To proceed or not proceed: Conducting sanity evaluations of incompetent defendants.

In many jurisdictions, court orders and state policies routinely authorize combined evaluations of competence to stand trial and legal sanity (e.g., Chauhan et al., 2015; Heilbrun & Collins, 1995; Johnson et al., 1990), even though the American Bar Association recommends against doing so (American Bar Association, 2015). For forensic evaluators, there is little formal guidance to address dilemmas that arise when addressing competence and sanity within a single evaluation episode. Specifically, it is not clear whether evaluators should proceed to evaluate the sanity of a defendant whom they have just opined is not competent to stand trial. We reviewed 926 sanity reports in Virginia to examine the frequency with which evaluators submit sanity reports regarding defendants whom they opined to be incompetent, and to explore associations between opinions of defendant competency and sanity in such combined evaluations. Results indicated that evaluators completed sanity reports on incompetent defendants in 31.1% of combined evaluations, comprising 14.6% of all reviewed sanity reports. Reports evaluating incompetent defendants were more likely to offer an opinion of insanity than reports evaluating competent defendants, but opinions of insanity were no more likely in combined reports than in reports addressing only sanity. Importantly, sanity reports addressing incompetent defendants were more than 6 times as likely to provide inconclusive or unclear sanity opinions as were other repo...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - Category: Medical Law Source Type: research