Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4/16/16
Petrides
Insanity Plea
Criminality, Insanity and the Law by Benjamin Karpman to discuss and further
explain different aspects of this debate.
In the article Criminal Incompetency by the Mental and Physical
Disability Law Reporter there is an example of a law set in place in Texas to
prove the validity of a defendants claim to insanity. A Texas appeals court
ruled that a trial court is barred from holding a hearing to extend the
commitment of a criminal defendant found incompetent to stand trial unless
two valid mental examination certificates are on file in Marroquin v. Texas in
2003. This article also gives a good example of what incompetency is not.
Lary Davis was sentenced to death for murder, and during his trial he
insisted on staying in a wheel chair despite not having any physical disability,
he insisted on wearing his prison uniform to court, and he also elected to not
sit at table with his council during some of the proceedings. After his
sentence to death was handed down he filed for a habeas corpus accusing
the court of continuing the trials penalty phase when he was unfit for court,
and claimed they should have called for a trial competency hearing. This
motion was denied on ground that no evidence was presented that the court
continued unjustly. Davis had consulted with his attorneys, understood the
nature of the proceedings, weighed the dangers associated with his absence
against those associated with the jurys observing his relations to the
proceedings, and knew that he faced life imprisonment or the death
penalty. So by including this case this article explains that even though a
Dannemora Hospital, also for the custody and care of insane convicts, the
conditions are simpler; inmates who recover are returned to prison to serve
out their terms, and those whose sentences have expired are retained so
long as they continue insane. This excerpt verifies that these criminals are
not just going free that they are in fact serving their time whether it is in a
prison or a psychiatric institution receiving the help and care theyre illness
required. Furthermore, In Criminality, Insanity and the Law by Benjamin
Karpman it is again pointed out the such individuals are to be sent to a
hospital for the insane for confinement and treatment. For the rest, criminals
are viewed as mentally normal, fully responsible people who commit crimes
out of sheer viciousness and that punishment is the proper method of
dealing with these situations. This article is another testament to how
criminals and mentally ill offenders should be dealt with. Another highlighted
quote in this paper is that criminality is a disease and criminals can be
cured. This quote is enlightening because Karpmans take on this situation is
that whether mentally ill or not each individual criminal can be treated and
cured. This is a refreshing statement because it illuminates the idea that
society and the courts focus too much on whether the defendant is actually
mentally ill or not when the should rather be focusing on which is the best
way to proceed in rehabilitating these criminally ill individuals. Karpan says
I belong to the small group of psychiatrists who hold the thesis that
criminality is without exception symptomatic of abnormal mental states and
115. Web...
Karpman, Benjamin. Criminality, Insanity and the Law. Journal of
Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951) 39.5 (1949): 584605. Web...