Uncloseting the Conscience of the Jury - A Justly Acquitted Doctrine

• NCJ Number: 74719
• Journal: Psychiatric Quarterly Volume: 52 Issue: 2 Dated: special issue (Summer 1980) Pages: 144-157
• Author(s): A L Halpern
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 14 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper is an extended version of a talk presented at a workshop on 'Law and Public Policy' on January 10, 1979, at the New York School of Psychiatry.

Annotation

The forensic psychiatrist who originated the justly-acquitted doctrine as an alternative to the insanity defense and to Bazelon's justly-responsible concept presents his doctrine in this paper.

Abstract

Although juries have the power -- firmly embedded in the Anglo-American criminal justice system -- to acquit contrary to overwhelming evidence and clear-cut instructions by the judge, many State and Federal judges prefer not to instruct jurors to that effect, fearing that such power might lead to undermining the process of law. Judge Bazelon, however, argued that the jury should be told of its power to nullify the law in a particular case. He called such nullification a mechanism that permits the jury to act as a community conscience for the sake of particularized justice (e.g., in determining the elusive boundary between an accident and negligence). The jury nullification issue has, however, been avoided by the increasingly frequent use of the insanity defense, although at the cost of widespread disrespect for law and ridicule for the psychiatric profession accused of pseudo-scientific psychological acrobatics in postulating the existence of a mental disease at the precise moment in which an unlawful act is committed. The justly-acquitted doctrine represents a new exculpatory rule which allows acquittal within the law rather than in spite of it. It asserts that a defendant is not criminally responsible if, in the circumstances surrounding his unlawful act, his mental or emotional processes or behavioral controls were functioning in such a manner that he should justly be acquitted. This doctrine is needed to supplement the insanity defense or to replace it if it should be abolished, to protect certain defendants who would otherwise either receive a guilty verdict or be committed as a result of an insanity acquittal. The histroical antecendents and the merits of the justly-acquitted doctrine are discussed and a list of rules for its implementation is given. Endnotes incude court decision citations and bibliographic references.