New at Reason

June 19, 2007

In a feature from our July issue, Brian Doherty examines the Yates trial and the larger issues of the insanity defense.

Comments

|6.19.07 @ 8:04AM|#

I hate the Yates story. It makes me so damned sad.

|6.19.07 @ 8:09AM|#

Based on research done in college it is pretty clear that fMRI is a way overvalued tool with little current application. I think neuroimaging may be a promising field in the future, and fMRI may eventually come within human understanding. For now, it is just s 2s-2min delayed picture of blood flow.

|6.19.07 @ 8:18AM|#

I liked this article when I read it in the print version. I guess I can see the libertarian concern with doctrines that minimize responsibility, but as the article points out we are nowhere near being overwhelmed with insanity defenses (they are a tiny fraction of cases that end in an insanity ruling). In fact, since everyone knows there are SOME folks who are not responsible for their actions, for our justice system to casually attribute responsibility to EVERYONE would undermine the value society places on responsibility. In fact our extra careful use of the insanity defense probably strikes the correct balance and bolsters a large role for responsibility in the long run.

Fluffy|6.19.07 @ 8:25AM|#

My only problem with the Yates case is the way it subtly shifted post-partum depression into the laundry list of disorders which can be used to explain murder.

I know Yates had additional problems, but the public focused on PPD and that's what most people will remember going forward.

And any depression defense boils down to "I didn't feel good so I killed someone to make myself feel better." That's essentially a greed motivation. Rapists rape to feel good, too. Husbands kill their wives so they can be with their mistresses and feel better. Etc.

thoreau|6.19.07 @ 8:42AM|#

As somebody who studies blood vessels, I applaud our continued reliance on tools that look at blood flow.

thoreau|6.19.07 @ 8:45AM|#

Fluffy-

Yep. As I understood it, she had post-partum psychosis as well. Now, people can say what they want about the nature of psychosis (I'm well aware of the controversies surrounding psychiatry on this forum) and whether even that can justify murder. But the condition alleged, whatever else might be said, is at least in a different ballpark than depression. That's what pissed me off about the case. They didn't focus on the most important point being raised, and instead focused on depression.

Lord Jubjub|6.19.07 @ 8:47AM|#

The use of fMRI and other brain imaging techniques is to indicate whether certain claims about mental states can be shown to correspond to actual brain function or whether they are merely an illusion.

The study of stroke damage has clearly shown that there are distinct tasks done by distinct regions of the brain.

|6.19.07 @ 9:13AM|#

It seems to me that if a mother who kills her children is not insane, then insanity simply does not exist.

|6.19.07 @ 9:21AM|#

It seems to me that if a mother who kills her children is not insane, then insanity simply does not exist.

I don't think that's true. If it were, a similar standard "A person would have to be insane to do X," would qualify as a defense in many crimes.

|6.19.07 @ 9:31AM|#

I don't think that's true. If it were, a similar standard "A person would have to be insane to do X," would qualify as a defense in many crimes.

I'm not necessarily saying that it should qualify as a legal defense, only that if you hold the opinion that Yates was acting as a sane person when she drowned her children then it would be difficult to come up with any scenario where a person was not sane.

IMO, insanity should not be a defense but rather a mitigating factor when it's time for sentencing.

|6.19.07 @ 9:42AM|#

"Finger of Birth-strangled Babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a Drab,
Make the Gruel thick and slab" -- Macbeth

It seems to me that if a mother who kills her children is not insane, then insanity simply does not exist.

Infanticide is, and has been, common in many, if not most or all, human societies, and isn't/hasn't been considered crazy. The only thing 'crazy' about this natural behavior is that now women have other ways of getting rid of children they don't want, without facing any punishment.

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/ppd.pdf
"Evolutionary approaches to parental care suggest that parents will not automatically in-
vest in all offspring, and they should reduce or eliminate investment in their children if
the costs outweigh the benefits. Lack of paternal or social support will increase the costs born by mothers, whereas infant health problems will reduce the evolutionary benefits to be gained. Numerous studies support the correlation between postpartum depression (PPD) and lack of social support or indicators of possible infant health and development problems. PPD may be an adaptation that informs mothers that they are suffering or have suffered a fitness cost, which motivates them to reduce or eliminate investment in offspring under certain circumstances, and that may help them negotiate greater levels of investment from others."

VM|6.19.07 @ 9:49AM|#

Well spake, Doktor T.

(although it does appear that you're shilling for Big Capillary)

[keed keed]

|6.19.07 @ 9:56AM|#

Let's face it, we wouldn't even be talking about Andrea Yates if she were Richard Yates. Richard Yates would have simply been convicted and thrown in jail. No outcries, no advocacy groups trying to save him, no angst-ridden editorials trying to displace blame onto his wife. A man would have been presumed to be responsible for his evil.

thoreau|6.19.07 @ 10:13AM|#

(although it does appear that you're shilling for Big Capillary)

No, neovasculature is definitely Small Capillary.

I want to shill for Big Vein, because I'm a Team Blue guy.

VM|6.19.07 @ 10:15AM|#

the problem with teh Intertubz is the lack of tonefall. hrumph. "Big Capillary" sounded like a great oxymoron.
(kicks pebble)

team blue is a perfect one!

Doktor T is kickin tail today! yeaaaaaa!!!!!!

|6.19.07 @ 10:51AM|#

Dan, I disagree and think insanity must be a complete defense for any judicial system that DOES take free will seriously. IF the reason why we punish is because a person freely choosing to break the law warrants a certain just dessert, then it's just a logical step that persons who do not freely choose to break the law should not be punished. Think of other complete defenses like necessity, or duress (or for that matter involuntary spasms). Any system that takes responsibility seriously can't punish folks under those situations. What makes a person culpable is the fact that he freely chose to do x. If he did not he's not culpable.

|6.19.07 @ 11:24AM|#

Ken, in that case it seems that you must allow a person found not guilty by reason of insanity to go free after his or her verdict.

Otherwise, you're keeping an innocent person locked up against their will (by sending them to a mental institution).

I think it's more honest to say that somebody like Andrea Yates is in fact guilty of murder, but her mental state may point to a hospital stay as a more appropriate sentence than prison.

I mean, there is no doubt that Yates did commit the act of murder; the insanity defense basically means that she's innocent because her motives don't make sense to the rest of us.

|6.19.07 @ 1:03PM|#

And any depression defense boils down to "I didn't feel good so I killed someone to make myself feel better." That's essentially a greed motivation.

No. Depression, if severe enough, bleeds over into and can become frank psychosis, complete with vivid auditory hallucinations and bizarre behaviors. It's not common, but it happens. When I think of the Yates case, I think of a patient of mine on the inpatient psych wards during medical school.

She was a young woman with several children, and had experienced years of depression following the birth of her third child. When I saw her, she was manifesting symptoms of psychosis - hearing the voice of "the devil" telling criticizing her and giving her instructions. She would read the bible constantly and take everything she read completely literally.

Eerily enough, one day she told me that in the past, she had taken her children to the top of a local mountain with the plan to throw them off for the same reason that Yates gave - she wanted them to die while they were still innocent, so that they would be guaranteed to get into heaven. However, God spoke to her and stopped her.

Her thoughts and actions were completely consistent with the world she lived in, but it wasn't our world.

As a side tangent, I've never seen religious instruction do anything good for the psychotic, but I've seen it do some truly horrible things. It's one of the many things that led me to atheism.

|6.19.07 @ 1:10PM|#

Tacos,

Having kids seems to lead only to bad things for psychotics too. Does that mean that reproduction is a bad thing?

|6.19.07 @ 1:22PM|#

She had told Resnick she was tormented by the fact that her children seemed to be growing into kids who were "not righteous," who were distant from God. Killing her children would serve their long-term well-being by ensuring that they "did not stumble."

This is the same reasoning that justified religious wars in Europe before the Enlightenment. Back then, most people figured it was better for the heritics to die than to keep racking up sins that would increase their punishments in the afterlife. It's possible for sane people to have horrible beliefs like this.

Over all, the article was excellent.

|6.19.07 @ 1:31PM|#

Having kids seems to lead only to bad things for psychotics too. Does that mean that reproduction is a bad thing?

I didn't go into detail because it would have meant going off onto a tangent, but I do not think that religion is bad BECAUSE it causes problems for psychotic people. A great many people pay lip service to the idea that there is a hell, a devil who tempts a persecutes you, and the existance of miracles. A religious psychotic actually _lives_ in such a world, and the contrast could not be more striking. Psychotic is what we would all be if we believed in our guts what we hear in church. But few people do. Andrea Yates was, in the framework of evangelical protestantism, completely logical. Just like the people who gun down abortion providers are being completely consistent with their belief that abortion is a modern holocaust.

It seems that, interestingly enough, one of the most important charaterstics of sanity is to be able to split the world - believe one thing on Friday night, and another on Sunday morning. In order to function in the world, you and I constantly need to ignore contradictions. It's something that psychotic people have enormous trouble doing.

|6.19.07 @ 2:02PM|#

Interesting dynamic in this thread -- Ken posts the leftist view that a person who deliberately drowns her children is really the victim and needs understanding, prompting Dan Troll to take his usual contrarian POV, which for once makes sense.

I thought this bit from the defense team was telling: "By Resnick's account, Yates recognized that her act was against the laws of man but believed it was in accord with the law of God because it would ensure her children an eternity in paradise." This is the same logic that would have acquitted the 9/11 hijackers if one of the planes has been safely landed and the perps put on trial -- "they're not accountable because they genuinely thought they'd be rewarded by God for their actions."

I can understand what the killer might have been going through -- my wife suffered from postpartum depression after one of our children was born, and she became this stranger with weird mood swings I barely recognized -- but she didn't murder her children. She sought help, and recovered.

It hurts to say this, but Dan Troll is right for once -- Yates should have been convicted of multiple homicide, with the insanity defense being considered in the sentencing phase and in determining where she served the sentence.

|6.19.07 @ 4:38PM|#

or maybe, just maybe, dan t. isn't actually a troll.

|6.19.07 @ 5:40PM|#

Uh, jh, when did holding those responsible for their freely chosen reprehinsible actions become the "leftist" view? Cuz that's what I said, though since I know logic I mentioned that a corollary is that it makes no sense to hold "responsible" someone who was not freely choosing their actions. Since you don't know logic I guess you miss that turn. But our judges have known logic for the past 500 years.
If Yates had committed a robbery because someone had a gun to her kids heads and told her to do so or else, is she guilty and deserving of punishment? Because the same logic underlies the justification defenses of insansity and duress.

|6.19.07 @ 9:02PM|#

Ken, I was responding to this leftist tidbit of yours: "In fact our extra careful use of the insanity defense probably strikes the correct balance and bolsters a large role for responsibility in the long run."

If a defense attorney can't deny his client did it based on the evidence, they will try to concoct some theory -- any theory -- to get their guilty client off. They're not gonna just throw up their hands and say, "Shoots, dude, you're guilty and they caught you redhanded. Your bad. Just plead guilty." And if they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses, out comes the insanity defense. This is "extra careful use"? This is "responsibility"? I don't blame the defense attorney for doing their job -- they wouldn't be using the insanity defense so much if gullible juries weren't buying it -- but the insanity defense usually seems to be about trying to dodge accountability for a guilty person who knew what they were doing. And yes, you have to be pretty screwed up to drown all your kids, or to knowingly murder someone, but that doesn't excuse the offense, or make you less of a danger to others.

Is it me, or are we butting heads a lot lately? Sorry if I've gotten a bit heated in some of the other exchanges we've had.

|6.19.07 @ 9:10PM|#

It's the job of a defense attorney to do the best he or she can for their client, and if all they have a shot at is the insanity defense its their duty to try it. That may not be the best system, but one would think doctrinaire libertarians would prefer the theory behind it, the adversary system of law which is based on competition and private counsel (for the most part). I mean, you did read the article right, where Doherty essentially admits this is much ado about nothing since the defense is raised in 1% of cases and is successful in a quarter of them. How much more careful use do you want, 1/2 of 1%?

|6.19.07 @ 10:44PM|#

Ken -- I agree with you that we shouldn't be blaming defense attorneys for doing their best to get their clients acquitted -- I said that in my 9:02 post. What I'm saying is that the gullible juries who actually buy this defense when it is B.S. are being neither "extra careful" or "responsible".

As for the percentages you raise: if the odds of someone successfully robbing my house is only 1% on any given day, I'd get damned annoyed at being robbed 3-4 times a year. It is also annoying to see people who are almost certainly guilty get acquitted due to juror ineptitude, even if the incidence is fairly rare, and reasonable to want to tighten that up as much as possible (without going too far and convicting innocent people).

The problem, as I see it, is threefold: dumb or statist jurors who are inclined to acquit guilty people based on cockamamie defense theories; a voir dire / peremptory strike system that kicks bright people off juries; and a compulsory jury service law with low pay that gives bright people a motive to get kicked off jury panels.