by Rick Stack
Despite the wishes of many good-hearted souls, based on our current justice system, I unfortunately don’t see any way to determine whether Julie Schenecker is not guilty by reason of insanity (not criminally responsible) other than letting a jury decide (unless she waives that constitutional right). This case is an excellent example of the tug-of-war between the medical community, with its concern for its patients and their rights, and the law as it judges whether serious mental issues (insanity) might provide a legal defense to a crime committed by the individual in question. What this means with respect to individuals on trial such as Ms. Schenecker, is that even though a person may have been diagnosed as “insane” by medical practitioners (psychologists and psychiatrists), this does not mean that this same individual will necessarily be judged not guilty by reason of insanity in a criminal proceeding. As a result of this curious distinction, our prisons are filled with many people who would be better served by being housed in mental institutions.
The legal standard for insanity (at least on the federal level) tightened up considerably as a result of public outrage in the wake of the John Hinckley trial, in which the jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity for the 1981 shootings of President Reagan and Press Secretary James Brady. Under the old law, the government (in federal cases) was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was NOT insane at the time of the charged offense. The burden of proof as to insanity has since been reversed (in 2/3 of the states and in federal cases) and now requires the defendant to affirmatively prove either by a preponderance of the evidence (in state cases), or by clear and convincing evidence (in federal matters) that he or she was not legally culpable by reason of her insanity at the time of the crime. The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 (“IDRA”) created a new federal standard for determining a defendant’s sanity.
“It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution under any federal statute that, [1] at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, [2] the defendant as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was [3] unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts. Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute a defense.”
(Note: Numbers added to denote elements of this affirmative defense).
The IDRA changed the previous approach by requiring a “severe” mental disease and eliminating the volitional aspect of the defense (i.e., the “irresistible impulse” standard). The IDRA also reshaped the cognitive aspect of the insanity defense by replacing “lacks substantial capacity” with “unable to appreciate” to delineate boundaries between a total lack of understanding and partial comprehension. Thus, the IDRA eliminated the diminished mental capacity defense, except to the extent that such diminished capacity may have prevented the defendant from forming the requisite mental intent to be guilty of the charged crime.
The bottom line is that SOME adjudicative body must determine whether a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity, and through our judicial system, we have entrusted that duty to a jury (or a judge, if the defendant waives his right to a jury trial). That is one of the reasons why the IDRA has limited the scope of expert psychiatric testimony so that they cannot testify as to the “ultimate issue” of the innocence or guilt of the defendant. This critical ruling is left to the jury:
“No expert witness testifying with respect to the mental state or condition of a defendant in a criminal case may state an opinion or inference as to whether the defendant did or did not have the mental state or condition constituting an element of the crime charged or a defense thereto. Such ultimate issues are for the trier of fact alone (the jury).”
In plain English, this means that that expert witness cannot offer an opinion as to whether the defendant had the intent (mens rea) to commit the crime at the time he or she committed it.
Like all human institutions, the IDRA is flawed. As a result of its strict standard requiring defendants to affirmatively establish an insanity defense, it has almost undoubtedly led to an increase in the number of clinically insane defendants committed to prison rather than being treated for their conditions in a mental hospital. This situation is consonant with our legal system’s current preference for punishment instead of treatment or rehabilitation.
It is curious and somewhat disheartening to note that a large number (perhaps the majority) of “armchair” crime fans and trial followers appeared to be swayed more by the legal standard rather than by the clinical standard. Thus, even though Julie Schenecker was quite obviously insane at the time of the shootings (she had been on psychiatric drugs for a long time and her condition had been steadily worsening for some time), she still may be convicted by the jury for the following reason. The key element of a premeditated crime is mens rea; i.e., formulating the intent to commit the crime. In Ms. Schenecker’s case, the jury could very well decide that she obviously had the intent to kill her children. After all, she went out and purchased a gun for that precise reason. She loaded bullets into the gun and at a precise moment in time, she chose to pull the trigger, thus ending their lives.
Thus, although Ms. Schenecker is obviously clinically insane from a psychiatric standpoint, and despite the fact that her insanity is THE REASON she killed her children, based on the legal standard, as described herein, the jury could very well find her guilty.
The Catch-22 in this is that — to a considerable degree — for a person to be sufficiently “insane” to meet the legal standard, they would have to be so completely “crazy” that they would not be able to carry out the crime in the first place. Thus, for all intents and purposes, IDRA and it’s state counterpart renders the not guilty by reason of insanity defense rather useless.
In the case of Julie Schenecker, I hope that the jury gives serious consideration to “the forest” of madness in which this poor woman was lost and which led her to kill her children. I suspect, however, that when all is said and done, the jury will ignore the obvious and will instead focus on the defendant’s volition which, in turn, could well lead to her conviction.
Please click here to view Rick Stack’s previous posts:
The Evolution of Media-Hype and the Invention of the “Trial of the Century!”
Rick Stack, a native Iowan, is a former Assistant United States Attorney who currently practices civil and criminal tax litigation in the Los Angeles area with Brager Tax Law Group. His interests include fitness, hiking, politics, Chicago sports teams, Big Ten and Pac 12 football, cats, and All Things Crime Blog.