Abstract:
Two landmark Supreme Court cases, Riggins v. Nevada (1992) and Sell v. United States (2003), examined whether defendants with mental illness can be involuntarily medicated to facilitate their competence to proceed. Both cases raised the same question: Does medicating a defendant (by either removing clinical symptoms or by producing a sedated, emotionless appearance) prejudice future jurists? Furthermore, would the knowledge of medication compliance or noncompliance itself affect jurist perceptions? To address both questions, an online, census-matched mock juror sample read randomized vignettes to assess whether a defendant’s in-trial symptom presentation (i.e., psychotic v. blunted v. neutral) and medication compliance (i.e., compliant v. noncompliant v. compliance not mentioned) influenced insanity verdicts. Regression analyses indicated defendants with psychotic and blunted clinical presentations were less likely than defendants with neutral clinical presentations to be perceived as able to conform their conduct to the law. Medication compliance was not a significant predictor. Results suggest the inclusion of a volitional component in the definition of insanity renders defendant in-trial clinical presentation more influential. It follows that defendants in the relatively few jurisdictions with such a component have a vested interest in appearing psychotic (a presentation often removed by psychotropic medication) or with a blunted affect (a presentation often induced by it). In the wake of recent influential rulings on the matter (e.g., Kahler v. Kansas, 2020), these findings signify the importance of policy decisions related to jurisdictional insanity statutes, with implications for both defendant legal strategy and judges’ decisions regarding medication over objection.
