Peay Jill
Department of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2015 May-Jun;40:25-35. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2015.04.007. Epub 2015 May 2.
The proper boundaries of criminal liability with respect to those with questionable mental capacity are currently under review. In its deliberations in the areas of unfitness to plead, automatism and the special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity the Law Commission for England and Wales have been cognizant of particular difficulties in fairly attributing criminal responsibility to those whose mental capacities may or may not have impinged on their decisions, either at the time of the offence or at trial. And they have referenced the potential breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) posed by the state of our current laws. However, in their efforts to remedy these potential deficiencies is the Law Commission heading in a direction that is fundamentally incompatible with the direction embodied by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD)? Whether one must cede sensibly to the other, or whether some compromise might emerge, perhaps through an extension of supportive services or through the development of disability-neutral criminal law, forms the subject of this paper.
目前正在审议针对精神能力存疑者的刑事责任的适当界限。在英格兰和威尔士法律委员会对不适合答辩、自动行为以及因精神错乱而作出的无罪特别裁决等领域进行审议时，他们已经认识到，在将刑事责任公平地归咎于那些其精神能力在犯罪时或审判时可能已经或可能尚未影响其决定的人时，存在特殊困难。而且他们提到了现行法律状况可能违反《欧洲人权公约》（ECHR）的情况。然而，法律委员会在努力弥补这些潜在缺陷时，是否正朝着与《联合国残疾人权利公约》（CRPD）所体现的方向根本不相容的方向发展呢？是必须明智地向另一方让步，还是可能会出现某种妥协，或许是通过扩大支持性服务或制定对残疾人中立的刑法，这构成了本文的主题。
