Also, in Texas, the burden of proof for insanity is on the defense. In Massachusetts, burden of proof is on the prosecution. His defense had to prove he was insane when committing the crime while her defense just had to poke holes in the prosecution’s case.
This seems way more sensible to me. I understand if the actual underlying crime should be innocent until proven guilty but if you are insane that specifically should be a higher burden of proof .
I just don’t think unqualified layman in the jury really should be the ones deciding whether someone was clinically insane or not.
The jury should just deliberate on whether the defendant committed the crime in question, if they rule they did, then the defense should be able to request a review by a panel of mental health experts who will be tasked with determining whether the defendant was criminally liable or clinically insane.
I think it’s more reasonable for each side to instead have professionals testify to their observations, the likelihood temporary insanity was the cause, and if they continue to pose a risk to others. Insanity is impossible to definitively diagnose without witnessing it while it’s happening.
In an insanity defense, “guilty” is already a statement of fact, the defendant has to admit to the fact that they did the crime, but only did so because of some kind of mental break, so having the jury rule guilty or not to then ask a panel of experts makes no sense. The jury already uses the facts of the case, combined with that testimony to determine if the likelihood meets the burden of proof required by the law, the issue is more so that the burden of proof is different from state to state and that it is not applied equally, but this is far from the only scenario that this applies to.
A panel of experts aren’t going to come to a consensus in most cases here either, and who would be the one deciding those experts? The court? Seems like it would be an inherent conflict of interest where the judiciary overrides the jury unless those medical professionals were similarly randomly selected like jurors are, but that’s not always going to be reasonable to do to form an unbiased group. We’d also need to completely rewrite sections of our legal system to even make this possible and there would still be an open question of constitutionality.
I do believe that an insanity defense should have a higher burden of proof on the defendant, but I don’t know if I agree it should be entirely reversed because it’s impossible to definitively diagnose a mental episode unless observed during the episode. If anything, that burden of proof should be required to claim an insanity defense to begin with, including a medical eval to justify that it was at least a reasonable likelihood, prior to the trial at all.
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u/klako8196 15h ago
Also, in Texas, the burden of proof for insanity is on the defense. In Massachusetts, burden of proof is on the prosecution. His defense had to prove he was insane when committing the crime while her defense just had to poke holes in the prosecution’s case.