Lecture clarifies insanity plea

Andrea Yates is obviously mentally ill, according to Jennifer S. Bard, an assistant professor… Andrea Yates is obviously mentally ill, according to Jennifer S. Bard, an assistant professor at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas.

Yates, a woman who systematically killed her five children in Texas, suffered from schizophrenia and depression even before she had children, Bard said, and her post-partem depression after having her fifth child only compounded the problem.

Yet the jury found her guilty.

Bard attributed this fact to prosecution strategies, public misconception about mental illness, the legal definition of insanity and lack of juror education about the insanity defense in her lecture yesterday.

Her lecture was the third Mark A. Nordenberg Lecture in Law and Psychiatry. The Pitt Law School and the Center for Bioethics and Health Law held the lecture in the Teplitz Courtroom in the School of Law.

Seeking the death penalty for Yates was a very clever thing for the prosecution to do, according to Bard.

When seeking the death penalty, the prosecution looks for jurors in favor of the death penalty. Often, jurors who favor the death penalty are also “suspicious of the insanity defense” and are less likely to render a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, Bard said.

Bard explained the findings of a small study that supports this notion. In the study, people formed groups based on whether or not they were in favor of the death penalty.

Those in favor of the death penalty were just as likely to consider people with “organic mental illness” not guilty by reason of insanity as those not in favor of the death penalty, Bard said. Organic mental illness is classified as people with physiological evidence of mental illness, such as a brain tumor, Bard explained.

However, those in favor of the death penalty were more likely to consider a person with non-organic mental illness, such as schizophrenia, guilty, Bard said.

“The mental health community has been doing a terrible job getting the public educated about mental illness,” Bard said.

The general public does not understand mental illness and its effects on behavior, Bard said.

In fact, Bard said President Bush used to feel the mentally ill should just “try harder.” Bush’s position changed when he became friends with a mentally ill person, Bard said.

A person with mental illness has no more control over their disease than a person with a physiological disorder, Bard said.

Under the M’Naghten rule, jurors in Texas cannot find defendants not guilty by reason of insanity unless it can be proven that they did not know what they were doing when they committed the criminal act or that they did not know it was wrong, Bard said.

Bard believes that if Yates had killed her children “in a frenzy” rather than systematically, the jurors would have found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

People also have many misconceptions about the insanity defense, Bard said. Bard referred to the four main “myths” of the insanity defense.

The first myth is that defendants serve less time in a mental hospital if found legally insane than they would in a prison if found guilty. In fact, those ruled not guilty by reason of insanity serve more time on average, Bard said.

Bard quoted one of her professors to sum it up: “You’ve gotta be crazy to take the insanity defense.”

Jurors also believe that insanity pleas are common. Bard said the insanity defense is used in only 5 to 14 percent of all cases.

Of these cases, less than one-third are for murder cases.

People also tend to think that “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdicts are awarded by jurors, when in fact they are usually given by judges in bench trials, Bard said.

The fourth misconception is that the insanity defense is “vigorously opposed by prosecutors,” Bard said. On the contrary, Bard said, prosecutors are usually in agreement with defense attorneys in regard to insanity pleas.

Jurors are also “not allowed” by law to know what would happen to a defendant if they were found not guilty by reason of insanity, according to Bard. This leads jurors to believe that the person could actually join the general population immediately or serve little time in a mental institution.

Bard would like to make jurors aware of what would happen to defendants if they were found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“In most states, juries are not told that the defendant will be immediately committed [to a mental institution],” Bard said.

Bard said she would also like to see nationwide reforms to the definition of “legally insane.” A person should be able to be declared legally insane even if they knew what they were doing, as in the case of Yates, if they “were not able to do anything about it,” Bard said.

Currently, 16 percent of prisoners suffer from severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, according to Bard.