Ohio Insanity Case Analysis

This paper will include what the insanity statutes are in Ohio, the state that I live in. I will also talk about how often the insanity defense is used in the United States. As well as how successful this defense is. I will also discuss if psychologists should give their ultimate opinion in regards to sanity cases as well as the ethical issues that may rise from their opinions. Lastly, I will discuss how difficult it is to provide adequate psychological care for mentally ill patients while they are incarcerated in prison. The care they would have received had they been institutionalized in a mental hospital instead would have resulted in fewer deaths. According to FindLaw.com, the statute that Ohio uses for the insanity defense is the M’Naghten
Rule (Reuters, 2014). The M’Naghten rule, which was introduced in 1843, came about because of a mentally ill person named Daniel M’Naghten.
According to our textbook, Wrightman’s Psychology and the Legal System, M’Naghten had paranoid delusions. He believed that the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, was aligned with the Tory Party in a conspiracy against him. He tried to run, but when that didn’t do the trick, he returned and stalked the Prime Minister. He later shot a man, who he believed to be the Prime Minister, but he actually killed the private security of the British Prime Minister. He was charged with murder, but after a couple of days of medical experts testifying, he was found not guilty by reasons of insanity (NGRI). (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011 pg.210) Our text describes the M’Naghten rule as “The jury ought to be told in all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be
proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defense on the grounds of insanity it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from 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 what he was doing was wrong” (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011 pg.210). Basically, the defendant will be excused from criminal conduct, if he didn’t know what he was doing or if he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong. This is hard to prove and the M’Naghten rule is not without its criticisms, which will be discussed later. The insanity defense, how often is it used and how successful are those when using this defense?
According to Frontline, it is used in “less than 1 percent of felony cases, and is successful in only a fraction of those” (Insanity defense faqs). Less than one percent, that’s how many times the insanity defense is used. According to the National Institute of Corrections, “In a 2006 Special Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimated that 705,600 mentally ill adults were incarcerated in State prisons, 78,800 in Federal prisons and 479,900 in local jails” (Mentally ill persons). Look at those numbers. The number of mentally ill adults incarcerated in state, federal and local prisons or jails is a staggering one million two hundred sixty four thousand three hundred mentally ill, that is 1,264,300 incarcerated in the United States. Why then, is the percentage less than1% when it comes to those who use the insanity defense during court? The Sentencing Project says that there are “2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails” (Incarceration). According to the numbers, the mentally ill make up more than 1% of those incarcerated. In fact, the mentally ill in the prison system is at 57% of those in the entire prison system. How is it that 57% of inmates in prison are mentally ill, but only 1% use the insanity defense? What is wrong with the insanity defense then? For starters, it is difficult to prove and the burden of proof lies on the
defendant! Criticisms that face the insanity defense include things like the public thinking that this defense is used all of the time and that juries acquit those who use it or lessen the defendant’s sentence. Another concern is that those who plead NGRI and the jury agrees with them, then are released back into the public and receive no form of punishment for their crime. Another misconception, though not necessarily wrong, is that there are those who malinger or pretend to have a mental illness in order to obtain any of the above lenience’s. The first misconception that this defense is used all of the time is incorrect. As stated above, the insanity defense is used less than 1%. The appearance that it is used all of the time is stemmed from the media. While the very few who are “lucky” enough to win their case by using NGRI plea, they do not necessarily receive a lighter sentence by being in a mental institution. According to our book, “some date indicates that persons found NGRI are confined more frequently and for longer periods than defendants convicted of similar crimes”. (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011 pg.218 p3). Punishment can often times be more strict than if they had just gone to prison. While there may be a few who malinger and try to pass the tests that are given for the insanity defense, it is likely that they won’t. If they try too hard to fail, then a red flag goes up. I believe that psychologists should provide their ultimate opinion during testimony. An ultimate opinion is “describing a defendant’s mental condition and the effects it could have had on his or her thinking and behavioral control, but they could not state conclusions about whether the defendant was sane or insane”. (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011 pg.219 p2). To me, the psychologist would simply be stating how the defendant could have been thinking at the time of the crime. However, “the federal courts, as part of their reforms of the insanity defense, now prohibit mental health experts from offering ultimate opinion testimony about a defendant’s insanity”. (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011 pg.219 p2) So the textbook does not agree with my view. However, I can see how one could misinterpret the defendant’s mental condition at the time of the crime as they were not there and by giving their testimony, they could sway the jury one way or the other. Some of the ethical issues that could arise from psychologists being allowed to give their ultimate opinion would be mixed feelings. Meaning the psychologist could develop feelings towards the defendant and sway the jury in their direction. The defendant’s confidentiality may be compromised during testimony and their expertise may not be with that particular illness, so they are guessing more than not. If a mentally ill defendant is found guilty and sentenced to prison, rather than a mental institution, some of the hurdles that are faced with providing adequate psychological treatment are: the guards have limited training in regards to each illness, there are additional costs for an inmate who is mentally ill than one who is not. Another issue would be other inmates abusing the mentally ill; they are viewed as an easy target. Even if guards are retrained or help is hired, the mentally ill population is growing and most prison systems can’t handle them. In conclusion, due to the media and their inflation of actual news, the public views the insanity defense as something that isn’t working and something that is overused by defendants. This isn’t the case. Despite the staggering numbers of mentally ill patients in the prison system, very few have used the insanity defense. While there are criticisms, they are largely misguided. The death of Timothy Souders and many more prove that the prison system is not the place for mentally ill patients. Timothy’s death was preventable and would have been had he been in a mental institution rather than in a prison that was ill-equipped to handle him