The reading I chose was The Jury Trial of Mac the Knife, an excerpt from D. Woychuk’s, 1996, Attorney for the damned: A lawyer’s life with the criminally insane. This case study outlined the story of Mr. MacKnight’s jury trial to review the level of psychiatric retention necessary after he had been found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity for killing one person and stabbing another, in July of 1976. Mr. MacKnight had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and each side of counsel argued whether or not he was in remission at the time of said trial. The murder/assault that took place in July of 1976 was not in dispute, as Mr. MacKnight had already been found NGRI and whether or not he had done it was a moot issue. Although, the murder/assault…show more content… Woychuk did not correct the error and the jury found that Mr. MacKnight suffered from a mental disease but it was not a dangerous mental disorder. An order to transfer Mr. MacKnight, pursuant to the juries finding was entered by the court. This case described my belief with regard to NGRI accurately. The facts are not disputed that he did indeed commit the crimes he was found NGRI, the trial held on continued retention was appropriate. It was clear that Mr. MacKnight was suffering from delusions and hearing voices when he committed the violent crimes against his neighbor. Anything beyond that, for example the other reasons brought up at trial such as the acid thrown in the other man’s face or the notion that the knife did or did not belong to Mr. MacKnight is irrelevant to NGRI.
Advantages of criminal system…show more content… The vast majority of offenders that I dealt with had undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. I do not believe that by nature people want to be deviants and if society spent more time intervening when things start going badly than trying to deal with issues after they have already derailed, we could eliminate a great deal of deviant behavior. In an ideal world, I would abolish the juvenile justice system and deal with juvenile offenders from a mental health model only. I would also extend the age of individuals that fell under this to at least the age of 21. If offenders continued to offend into adulthood, then possibly use the mental health model in combination with the criminal justice model. Any deviant behavior due to chemical dependency issues would first and foremost be dealt with in a rehabilitation setting, with the idea that relapse is expected and would be addressed if it happened. I do think that there would have to be some criminal justice models involved with non-compliant participants, such as inter-lock on vehicles et cetera. Our criminal justice system is broken and without mental health care and rehabilitation it will only get worse and not serve any part of
