The defendant has been charged with a series of crimes including homicide, assault of a police officer, kidnapping, burglary, and crimes related to drugs. The first issue is whether Stu Dents understands these charges and is competent to stand trial. Competency to stand trial requires that a defendant have the mental capacity to understand the changes against him, the procedures of the court, and the consequences of his being found guilty. He must also be competent enough to be able to help his lawyers plan a legal strategy, remember and describe details related to the crimes charged against him, explain his motives, testify in the witness stand in his own behalf, and stand up against witnesses.
Stu Dents’ erratic behavior at the time of his arrest, his wild and delusional protestations, journal entries, and array of photographs of the victim all appear to indicate that Stu Dents may be suffering from a mental disorder, defect, or impairment that precludes his understanding of the charges against him or his ability to cooperate in his defense. Therefore, based on this prima facie evidence of Stu Dents’ mental disability, a plea can be entered that Stu Dents is not competent to stand trial.
The State of Georgia’s Insanity Defense
But if the court rejects the plea and rules that Stu Dents is competent to stand trial, Stu Dents can then plead the insanity defense at trial. Georgia uses a modified version of the M’Naghten Rule. The burden of proof is on the defendant, who can use the “irresistible impulse” test under a modification of the M’Naghten Rule. The state also allows an intermediate verdict of “guilty but mentally ill,” which impacts the choice of legal strategy.
Proving Insanity Under Georgia Law
The M’Naghten Rule limits the insanity defense to “cognitive insanity,” manifested as a basic inability to distinguish right from wrong. The original ruling was that a defendant may use the insanity defense only if “at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” (Queen v. M'Naghten, 8 Eng. Rep. 718 [1843])
Stu Dents may invoke the original M'Naghten rule only if:
(1) He suffers from “a defect of reason, from disease of the mind;” that is, in cases of cognitive insanity
(2) Because of this cognitive insanity, Stu Dents did not know what he was doing
(3) Even if Su Dents knew what he was doing, cognitive insanity kept him from understanding that the act was wrong
If Stu Dents meets his burden of proof and is able to prove cognitive insanity he can be judged mentally insane under the original M'Naghten rule. However, should it transpire that Stu Dents is not able to prove cognitive insanity, but only that he acted under an insane delusion, Stu Dents can still rely on the modified M'Naghten rule and base his defense on the “irresistible impulse test.”
Irresistible Impulse Test
Under the modified M'Naghten rule, an additional form of insanity is allowed, “volitional insanity.” This concept applies to individuals who are not mentally ill, and who knew at the time that they committed the crime that the act that they were committing was wrong, but who were nevertheless unable to conform their behavior to the law.
Therefore, should the prosecutors have enough evidence to show that Stu Dent committed the homicide and the other crimes charged against him—and the evidence certainly looks to point in that direction—and Stu Dents can not prove cognitive insanity, he can still use the “irresistible impulse” test to prove “volitional insanity” at the time he committed the crime, and thus avoid criminal liability. Perhaps.
Guilty but Mentally Ill
Georgia allows a verdict of “guilty but mentally ill” (GBMI). A verdict of GBMI differs from a verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity” in that the defendant does not escape full criminal liability. A defendant who is found GBMI can be sentenced to serve a full prison term even should the defendant later recover from his insanity. A defendant found “not guilty by reason of insanity” would be set free.
Therefore, the best legal strategy would be to try to prove that Stu Dents suffers from cognitive insanity to reduce the risk that the jury would hand the intermediate verdict of GBMI instead of a verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity.” At the very least, Stu Dents would retain the option to gain his freedom should his mental condition improve.
Does the “Guilty but Mentally Ill” Verdict Violate the Constitution?
But if Stu Dents is found “guilty but mentally ill,” the next step in his defense would be to challenge the validity of the verdict under Constitutional law. The requirement that a defendant should have the mens rea, or guilty mind, to commit a crime is not limited to the defense of insanity but can be found in all other the defenses, including self-defense, defense of others, provocation, duress, and mistake of fact. Therefore, why is it that only the defense of insanity can result in the twilight verdict of “guilty but mentally ill?” That is, there are no such verdicts as “guilty but acting in self-defense,” or “guilty but under duress.” When those defenses are invoked with success, the verdict is “not guilty,” and the defendant is acquitted and walks free.
The implication of this glaring discrepancy in the way the law is applied in the insanity defense is that (1) the defendant is denied of due process, as mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment and (2) the defendant is not getting equal protection under the law, which also violates the Fourteenth Amendment (Fentiman,1985). The defendant is not getting the benefit of due process because he is not allowed to fully invoke the defense of insanity, which means that the defendant is not allowed to prove that one of the key elements of the crime has not been met: mens rea. Due process is also violated when a criminal defendant is tried in court when he is clearly not competent to assist in his own defense. As to equal protection under the law, the “guilty but mentally ill” verdict allows the judicial system to hand the defendant longer sentences (Fentiman, 1985). There is also an issue regarding psychiatric treatment during the defendant’s term of incarceration. In the case of defendants serving time under “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdicts, psychiatric treatment and assessments are provided until the defendant is found “cured” and granted freedom. No such avenue is available to the defendant found ““guilty but mentally ill.” It would be an interesting study to see whether both types of defendants are getting equal access to psychiatric treatment.
References
Fentiman, L.C. (1985). “Guilty but mentally ill”: The real verdict is guilty. Boston
College Law Review 26 (3), 601-653.
Perkins R.M., & Boyce, R.N. (1982). Criminal Law, Third Edition. Mineola, New York:
The Foundation Press, Inc.
Queen v. M'Naghten, 8 Eng. Rep. 718 [1843]
