Psychiatric Testimony--Who Can Give it and When? (original) (raw)

Legal professionals and witness statements from people with a suspected mental health diagnosis

International journal of law and psychiatry

Individuals with mental health problems are considered to be part of a group labeled 'vulnerable' in forensic psychology literature and the legal system more generally. In producing witness statements, there are numerous guidelines in the UK, designed to facilitate the production of reliable and valid accounts by those deemed to be vulnerable witnesses. And yet, it is not entirely clear how mental health impacts on reliability and validity within the judicial system, partly due to the diversity of those who present with mental health difficulties. In this paper, we set out to explore how legal professionals operating in the UK understand the impact of mental distress on the practical production of witness testimonies. Twenty legal professionals, including police officers, judges, magistrates and detectives were involved in a semi-structured interview to examine their knowledge and experience of working with mental health problems, and how they approached and worked with this...

Psychiatrists and the Parameters of Expert Testimony

A provocative paper by Faust and Ziskin (1988a) questioned whether psychiatry and professional psychology had any credible role in offering expert testimony. They concluded that psychological assessment, diagnosis, and clinical judgment (see also Ziskin & Faust, 1988) were of insufficient quality and should not be allowed as expert evidence. A vigorous, and at times acrimonious , debate ensued (e.g., Brodsky, 1989; Faust & Ziskin, 1988b; Matarrazzo, 1990, 1991; Ziskin & Faust, 1991). We do not intend to enter this foray. Rather, we believe that a common ground could possibly be achieved by addressing two questions that undergird this controversy. First, how do mental health experts express their confidence/uncertainty regarding their clinical data and conclusions? Second, what effect do expressions or confidence/uncer-tainty have on juror perceptions? Indeed, the simmering controversy might subside, if it could be demonstrated that either (a) experts accurately stated their level of confidence in their opinions, or (b) prospective jurors were uninfluenced by overstated opinions. The effects on judges and juries of how expert testimony is presented has gone largely unnoticed in the professional literature. One notable exception has been the barrage of criticism levied at mental health experts for their overreaching testimony in insanity trials (e.. A particularly contentious issue is whether conclu-sory opinions on the matter of insanity "invade the province of the jury" by unduly influencing jurors' perceptions and subsequent verdict. The "undue influence" argument was raised in the aftermath of the M'Naghten trial (Brooks, 1974) and has periodically resurfaced (Goldstein, 1967; Halleck,

The matter of forensic psychiatry: a historical enquiry

Medical history, 2006

Since antiquity, some men have not been considered accountable for their actions when they transgressed the law, and were exempted from legal penalties, or or given lesser ones. Why? The rationale for legal exemption has varied over time. So have the labels assigned to such lawbreakers, and even the personnel involved in the labelling process. For centuries, settling the question of deviant mental states of relevance to the court seemed relatively unproblematic. It was thought that personal acquaintance would easily discover such states of mind and the court could then be notified. It was not until the nineteenth century that western society felt a need to regulate this problematique. As a result, or as a precondition for this process of settling the question of legal accountability, the matter came to be construed in part as a medical problem. Physicians, and later psychiatrists, came to be regarded as possessing specific knowledge in this area which qualified them to judge a person's legal accountability. Personal knowledge of the deranged defendant was supplanted by professional knowledge of sanity and insanity as the basis for authority on the matter of accountability.