So, while looking up how Virginia treats insanity, I found an interesting update on Virginia's mental illness laws:
In Virginia there is a rule that prohibits introducing evidence of mental illness in criminal cases unless the Accused pleads Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (“NGRI”). As a result, the jury is not made aware of mitigating evidence that would allow for a fair trial and appropriate resolution. Curre
justiceforwardva.com
So at least as of earlier this year, the rule was if you didn't plead Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity you couldn't introduce any evidence of mental illness whatsoever.
If this is till true, and it appears to be, it's an all or nothing deal. Assuming it goes to trial, which it probably won't.
On quick perusal, I dont disagree with that. If you are not insane enough to legally be insane, I don't want a sliding scale of feelings about relative mental health crises to be the benchmark for how juries decide cases. Most habitual criminals have mental health problems, were abused as kids, have various traumas, and the like. The law should- mainly- provide a standard. That article feels to me to be written by the sort who would excuse a stabbing because the stabber was an EDP having an emotional disturbance. I think their description of mens rea is superficial and infantile. How can you establish intent, they would say. He didn't mean to kill that person, he thought they were Hitler and he was saving the world. There is no limit to the silly shit attorneys will try and get to stick to a wall. The ruling they are opposed to bars "evidence" of a sort that can be easily doctor shopped and whimsically produced with a good defense team, especially nowadays moreso than in 1985. The very basis of the ruling was an attorney claiming he was having a manic episode in an attempt to enter an NGRI without an NGRI plea- essentially, that he was only periodically incompetent and incapable of forming intent. The ability to declare that someone was only occasionally incompetent as an article of their defense and to require the prosecution to prove otherwise is an extreme burden when taken too literally.
Were the Stamper ruling disposed of and the framework suggested in the article implemented, you'd need a team of trained psychiatrists for jurymembers. You'd need some sort of mental health frye hearing for every case that claimed temporary insanity. It is an attempt to dispense with responsibility for offenses that are provable; to me it doesn't reason out far from claiming that a drunk lacked mens rea because his friends plied him with alcohol until he was blackout drunk and told him to drive home right before he plowed into a car and killed three people. To suggest that his lack of faculty at the time affects his culpability is specious; perhaps he has a mental or personality defect predisposing him to his addictions and should therefore receive special consideration?
I am certain there is much more to it than that, but my knowledge of the Stamper ruling extends to that article, and knowing that the sort of people who write those articles are a lot less interested in justice and a lot more interested in posing interesting legal quandaries that leave innocent people in harm's way over niggling distinctions and technicalities. I don't trust the article to be objective beyond the established bare fact.
What many people here don't get is to be declared not guilty by reason of insanity is both very rare, and a very high burden. Chris is absolutely NOT going to meet that bar.
I may have missed it but that says nothing about providing the mental health information for the benefit of sentencing, however. That, to my mind, is where mitigation (or aggravation) should be considered. It does no good to dispose of offenses and nolle pross the "good stuff" so a violent criminal can plea to a couple of possession charges. Stick him with what he earned and sentence him in a range of mitigation if necessary, outlining the reasons for the same on his judgment of the court. If you can't find a way to work around a mandatory minimum, too fucking bad, that's why mandatory minimums exist in the first place- so you can at least put these worthless cocksuckers in jail for a few months.
It depends if the incest case comes with sex offense registration. If it does, I probably do both because there's a public safety interest in getting this person into registered sex offense status.
Incest is registerable in VA.
I was going to say my state has diversionary mental health court to bridge the gaps that article bemoans but look like VA effectively does now too as anonimous pointed out. This would not IMO be a case ripe for diversion, about the only time I've ever seen a sex offense receive that consideration was for registration violations due to hardship (generally a person is long term hospitalized or incapacitated but nobody can find him to update the registry and they dont want to ding him as a result) and technically registration violations aren't in and of themselves sex offenses.
