John W. Hinckley And The Case Of “Insane Costs” For “Insanity Defense” Investigation
Human sanity is quite an arguable and discussed subject not only in psychology, but also in somewhat broader disciplines, such as sociology and law. The highly resonant legal cases, such as John W. Hinckley’s attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, often spurred highly resonant discussion on the matter of sanity, despite the fact that such cases are quite uncommon. The resonance of Hinckley’s case went extremely far as it managed to motivate the American government to change the policy in regards to insanity defense. Considering that the cases when the defendant’s side pleas “not guilty” due to the defendant’s insanity are extremely rare, the case of John W. Hinckley and particularly its aftermath proves that the society and the government should be more cautious in regards to such cases and the latter should adjust the policies relevant to such sensitive matter in correspondence to the public demand in order to ease the burden of the American taxpayers.
The highly resonant case of John W. Hinckley’s assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan took place in early 1981 and caused a cascade of similarly highly discussed and controversial events, such as the U. S. government’s “insanity defense” policy review. As Hinckley was returned “not guilty” due to his insanity, many critics argued that the legal system in the United States is incompetent and has to change its “insanity defense” policy. This criticism is, however, decently met by relatively new argument of Professor Douglas Linder (2002), who made a sound counterargument that sanity defense at the time was used only in 2 percent of all felony cases, 75 percent of which failed. The government, however, still deemed criticisms reasonable and found the necessity in changing the policy and making the defendant prove his or her own insanity in court, opposed to previously putting this burden on courts, which are funded predominantly by the country. This demonstrates not only government’s high concern over the taxpayers’ money, but also suggest that the United States made quite a strong decision in regards to criminal offenders. Although, the government’s adjustment makes it harder for the offenders to defend in court, it makes the defense much more objective and unbiased, which in turn stimulates the offenders to either put more effort in their defense or not violate the law in the first place.
Particularly, the United States government adjusted the “insanity defense” policy in the way that may create much more damaging costs to the triers in the United States, i. e. the criminal offenders, which sounds unbiased, just, and demotivating in regards to the subject of criminal offense as a whole. On the rise of Hinckley trial and its resonance, the government ruled, no expert witness testifying with respect to the mental state or condition of a defendant in a criminal case may state an opinion or inference as to whether the defendant did or did not have the mental state or condition constituting an element of the crime charged or a defense thereto. Such ultimate issues are matters for the trier of fact alone.
This means that the trier would need to search for all possible evidence that might prove his or her insanity, which, as Hinckley’s case prove, can be extremely costly and, thus, both demotivating for the offender and uncostly for the country. As John Hinckley’s assassination attempt case drew an extraordinary amount of attention from the government and numerous experts, the costs of investigation reached enormous scales. As the procedure of mere psychological investigation eventually became extremely complex and nearly impossible for the court experts to establish whether a 26-year-old John W. Hinckley was insane or not, the contemporary high-cost technology became involved in the process. In his work discussing the cases of insanity defense, Fersch (2005) noted that brains scans are quite frequently used in criminal investigation procedures in order to validate the diagnosis of a certain mental disorder. In Hinckley’s case, the CAT-scans were performed by Dr. David Bear, which eventually confirmed that Hinckley suffered with schizophrenia. These procedures truly helped the case to move forward, however, they eventually proved to be extremely costly for a single criminal offense case. As the investigation progressed and various techniques had to be used while establishing the state of Hinckley’s mental well-being, the total cost of the procedures reached nearly half-a-million dollars. In their work discussing various legal and psychology cases, Charles Ewing and Joseph McCann (2006) provided that the costs of Hinckley’s sanity investigation reached nearly $450,000, which is quite a considerable amount. Furthermore, the investigation, in fact, attempted to prove that Hinckley was sane for the trial, it proved to be quite unsuccessful as Hinckley was found insane and, thus, not guilty, which made all the costs and expert efforts useless. Thus, by laying a burden of mental health investigation on the defendant, who chooses to plea “not guilty” for the reason of insanity, the government ensured that such cases are not likely to reprise, and the taxpayers would not need to worry about the fairness of their money distribution in the country.
Thus, John W. Hinckley’s case of 1981 assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan demonstrates that not only the government of the United States is reasonable and open to the public criticisms, but it also makes its greatest efforts to make the court case investigations unbiased. As Hinckley’s side tried “not guilty” for the reason of insanity, the investigation went somewhat to the extreme and proved to be extremely costly as human sanity is quite a sensitive subject. Although, the investigation was quite unsuccessful and Hinckley was found “not guilty” in the end, the government made some decent conclusions and took necessary action in order for the investigations to be unbiased and taxpayers’ money to be distributed fairly.
Works Cited
- 639 CRM. Rule 704(b). 1981, https://www. justice. gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-639-insanity-scope-expert-testimony.
- Ewing, Charles Patrick, and Joseph T McCann. Minds On Trial: Great Cases In Law And Psychology. New York, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 91-101.
- Fersch, Ellsworth Lapham. Thinking About The Insanity Defense: Answers To Frequently Asked Questions With Case Examples. New York, Universe, 2005.
- Linder, Douglas O. 'The Trial Of John W. Hinckley, Jr. ' Famous Trials, 2002, http://www. famous-trials. com/johnhinckley/537-home.
