Accomodating the killer.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: Law & Justice - Insanity defense

OF ALL OF THE MATTERS that psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers undertake, support of accused criminals', and particularly killers', pleas of "not guilty by reason of insanity" or, in some states, "not criminally responsible," is perhaps the most outrageously invalid. Many of their clients or patients are voluntary. Whatever debates exist concerning the prescribing of psychoactive drugs, such activities usually are desired by the recipients. Whatever role mental health practitioners play in adjudicating interpersonal legal disputes, at least they theoretically can bring the concept of "the reasonable man" (now, perhaps, the reasonable person) to bear without resorting to creating exculpatory bases for others' derelictions of responsibility in decisionmaking. Even when testifying in court regarding the penalty phase after a verdict has been rendered, the mental health personage usually argues for mitigation, not elimination, of punishment.

When defense mental health "experts" testify to a lack of a defendant's criminal intent, these "hired guns" are aiming to have the perpetrator confined to a psychiatric institution rather than a jail. In some cases, a murderer who is in prison for life without parole, as was the case early in 2008 for Maryland's Kevin Johns, can kill again with the hope of being found insane or not criminally responsible and, therefore, be taken out of horrible prison confines and placed in a different location for incarceration. Moreover, what if this prisoner is in a state (which he is in Maryland) that effectively has eliminated executions--not by law, but by practice? In short, what does a rational murderer who faces life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but not execution (regardless of what he does), potentially do to improve his lot?

He murders again and, if he has a history of being violent in a repeated and unconventional way, he specifically may avoid going to--or escape--Supermax prison (in Baltimore, Md.) and instead get sent to a relatively more pleasant psychiatric facility. This arguably was the motive in Johns' brutal killing of Philip E. Parker Jr. on a prison bus. Johns has had a long, violent history, culminating in the killing of Parker in February 2005. The judge, Emory A. Plitt Jr., originally decided in June of 2008 that Johns was "not criminally responsible." The appalled concern of many was that this decision would allow Johns to be placed in a psychiatric facility wherein...