Reference no: EM133225161

What series of steps would you take to address the issue? What ethical principles and standards inform this strategy?

Billy Bezerk was to stand trial for the axe murder of his family of four. His attorney was planning to use an insanity defense and hired Cruddy D. Cider, Psy.D., to conduct an expert psychological evaluation of criminal responsibility. The evaluation revealed that Mr. Bezerk had a major thought disorder, poor impulse control, and considerable unmodulated anger and frequently expressed paranoid ideation. In particular, Mr. Bezerk's auditory hallucinations had repeatedly warned him that alien beings had taken over the bodies of his family and were about to embark on the conquest of Earth. Dr. Cider cited all these findings and concluded his report with the statement that Mr. Bezerk was clearly insane at the time of the offense. The ultimate issue of whether a defendant was "insane" at the time of an offense does not fall within the valid realm of a psychological question because the concept of insanity is defined by law rather than by behavioral science. A bit of history reveals the complexity of the issue. In 1843, Daniel M'Naghten, a Scottish wood turner, attempted to assassinate the prime minister of England while suffering from stark paranoid delusions and killed a different man instead. The court found him not guilty because he clearly did not understand the nature or wrongfulness of his act. Public outrage after his acquittal prompted the creation of a formal legal definition of insanity that became known as the M'Naghten rule. In the 1950s, Monte Durham was convicted of housebreaking in the District of Columbia, and his only defense at trial asserted Durham was that he was of unsound mind at the time of the offense (Durham v. United States, 1954). In that case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia adopted a so-called product test under which legal insanity hinged on whether the person committed the criminal act because of a mental disease or defect. Considerable criticism followed because that standard gave mental health experts too much influence in a decision of insanity and not enough to jurors. The next development, known as the Model Penal Code (MPC), published by the American Law Institute (ALI), provided a compromise standard for legal insanity, blending elements of the stricter M'Naghten rule and the more lenient Durham ruling. Under the MPC ALI standard, insanity defenses hinged on whether at the time of the criminal conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the act or lacked the ability to behave in conformity with the requirements of the law. The MPC ALI standard enjoyed popularity until 1981, when John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity under those guidelines after attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Public outrage at Hinckley's acquittal led federal lawmakers to pass legislation reverting to the stricter M'Naghten standard. Some states attempted to abolish the insanity defense altogether by offering juries a verdict of "guilty, but mentally ill," which allowed sentencing of people to terms of years in psychiatric facilities. Today's standards for proving legal insanity vary widely from state to state, requiring those offering expert testimony to focus their opinions on the elements of the particular statutes in question. Dr. Cider can appropriately describe the defendant's bizarre behavior, confirm his impulsivity and instability using test or interview data, explain how a lack of control might result, link these findings to the facts of the case, and provide other such expert commentary. Based on his knowledge of schizophrenia and his evaluation of Mr. Bezerk, Dr. Cider may also testify about the probability that the symptoms observed most likely affected the defendant's behavior on the day of the crime. However, the judge or jury must weigh the evidence and decide whether the information presented proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Bezerk met the legal definition of insanity. Too frequently, mental health professionals will neglect such caution in their testimony and may even find themselves encouraged to comment on ultimate issues by some attorneys and judges (Faust, 2011d; Melton et al., 1997; Sales & Shuman, 1993; Sales & Simon, 1993). Sometimes, even experienced forensic mental health professionals have been caught making inappropriate assertions from the witness stand. Andrea Yates, the Texas woman convicted of drowning her children in a bathtub, was granted a new trial by an appeals court after an expert witness for the prosecution gave false testimony.