NCJ Number
164737
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 23 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1996) Pages: 572-592
Date Published
1996
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This overlapping effects of medicolegal decisionmaking regarding mentally ill defendants are examined with respect to the verdict of guilty but mentally ill.
Abstract
The analysis focuses on several core ideas contained in Lacan's postmodern psychoanalytic theory to consider how discourse, desire, and subjectivity are involved in the process of constructing and articulating knowledge in the forensic courtroom context. The discussion notes that medicolegal discourse privileges its own system of communication in the forensic courtroom while invalidating any alternative construction. It emphasizes that the guilty-but-mentally-ill option and the discourse defining it declares psychiatric citizens both criminally culpable and mentally ill, thereby promoting meaning as the expense of the defendant's being. Although some people, despite psychiatric problems, commit criminal acts and need to be held legally accountable, the imposition of language as a variable influencing and perhaps determine trial outcomes must categorically be given further attention. Thus, the guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict is the embodiment of punishment assuming an insidious linguistic form. 55 references