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Academic

: The Faculty Lounge

Helping The Innocent And Mentally Ill Plead Guilty

By Dan Filler

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When I teach the insanity defense in Criminal Law, I often talk about the strategic component of the defense. Before any (good) attorney raises this claim, she has to consider whether an insanity finding will actually be better or worse for her client. The insanity defense is most useful when a defendant is facing serious jail time. On less serious offenses, it's totally normal for a defendant found NGRI to spend more time in the hospital then he would have served in jail after conviction.

In this case, a 38 year old Colorado woman - Tanya Martin - was convicted of animal cruelty; she'd set her dog on fire. She apparently has a long history of mental illness. This act occurred when she'd gone off her medication. The physicians at the Colorado Mental Health Institute concluded that she was mentally ill at the time of the fire and the DA conceded that "this is a tragic criminal act that has its roots in mental illness." As part of a plea deal, she got 10 years of probation and 45 days in jail. (I wonder if she's getting credit for time spent at the mental hospital.)

This looks like a great example of a case where a defense attorney might push a client to plead guilty notwithstanding the fact the attorney is convinced that her client was not, in fact, legally culpable for the offense. These cases get pretty hairy when the defendant remains substantially mentally ill - and the lawyer is put in the position of trying to convince a mentally ill person, with a NGRI defense, to engage in the Kabuki performance of a voluntary, knowing and intentional admission of guilt.

Defense lawyers often have to face ethical quandries that look very different than the casebooks suggest. How many times must a public defender push an almost-certainly-innocent client to plead guilty? In my experience, plenty. You might say that this pressure is the same as suborning perjury. The defendant lies when he admits guilt. But as with the Martin case here, sometimes this may be the best outcome for the client.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 05, 2009 (boomark / email).