Anyone else think court cases like this one are more a mental health issue than a criminal one?

[PudULike]

Was just reading about the current court case of a young woman who travelled across Europe to speak to and challenge the people she (wrongly) believed were her parents. From the testimony that's been reported, she seems to have, while reading about a high profile disappearance, developed a persistent fixed belief that wasn't based on facts and didn't yield to contradictory evidence. Put bluntly, she seems deluded. Like, properly mentally unwell. Not 'bad' but 'mad'. It got me wondering where the line is set for whether we put somebody on trial.

What's the procedure whereby a person is considered to be well enough to stand a criminal trial? What are the thresholds for cognition & sanity, and who applies them?

If a person is considered fit to stand trial and is thereafter found guilty, does the judge have any discretion to send them to a secure hospital rather than a standard jail? If they're in a prison, will their mental status be monitored and treated?

Two court cases of recent years where I've found myself wondering if the accused is actually fit to understand the proceedings, and lucid enough to be judged for their actions, are those of Jonty Bravery, the teenager with complex autism who threw a child from a balcony (and who had 2:1 constant supervision by care staff, so wild was his previous behaviour held to be; and Mark Gordon, who let his baby die while on the run from social services. The latter seemed paranoid & grandiose and tbh not on a normal mental wavelength.

Sorry for the long-windedness. I guess I'm asking where the boundary is for not being well enough to stand trial? Is it that you were fully psychotic and unable to have perceived at the time of the crime what was real or not; or will people with 'lesser' mental illness such as delusions, fixed ideas, and paranoia sometimes be considered too abnormal to be judged by a jury?

We would not be able to put half ir more of the criminals through the system if the lower end of mental illness was sufficient to not be judged by a jury. The bar has to be set fairly high i think.

If there was any suggestion she was mental unwell enough to not understand the consequences of her actions she would have been psychologically assessed for fitness to plead. Someone who has become deluded by things on the Internet is not the same as somebody so mentally unwell that they can't understand their actions are criminal.

IIRC this isn't the first prosecution.

She was already given a slap on the wrist and treated with compassion, and she continued to pursue it.

Whether she's profoundly ill or otherwise, she's been judged as fit to stand trial, and therefore it falls to a jury to decide matters of fact, namely if she is guilty of the criminal offences or not.

Assuming she is found guilty, it doesn't then follow that she will be treated no differently to anyone else just because she was fit to stand. If she is in the grip of delusional illness, then that will be considered and taken into account for the purpose of sentencing.

I work in a mental-health related field and have had brushes with the law myself when I've been in the grip of illness, so I'm well aware of how sensitive an issue this is any why there needs to be a place for compassion, but if people commit criminal acts while in the grip of an illness, those acts are still criminal and there are other considerations to take into account beyond just the wellbeing of the accused.

https://news.sky.com/story/man-who-threw-boy-off-tate-modern-balcony-sentenced-for-attacking-nurses-at-broadmoor-13491936