NOT GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY
Article Summary
This article presents a study on the beliefs that criminal cases involving persons with insanity, as misunderstood by the public and mostly preconceived by the jury. The objective is to confirm if the pre-existing beliefs on executing justices on insane capital offenders are true. It uses surveys through interviews on a fair sample population to determine the facts. The results indicate that fears and misconceptions based on misinformation about insanity have an impact on the decision making in the legal field.
Summary of Main Findings
This research literature highlights perceived views and public opinions believed to be used by the jury as mechanisms of decision-making in criminally insane persons. It confirms public beliefs that the majority of cases as not genuine and used in defense by persons guilty of violent crimes. That insanity claims are often used as strategies to get a quittance by the defendants, and few who make it behind bars are always on short terms. It points out prior relationships or close interaction with an insane person along with knowledge on insanity as crucial factors in determining cases of criminally insane individuals. Improvement in knowledge and recognition of the mentally unstable is also associated with stigma, negative emotions, and discrimination of the insane. These facts are believed to be influential in decision making in the jury, with most pointing out pre-existing attitudes toward the mentally ill as weighting the jury’s verdict.
Critique of the Article
Legal verdicts on mentally ill persons require skilled evaluations and testimonies, which can be complicating issues. In a courtroom, there is a need for expert evaluation of these cases to reach a morally and legally unbiased verdict. Mentally associated cases vary at all lengths, consider an example of a person accused of attempted suicide, a psychiatrist will most likely derive a conclusion for the decision as either based on psychosis or as resulting from depression, the jury will, in this case, give recommendations for treatment and the accused acquitted, this is not true where there is a defendant like the case presented in the case study on the article.
Even though the researchers employed an excellent methodology in the study, the shortcomings that result from limited case samplings is a case that makes the findings unreliable. Further, the research was one-sided in going to the public and doing little to reach out to the professionals like the lawyers, criminal investigating officers, and the policing authority. Widening the scope of the study would enhance the results and present clearer findings that are unbiased.
There is some attractiveness in the manner in which the authors presented their findings and the basis on which they built their hypothesis. The article is also made on several pieces of research citations, presenting the deliberate research work employed in the study. Moreover, the material has a good problem statement. It provides enlightenment on societal issues that are hardly talked in our societies today. What can be said about cases which do not have defendants like a suicide attempt prompted by mental illness?
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Reference
Daftary‐Kapur, T., Groscup, J. L., O’Connor, M., Coffaro, F., & Galietta, M. (2011). Measuring knowledge of the insanity defense: Scale construction and validation. Behavioral sciences & the law, 29(1), 40-63. 10.1002/bsl.938.