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Summary Of The Dr. Smithson Case

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Summary Of The Dr. Smithson Case
In scenario number 6, the story of the case is that Dr. Smithson, a neurologist sufferes from paranio and delusions of grandeur. He believes that he is a great pharmaceutical chemist and in doing so, he discovers a “miracle cure” for Alzheimer’s and believes that the drug which includes bleach and arsenic which help people dealing with such memory loss. He prescribes this “cure” to 20 patients with dementia. In the end, ten of the patients die and the rest are hospitalized with serious sillness. He is charged with second degree murder and urged to accept the plea pargain for not guilty by reason of insanity. This plea will lead to his involuntary hospitalization. His attorny tries to explain how several doctors will testify against him if …show more content…
It also requires that defendants must be able to assist their lawyers preapre for the defense. It is important to note that mental illness does not equal incompetancy. In the case of Dr. Smithson, although he is paranoid this does not stop him from being able to communicate and be involved with his defense attorny. The client also understands the roles of a prosectuor and jury and the fact that he could be sentenced to serve a lengthy jail sentence. For these, reasons we would declare Dr. Smithson competant to stand …show more content…
In this case, even the defense attorny agrees that Dr. Smithson should take the plea of not guiltry by reason of insanity (NGRI). My group would agree that he is legally insane because Dr. Smithson does not believe that he was at fault. He believes that the the medication capsule he created was truly supposed to help the patients (even common knowledge about the toxicity of the chemicals presented in the capsule would ecourage one to think otherwise). Instead, he falsely believes that the caregivers of the 20 patients must have done something wrong that led to the ultimate death and illness of the patients. Moreover, the client believes he was heroic and lacking mens rea; therefore, does not think he should be convicted as he did no harm. The M’Naughten is in line with this thinking as it states that criminal resposiblity is linked to the person knowing whether what they did was wrong. Furthermore, since the client did not believe he did anything wrong he would be declared insnaty in line with the M’Naughten
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