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Legal News

: Lawbeat

Nichols trial coverage weak on insanity defense

By Mark Obbie

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Few criminal cases have received as much attention in Atlanta lately -- and deservedly so -- as the Brian Nichols case. Nichols is charged with capital murder in the deaths three years ago of four court and law enforcement officials in a wild courthouse shootout and escape. Now that Nichols is on trial and pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, you'd think that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution would do back flips to inform its readers on all the ins and outs of this always-controversial and easily misunderstood issue, especially in such an important and emotional case. But you'd be wrong. The AJC's coverage so far suffers from a lack of imagination bordering on irresponsibility. Today's story by Steve Visser, marking the official debut of Nichols' insanity defense, touches on the critical issues, but only barely. Here's how Visser's story handles it:

Nichols contends he couldn't control his actions on March 11, 2005, when he is accused of fatally shooting a judge, a court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and a federal officer. He suffered from a delusional compulsion that "overmastered his will," according to court papers filed Wednesday.If Nichols is found insane at the time of the killings, he would be sent to a secure mental hospital to be evaluated and kept there until he was determined not to be threat to himself or others, said Thomas West, a lawyer and expert in capital-murder defense who is not involved in this case."If the doctors find that he is OK, they can make a report that he should be released but there would have to be a hearing before a judge," West said. "The court has to determine if he can be released."West said success in using an insanity defense is "rare" since a jury found John Hinckley was not guilty by reason of insanity in the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

One local expert? Four short grafs? That's it? There's so much more the paper could do to explain to readers the debate among legal and psychiatric experts over criminal responsibility and the legal standards for insanity, and what happens to a defendant who is acquitted on those grounds. The story mentions the obvious (and overused) Hinckley precedent, but nothing else about how often the defense is used and how the laws have changed over the years. I dug into the AJC's archives to see if the paper had already tackled the issue in depth, and found only this story last month by Jeffry Scott, which is similarly cursory in its treatment of an issue sure to dominate coffee-table and barroom debates in Atlanta. Wouldn't the paper truly fulfill its duty by informing that debate with in-depth, factual coverage?

Full post as published by Lawbeat on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).