[blindLaw] Misunderstand In Compus Mentis?

Wed Sep 28 07:51:30 UTC 2022

This is just off the top of my head; I'm not a lawyer, let alone an expert
on this.

Pragmatically, you probably shouldn't be touching such cases until you have
a lot of experience, same as death penalty. If it interests you, that's
great, but I strongly encourage you to work for someone who does them.

1. The normal term used is "fitness to stand trial". "Compus mentis" is not
normally used these days.

2. For Federal crimes, read 18 US Code Ch. 313 (Offenders With Mental
Disease Or Defect), sections 4241 through 4248
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-III/chapter-313

This covers both fitness to stand trial and sentencing for people found to
be too mentally unwell to merit normal punishment.

E.g.. 18 USC 4241(a) Motion To Determine Competency of Defendant.—
At any time after the commencement of a prosecution for an offense and
prior to the sentencing of the defendant, or at any time after the
commencement of probation or supervised release and prior to the completion
of the sentence, the defendant or the attorney for the Government may file
a motion for a hearing to determine the mental competency of the defendant.
The court shall grant the motion, or shall order such a hearing on its own
motion, if there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant may
presently be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him
mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the
nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist
properly in his defense.

3. Federal precedent

There are also several SCOTUS and lower court decisions on this, which are
usually closely related to a determination of whether someone is fit to
represent themselves (either of they say they want to, or they say they
don't but they aren't e.g. poor enough to get a public defender
automatically).

These are broadly called a Faretta inquiry, after the key decision in
Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 835 (1975).
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9816908874706840257#p835

(Note that this case uses the somewhat outdated phrase "in propria
persona"; it means the same as "pro se", which in the UK is called
"litigant in person" or "LiP".)

These are elaborated by and related to many cases, e.g.:

Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402, 402 (1969) — "it is not enough for
the district judge to find that "the defendant [is] oriented to time and
place and [has] some recollection of events," but that the "test must be
whether he has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a
reasonable degree of rational understanding—and whether he has a rational
as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him.""
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2877494138671044176

Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 171 (1975)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12110713099598535891

Indiana v. Edwards, 554 US 164 (2008)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17554124406179090202

For the right to a public defender (if defendant consents), the key case is
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 US 335 (1963).
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=694784363938594707

All of the above have lots and lots of further case law that narrows or
elaborates on the standards. Those are just places to start. If you search
for things that cite Faretta or 18 USC Ch 313, though, you'll probably find
what you want.

Note that some of the above cases cite old UK common law. For the modern UK
equivalent law, see primarily the Mental Health Act 1993, part 3.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1983/20/part/III

4. Different issues

Note that there are several different aspects to this, which have sometimes
very different results.

(All examples below are my own hypotheticals, just to illustrate the idea,
not necessarily supported in any specific case law.)

1. applicable standard(s)
 a. state law (varies widely)
 b. federal law (18 USC Ch. 313)
 c. common law (eg cases above, and state courts' equivalents)

2. competence to be a witness
  a. in someone else's case

e.g. Daubert standard for expert witness, basic credibility, ability to
understand and produce coherent statements a translatable language, ability
to have encoded the topic into long-term memory and to now recall it, etc

e.g. can't have Broca's or Wernicke's aphasia, can't be actively psychotic
or hallucinating, must understand difference between reality and
imagination (this also comes up for little kids), can't have sensory
confabulation (e.g. Anton syndrome aka Anton's blindness aka visual
anosognosia), can't have amnesia (see e.g. the famous case of "H.M.", but
also various drugs that cause amnesia like alcohol, triazolam, rohypnol,
etc), etc

  b. in one's own case
    i. as a witness per se

same, but higher standard, and also goes into issues about wasting court
time and possibly getting held in contempt (though the bar for that is
extremely high; courts don't want to punish someone for just being
incompetent — it's too common, one has the right to conduct a very unusual
defense [which very rarely does work], and if it's really so incompetent
then it might imply the court should sua sponte reconsider competence to
stand trial at all)

    ii. competence to fully understand and make an informed legal decision
to waive one's 5th amendment rights

affects right to waive 5th

affects right to call the witnesses of one's own choosing, and therefore
might affect competence to mount a full defense

3. competence to understand the proceedings even with the aid of a lawyer,
aka competence to stand trial

affects right to not be prosecuted at all in a criminal proceeding, even
with a lawyer, and instead be sent to psych ward, but the standard is in
practice very high (and the alternative is often going to be life detention
in a psych ward)

e.g. must not be floridly hallucinating, must understand what e.g. "murder"
and "self defense" mean, must have at least a bare minimum epistemological
common ground with others (can't believe things are "proven" or not based
just on what the voice in your head says, or on what you say because you're
the Messiah, etc), etc — hard to give a comprehensive list, look through
case law to see a bunch of weird cases

4. competence to understand *and conduct* the proceedings without a lawyer

affects right to *refuse* a lawyer

e.g. must understand what evidence means, the basics of crim pro, what must
be shown to get a verdict of not guilty, what's relevant, what kind of
evidence one can obtain, etc

5. competence to understand and conduct a *death penalty case*

  a. by a lawyer

requires specific experience, like class actions

affects right to be someone's lawyer, right to have lawyer of your
choosing, and later civil suits for inadequate assistance of counsel

  b. by defendant without a lawyer

affects right to *refuse* a lawyer

like #4 but usually higher standard

6. competence to understand that doing the thing one was accused of was
morally wrong

  a. at the time one did it, aka "insanity plea"

affects sentencing, but not necessarily fitness to stand trial

e.g. must not be in such extreme hallucinations to genuinely believe one
was e.g. squishing alien spiders rather than killing one's kids

  b. during trial

affects competence to stand trial

  c. afterwards

more likely to come up under one of the other things, but could also be an
insanity defense (i.e. that one isn't capable of understanding what the
current *punishment* is or why, or that it's exacerbating the mental
disorder, and therefore it's cruel & unusual)

5. Some collected research I have

You may want to peruse my folders of legal research partially related to
this (not exactly on point, but should give you at least pointers to other
things to read):

* pro se & appointment of counsel
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzmetJxi-p0VUUZlS00xTld6RW8?resourcekey=0-c5YL_TWjSguSJER0G0OKPQ

* legal ethics of dealing with disabled (e.g. suicidal) clients
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BWVT9valwHe6FbrMcB9MipR3BHjnpvje

Hope that helps. If you have a more specific question please ask it.

You may also want to write to e.g. the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers (NACDL) mailing list.

Sincerely,
Sai
President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc., a 501(c)(3)

Sent from my mobile phone; please excuse the concision and autocorrect
errors.

On Wed, 28 Sep 2022, 02:59 Thomas Dukeman via BlindLaw, <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Hello fellow legal beagles!
>
> Maybe I am misunderstanding the legal concept, or it was improperly
> implied, but can someone explain in full if there are actual required
> standards for what is and is not considered being found In Compus Mentis
> and unable to stand trial? I am asking because I was listening to a true
> crime podcast (yes im aware they can sensationalize and/or over-dramatize
> things for ratings) but it got me wondering how it was that a person can be
> found to be of below average intelligence was of to such a degree that he
> did not know right from wrong can still be found fit to stand trial? Is
> that not the very definition of In Compus Mentis? The confusion comes from
> the fact that even though the case against this individual was in 2010, It
> was not in a legal system I am familiar with. The case I am referring to is
> that of Juan Carlos Rodriguez’s involvement in the murder of Dutch
> Immigrant Martin Verfondern in Galicia, Spain in 2010. Can anyone help me
> see how it was this was allowed to happen, because I feel something is
> definitely wrong here.
>
> Tom
>
> Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
>
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