Legal Capacity and Criminal Responsibility in Mental Illness

Posted on Nov 15, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

Imputability and Capacity of the Schizophrenic

Liability

In schizophrenia with full clinical activity, there is no accountability. The individual is unable to understand the consequences of their actions and, therefore, to control them. They must be admitted to an appropriate institution for their condition or undergo outpatient treatment. In situations of schizophrenic defect, the individual’s accountability is proportional to the intensity and the symptoms resulting from this defect. The defect relates to emotions and behavior. Accountability should be considered normal when a full return to normalcy has occurred.

Capacity

In advanced simple schizophrenia, absolute incapacity can be considered. In catatonic schizophrenia, the individual is unable to perform any legal act. When outbreaks are frequent, prolonged, and intense, absolute incapacity is recommended. The incapacity should be lifted if the person has regained their normal mental functions. A severe case of schizophrenic dementia renders the individual incapable.

In reactive schizophrenia, it is logical to proceed with the patient’s incapacitation.

Epilepsy and Criminal Behavior

Criminal Reactions During Seizures

Characteristics:

  1. The criminal action is independent of external circumstances and lacks premeditation.
  2. It is often at odds with the subject’s usual tendencies.
  3. Extraordinary brutal violence and fury characterize the reaction.
  4. It differs from the usual manifestations of evil and the traditional procedures of wrongdoers.
  5. Sometimes, after the attack, an irresistible sleepiness appears, with the patient falling asleep next to their victim.
  6. Immediate amnesia of the act, despondency, and astonishment.
  7. Photographic fidelity and recurrence.
  8. Favorable influence of anticonvulsant treatment on recidivism.

Offenses:

  • Before the crisis (“aura”): Actions sometimes have a motor component or cause impulses.
  • Out of the crisis: Twilight state, with a strong mark of mental confusion. Violent crimes may occur against anyone who crosses the individual’s path.
  • During epileptic equivalents: Blundering acts are performed, such as public nudity or genital exhibitionism.
  • During absences, shoplifting attempts are typical. During crises, pyromania and sleepwalking occur. In lucid twilight states, automatic acts, escapes, or desertions are performed. Dysthymic crises cause fires, violence, and destruction.

Criminal Reactions Outside of Seizures

Individuals with epilepsy may commit criminal acts characterized by hypocrisy, duplicity, taciturnity, obsequiousness, a perverse tendency to lie, and, in some cases, a narrow religious outlook. Intellectual disorders and emotional disturbances lead to exaggerated drive explosions, ill-timed reactions, bad moods, sadness, and anger, which are of great legal interest. Medical-legal experts agree that epilepsy should not be systematically considered a guarantee of impunity.

Liability of the Epileptic

The defining traits of epileptic crime are violence and impulsivity, often discharged within the family. Epileptic foci are temporary, with low IQ, repeated seizures, and signs of organicity. These individuals are prone to violence.

Regarding the accountability of the epileptic, we distinguish between crimes committed during an epileptic paroxysm and those taking place outside of one.

  • Offenses committed during an epileptic paroxysm: Accountability is nullified by the subject’s lack of awareness, which precludes any possible voluntariness. The problem is framed as mental illness or temporary insanity.
  • Offenses committed during paroxysmal intervals: Wrongful acts are performed outside the episodic epileptic manifestation. Biopathographical information will determine whether the act was premeditated, discussed, and carried out with perfect clarity, in which case the individual will be considered fully accountable. Acts may reflect profound character disorders. This characterological defect can be so deep and decisive for the crime that it completely exonerates the individual. In other cases, it may be a reason for diminished capacity.

Alternative measures to internment include submission to outpatient treatment, with controlled assurances of its success, and periodic monitoring through bi-weekly or monthly presentations by the individual or their guardian.

Personality Disorders

Concept of Personality Disorder

Historical Perspective: Karl Schneider defines psychopathic personalities as “abnormal personalities who suffer because of their abnormality or who, by their impetus, make society suffer.” This implies two things: 1. Abnormality. 2. That the suffering caused by a personality abnormality is subjective and/or social. Not every abnormal personality is a psychopathic personality.

Psychopathological Perspective: Personality is the “dynamic organization of the cognitive (intellectual), affective, and conative (instincts and volitions), physiological, and morphological individual.” Personality traits can be distinguished as formal and material.

Normal and Abnormal Personality

A subject may appear introverted, shy, outgoing, or very outgoing, or very impulsive or not impulsive at all. These traits, when present with greater intensity, become “almost abnormal,” defining each subject, especially those considered to have a “great personality.”

Formal and Material Traits of Personality

Formal traits include fundamental mood, reactivity to external events, the course of affective movements, personal tempo, instinct, dedication to or withdrawal from the surrounding world, activity, and willpower. Defects in these formal qualities constitute character defects, while material traits depend on education. Material traits include stubbornness, ill-will, self-neglect, pride, cruelty, weakness of character, prodigality, distrust, and inconsistency. An abnormal personality is defined by the following:

  1. Failure to adapt to social life.
  2. Unstable behavior and ease of passage to action.

Clinical Presentation of Personality Disorders

General characteristics of psychopathic personalities:

  1. Disproportion between stimuli received and responses given: The subject responds to a stimulus in an exaggerated way or shows a lack of reaction to important stimuli.
  2. Disharmony between the elements that make up the character: The subject does not maintain a balance between their intelligence, affection, instinctual life, and will.
  3. Psychophysical intolerance: Subjects complain about everything because they are unable to withstand minor inconveniences.
  4. Inadaptability to life: The subject is never satisfied, feels undervalued or overvalued, idealizes or rejects others, despises or lashes out.
  5. Antisocial behavior: Due to their lack of control, personal disharmony, psychophysical intolerance, impulsivity, etc., the subject frequently comes into conflict with others.

Behavior patterns are always inflexible and maladaptive. Abnormal personality traits are observed since childhood.