Asokan T V
Department of Psychiatry, SRM Medical College and Research Institute, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India.
Indian J Psychiatry. 2016 Dec;58(Suppl 2):S191-S198. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.196832.
For the past 150 years, there is no change in the understanding and knowledge other than autonomy and capacity to choose the right and wrong for criminal liability. The alternative concept that human behavior is the result of an interaction between biological and environmental factors other than free choice failed to impress the criminal justice system because of a direct threat to a society's deep seated need to blame someone than themselves for criminal harms that occur. The insanity defense has a long history, and is evolved after many tests that have been tried and tested. McNaughton's rules stressed on "understandability of right and wrong" and "intellectual" rather than a moral or affective definition dominated in its formulation. Lack of control and irresistible drives or impulses were neglected Going by the current understanding of neurological evidences of compulsion and lack of impulse control, rationality tests without the inclusion of lack of control, seem to be outdated. Separate "Control determination" than the "Rationality determination" by the jurors may improve the accuracy of Juror's categorizations. There is a suggestion that Relevance ratio is ideal for 'Evidentiary relevance" and there should be a quality control on expert testimonies. With progress in neuroscience, the law may need to abandon or alter some of its current assumptions about the nature of voluntary conduct, which underlies various defenses.
在过去的150年里,除了刑事责任中关于自主以及辨别是非的能力外,人们的理解和认知没有任何变化。人类行为是生物因素和环境因素相互作用的结果而非自由选择这一替代概念,未能给刑事司法系统留下深刻印象,因为它直接威胁到了社会根深蒂固的一种需求,即让他人而非自己为所发生的犯罪危害负责。精神错乱抗辩有着悠久的历史,并且是在经过多次试验和检验后演变而来的。麦克诺顿规则强调“对是非的理解”和“智力方面”,而不是在其制定过程中占主导地位的道德或情感定义。对缺乏控制以及不可抗拒的冲动或驱动力的考量被忽视了。按照目前对强迫行为和缺乏冲动控制的神经学证据的理解,不包含缺乏控制因素的合理性测试似乎已经过时。由陪审员进行单独的“控制判定”而非“合理性判定”,可能会提高陪审员分类的准确性。有人建议似然比对于“证据相关性”来说是理想的,并且应该对专家证言进行质量控制。随着神经科学的发展,法律可能需要摒弃或改变其目前关于自愿行为本质的一些假设,而这些假设是各种抗辩的基础。