental health defenses and verdicts, and this was moderated by intrinsic religiosity, such that religious fundamentalist beliefs only predicted punitiveness for individuals low in intrinsic religiosity. Also, priming fundamentalist beliefs increased punitiveness in both verdict and sentencing decisions. Combined, these results suggest that religious beliefs play a role in jurors’ verdict decisions in an insanity case, and that priming fundamentalist beliefs increases jurors’ punitiveness. Allport and Ross’s religiosity hypothesis was supported, but social identity theory was not.

At Her Majesty's Pleasure: Criminal Insanity in 19th‐Century Britain

AbstractCriminal insanity cases tried in common law courts in the 19th century attracted the sustained attention of doctors, lawyers, government officials and members of the public. This intense interest was due, in part, to the drama of these cases. However, criminal insanity and the criminally insane also prompted experts and others to contemplate intractable, metaphysical questions about the limits of sanity, the existence of free will and the justification of judicial punishment. This essay argues that, while scholars working in the field of what might be called ‘forensic psychiatry studies’ are acutely conscious of the many ways in which the history of criminal insanity intersects with broader histories of the mind sciences, law and the self, criminal insanity remains largely, and regrettably, tangential to these broader literatures. The essay describes some new directions in the scholarship on criminal insanity that promise to enrich forensic psychiatry studies and also, it is hoped, related fields.

Juror decision making in not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder trials: Effects of defendant gender and mental illness type

This study sought to examine the potential impact of defendant gender and mental illness type on Canadian juror decision making by manipulating the gender (man, woman) and mental illness (substance abuse disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression) of the defendant in a second-degree murder case involving an insanity plea. Participants read a trial transcript that included definitions of second-degree murder and the not criminally on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) defense. Participants then provided a verdict (guilty or NCRMD) and completed various scales measuring attributional judgments, perceptions of the defendant, and perceived dangerousness. Contrary to expectations, NCRMD was chosen over a guilty verdict in the majority of cases. Findings also indicated that participant decisions and perceptions regarding defendants diagnosed with substance abuse disorder differed from the other mental illness groups. The gender of the defendant had an influence on participants' perceptions of internal attributions, and the perceived stability of criminal behaviors. Results suggest that perceptions of mental illness influence verdicts in NCRMD cases, and that defendant gender plays a role in participants' perceptions of defendants. These findings contribute to the scarce literature on mental illness in the Canadian court system. Future research should examine the interaction between juror gender, defendant gender, and mental illness in insanity cases.

Religious Fundamentalism and Attitudes toward the Insanity Defense: The Mediating Roles of Criminal Attributions and Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill

Religious fundamentalism typically has been associated with negative perceptions of the insanity defense and defendants who use it. This association also has translated into verdict and sentencing decisions in insanity cases, such that higher endorsement of fundamentalist beliefs was associated with more punitive decisions. However, the mechanisms underlying the relationship between fundamentalism and insanity defense attitudes is unclear. Two possible explanations for this relationship include that (a) fundamentalism is associated with more dispositional attributions, and (b) fundamentalism is associated with more authoritarian attitudes toward mental illness and the mentally ill. Using structural equation modeling, attributions and attitudes were tested as mediators of the relationship between fundamentalism and insanity defense attitudes (i.e., strict liability attitudes and injustice–danger attitudes). These relationships were examined for theists and nontheists separately. Results suggest that personal attributions mediate the relationship between fundamentalism and injustice–danger attitudes, but authoritarian attitudes mediated the relationship between fundamentalism and strict liability attitudes. These relationships were only significant for theists. Implications for research and practice are discussed at the end.

When insanity has gone undiscovered by the courts: The practice of the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Commission in cases of doubts about insanity.

England, Scotland and Norway have established Criminal Cases Review Commissions to review the convictions of persons who may have been wrongly found guilty of a criminal offence. The aim of this study was to explore the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Commission (NCCRC) practice when legal insanity constitutes grounds for possible reopening of a criminal case. We identified all cases between 2004 and 2012 where an application to the NCCRC to reopen a case was on grounds of concerns about insanity. Data were extracted from records. Differences between reopened and disallowed insanity cases and variables that may explain the NCCRC's decision to reopen a case were analysed using multiple logistic regression. Forty cases were allowed, and 34 disallowed. The NCCRC relied fully and unanimously on the conclusions of the expert reports in making these decisions. In 26 of the 40 cases that the Commission reopened, psychosis had gone undetected by the courts. Such undetected cases were most often discovered in the wake of a new criminal case in connection with the defendant. If the length of the sentence were short, it was less likely that insanity had been considered by the court in the index judgement. The NCCRC may rely excessively on the forensic psychiatric reports. The experts' conclusions may be uncertain, given that they often have to look back several years to establish mental state and its relevance at the time of the crime. As nearly two-thirds of the reopened insanity cases had been given penalties of under 6 months, it may be asked whether such further investigation of fairly low-level crimes is the best use of resources. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Criminal behavior and the copycat effect: Literature review and theoretical framework for empirical investigation

The accumulation of anecdotal accounts of copycat crime suggests that popular culture plays an important role in some instances and aspects of criminal behavior. However, there is little empirical research specifically examining the copycat effect on criminal behavior. Questions remain regarding the nature and extent of copycat crime, cultural influences that shape the copycat effect, the role and relevance of popular culture as a motivating factor for criminal behavior, and issues the copycat phenomenon raises for legal determinations of criminal responsibility. This paper reviews the research literature and contemporary case examples of copycat crime with attention to the influence of mass media technology on criminal behavior, the mechanisms of media-mediated crime, and the relevance of understanding the copycat phenomenon for determinations of criminal responsibility in insanity cases. An integrative theoretical model of copycat crime is proposed, a methodological framework for empirically investigating copycat crime is presented, and practical implications for understanding the role of the copycat effect on criminal behavior are discussed.

The Mary Lincoln Enigma: Historians on America’s Most Controversial First LadyMary Lincoln’s Insanity Case: A Documentary History

Book Review| April 01 2014 The Mary Lincoln Enigma: Historians on America’s Most Controversial First LadyMary Lincoln’s Insanity Case: A Documentary History The Mary Lincoln Enigma: Historians on America’s Most Controversial First Lady. Ed. by Frank J. Williams and Michael Burkhimer. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Pp. xii, 376, illustrations, acknowledgements, introduction, epilogue, contributors, index. Cloth, $32.95.).Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case: A Documentary History. By Jason Emerson. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Pp. xix, 237, acknowledgements, introduction, editorial note, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, illustrations. Cloth, $35.00.). Martin J. Hardeman Martin J. Hardeman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) (2014) 107 (1): 116–120. https://doi.org/10.5406/jillistathistsoc.107.1.0116 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Martin J. Hardeman; The Mary Lincoln Enigma: Historians on America’s Most Controversial First LadyMary Lincoln’s Insanity Case: A Documentary History. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 1 January 2014; 107 (1): 116–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jillistathistsoc.107.1.0116 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

'Far from the Turbulent Space': Considering the Adequacy of Counsel in the Representation of Individuals Accused of Being Sexually Violent Predators

'Far from the Turbulent Space': Considering the Adequacy of Counsel in the Representation of Individuals Accused of Being Sexually Violent Predators

“Too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity”: Some therapeutic jurisprudence dilemmas in the representation of criminal defendants in incompetency and insanity cases

Little attention has been paid to the importance of the relationship between therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the role of criminal defense lawyers in insanity and incompetency-to-stand-trial (IST) cases. That inattention is especially noteworthy in light of the dismal track record of counsel providing services to defendants who are part of this cohort of incompetency-status-raisers and insanity-defense-pleaders. On one hand, this lack of attention is a surprise as TJ scholars have, in recent years, turned their attention to virtually every other aspect of the legal system. On the other hand, it is not a surprise, given the omnipresence of sanism, an irrational prejudice of the same quality and character of other irrational prejudices that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry, that infects both our jurisprudence and our lawyering practices. Sanism is largely invisible and largely socially acceptable, and is based predominantly upon stereotype, myth, superstition, and deindividualization. It is sustained and perpetuated by our use of alleged “ordinary common sense” (OCS) and heuristic reasoning in an unconscious response to events both in everyday life and in the legal process. This paper examines the literature that seeks to apply TJ principles to the criminal law process in general, drawing mostly on the work of Professor David Wexler. It considers why the lack of attention that I have referred to already is surprising (given TJ's mandate and the fact that many TJ issues are inevitably raised in any insanity or IST case). The paper then considers why this lack of attention is not surprising, given the omnipresence of sanism. It will consider some of the actual counseling issues that might arise in these contexts, and offer some suggestions to lawyers representing clients in cases in which mental status issues may be raised. The paper concludes that we must rigorously apply therapeutic jurisprudence principles to these issues, so as to strip away sanist behavior, pretextual reasoning and teleological decision making from the criminal competency and responsibility processes, so as to enable us to confront the pretextual use of social science data in an open and meaningful way. This gambit would also allow us to address—in a more successful way than has ever yet been done—the problems raised by the omnipresence of ineffective counsel in cases involving defendants with mental disabilities.

Representing Criminal Defendants in Incompetency and Insanity Cases: Some Therapeutic Jurisprudence Dilemmas

Representing Criminal Defendants in Incompetency and Insanity Cases: Some Therapeutic Jurisprudence Dilemmas

Malingering as a Dichotomous Variable: Case Report on an Insanity Defendant

ABSTRACT Malingering in forensic contexts has garnered increased attention in recent years. As a result, the past two decades have seen the development of more than a half dozen instruments to assess response styles. Although these instruments are gaining unprecedented popularity among forensic practitioners, there is little research on how closely practitioners adhere to the published guidelines for administration or interpretation. This article provides a case study of the use of one popular instrument, the Structured Inventory of Reported Symptoms, in an insanity case. Misinterpretation of the defendant's scores contributed to the misclassification of malingering, which was used to bolster the government's case at trial. This case suggests the need for better training and more caution when using instruments to assess response styles in forensic contexts.

Detecting over- and underreporting of psychopathology with the Spanish-language Personality Assessment Inventory: Findings from a simulation study with bilingual speakers.

Existing research on the Spanish-language translation of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; L. C. Morey, 1991) suggests that the validity scales from the English- and Spanish-language versions may not be equivalent measures. In the current study, 72 bilingual participants completed both the English- and Spanish-language versions of the PAI under the instructions to respond honestly, to overreport psychopathology for an insanity case, or to underreport psychopathology for an employment evaluation. Overall, the English- and Spanish-language validity scales performed similarly, and scores from the Negative Impression Management and the Positive Impression Management scales demonstrated the highest levels of equivalence and accuracy for the identification of simulators across language versions.