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Upholding Legal Rights of Mentally Ill Defendants

By Kristin Houle

That's the title of a new posting on the blog Women in Crime Ink, by Lucy Puryear, M.D.: "On June 19, 2008, the Supreme Court of the U.S. issued a decision in which it held that a higher standard must be used to determine defendants' competence to represent themselves in criminal cases than the test used to determine the accuseds' competence to stand trial. Plainly speaking, this means that while a mentally ill defendant can be found competent to stand trial it does not necessarily follow that they can competently represent themselves as their own counsel.Fundamentally this could be viewed as a negative decision for the mentally ill. One of our constitutional rights is self-representation in court. We are allowed to tell our story the way we want it told and to plead our case in a manner that we believe is in our own best interest...continue to full post

Full post as published by Prevention Not Punishment on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).