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Legal and Ethical Issues in

Abnormal Psychology

Legal and Ethical Issues

• Psychologists play a role in determining defendants’ state of mind in criminal actions.
• Psychologists participate in legal decisions and legal actions such as custody issues and jury selection.
• Psychologists evaluate competency and other issues related to criminal cases.
• Psychologists offer expert opinions on child custody, organic brain functioning, traumatic injury, suicide, deprogramming.

Criminal Commitment

• Criminal Commitment: Incarceration of an

individual for having committed a crime.

• Criminal law recognizes that some people lack the

ability to discern the ramifications of their actions

because they are mentally disturbed.

Insanity Defense: Legal Precedents

• M’Naghten Rule (the “right-wrong test”): Cognitive test of legal insanity - A person can be acquitted of a crime if it can be shown that, at the time of the act: - Defendant’s reasoning was so defective that he/she did not know what he/she was doing (nature of the act). - The defendant was unable to comprehend that the act was wrong (quality of the act).

Insanity Defense: Legal Precedents

• Irresistible Impulse Test: Defendant is not criminally

responsible if he/she lacked the will power to

control his/her behavior.

• What is the difference between a truly irresistible

impulse and one unresisted?

• Is a person with a history of antisocial behavior unable to resists impulses or are they choosing not to exert control of their impulses?

Insanity Defense: Legal Precedents

• American Law Institute (ALI) Model Penal Code:
  • Mental disease or defect impairs capacity to appreciate the criminality of conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of law.
  • “Mental disease or defect” does not include abnormality manifested by repeated criminal conduct. - Intended to eliminate antisocial personality disorder
  • Some jurisdictions allow “diminished capacity,” lack of “specific intent” to commit a crime

Insanity Defense: Legal Precedents

• Guilty, but mentally ill: Attempt to separate mental illness from insanity and to hold people responsible for their acts - Jurors may convict defendants and hold them responsible for their crimes, but also ensure they are treated for their mental illness. - Culpable and mentally disabled - Mentally disabled, but neither culpable nor innocent

Civil Commitment

• Parens patriae : The government has the authority to commit disturbed persons for their own best interest.
• Civil Commitment: Involuntary confinement of a person judged to be a danger to self or others, even though the person has not committed a crime.
• Potentially negative consequences:
  • Lifelong social stigma, major interruption of one’s life, loss of control of one’s life and being dependent on others, loss of self-esteem and self concept

Procedures in Civil Commitment

• Formal Civil Commitment:
  • The court is petitioned to examine the person.
  • Judge appoints two professionals to examine the person.
  • In a formal hearing, the examiners and others testify about the person’s mental state and potential danger.
  • The judge determines whether the person must enter treatment.

Protection Against Involuntary Commitment

• A mentally ill person may be confined without a jury

trial and without having committed a crime, based

on what might happen.

• Treatment or punishment?
• Opponents Argue:
• Civil commitment is for the benefit of those

initiating commitment, not for the individual.