NCJ Number
178654
Journal
Forensic Examiner Volume: 8 Issue: 5 & 6 Dated: May/June 1999 Pages: 22-24
Date Published
1999
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article examines feigned mental illness by persons trying to circumvent California's "third strike" law.
Abstract
California’s 1994 “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law is intended to take repeat, violent criminal offenders who have not changed their ways despite previous intervention with the legal justice system and keep them locked away in prison for lengthy periods. Since the enactment of the three-strikes law, numbers of criminal defendants are feigning mental illness in hopes of being found not guilty by reason of insanity and being sentenced to a state mental hospital rather than a state prison. The article describes malingering by defendants with no history and no genuine evidence of mental illness, and defendants with documented histories of mental illness who embellish their symptomatologies. It also delineates several ways for non-mental health professionals within the criminal justice system to suspect malingering by those seeking exculpation of their responsibility for a crime. References