NCJ Number
81340
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Dated: (1981) Pages: 325-328
Date Published
1981
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This study investigates the degree of agreement between psychiatric evaluations and eventual court verdicts in cases where the insanity plea was employed in the criminal proceedings.
Abstract
Data were derived from 355 Hawaiian criminal cases in which the 'not guilty by reason of insanity' plea was entered as a defense and in which more than one psychiatric examiner was employed, producing reports with definitive statements regarding the sanity of the defendant at the time of the alleged criminal act. In 327 instances (92 percent), there was unanimous examiner agreement concerning the mental state of the defendant. This high congruence may be explained by Hawaii's lack of prohibition against examiners discussing their findings before submitting them to court and by the nonadversary practice of using State-appointed examiners who are not connected to either party in the litigation. Agreement between evaluation and court decision was examined for 315 cases and was also found to be very high; in only 7 percent of the cases did the court judgment not agree with the examiners' sanity finding. This finding suggests that either psychiatric opinion is influential in the courts or that in the vast majority of cases, two different bodies, one psychiatrically oriented and the other legally oriented, are able to reach the same decision concerning the mental status of a criminal defendant. Tabular data and two references are given.