Doing away with the "only one-fourth of one percent" solution.

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

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"Psychiatrists engage in many phony practices but none phonier than the insanity defense."

OF ALL OF THE fatuous arguments supporting insanity pleas, the most effective is that "only one-fourth of one percent of those tried in criminal cases successfully plead insane." The significant word here is "only," because it implies that such an outcome, however fraudulent, should not be upsetting to the average citizen. As one "consulting psychologist," Laurence Miller, wrote prototypically in "The Doe Report" published by Medical Legal Art, "This is hardly an epidemic."

First of all, the statistic understates the role of exculpatory psychiatry and psychology in the courtroom, as purported psychological problems of felons affect criminal justice outcomes beyond just accomplishing a not-guilty-by-reason-of insanity plea. There is invalid psychological mitigation of crime and punishment throughout the criminal justice system--from untried cases to plea bargains to other psychiatrically affected punishments--in addition to felons' avoiding punishment via the insanity plea.

Ironically, the specious depicting of the relatively smaller percent of insanity plea outrages, in conjunction with the avoidance of personalizing the victims' and their relatives' stories, insulates the use of the insanity plea from close examination. As Soviet leader Joseph Stalin infamously stated, "One death is a tragedy, but 1,000,000 deaths are a statistic," with its generally accurate implication that no one cares about evil's victims as long as its supporters can depersonalize them.

Let us look at just one capital case in which an insanity-type plea, aided and abetted by credulous mental health professionals, protected a wholly evil perpetrator from severe punishment. In November 2008, a beautiful and wonderful citizen by all accounts (including personal communications to this writer from her friends and coworkers), Aysha Dawn Ring, viciously was murdered by a stranger to her, David Briggs. She was stabbed to death while standing in line at a Baltimore liquor store. Briggs savagely--and without provocation--slit her throat while she was writing to pay for purchases, and then purposefully ran away, disposed of his weapon, and, according to accounts in the Baltimore Sun, was "found naked ... in the empty chapel of a homeless shelter in the Pittsburgh area." He also was speaking apocalyptically and incomprehensibly. A perfect combination of events to infer that a killer is not to be held responsible for ending a completely innocent person's life.

The press reports detailed his...