Shiina Akihiro, Sato Aiko, Iyo Masaomi, Igarashi Yoshito
Chiba University Center for Forensic Mental Health, Inohana 1-8-1, Chuo-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba, Japan.
International University of Health and Welfare, Kouzunomori 4-3, Narita-shi, Chiba, Japan.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2021 Jul-Aug;77:101702. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2021.101702. Epub 2021 May 4.
The criminal responsibility of offenders with mental disorders is a key issue in forensic psychiatry. Japan's implementation of the Medical Treatment and Supervision Act and Lay Judge Act in the early 2000s raised public awareness of this issue. To determine how criminal court judges in Japan assess the criminal responsibility of offenders, we examined 453 district court verdicts that mention psychiatric evidence. We extracted elements from each verdict that may be associated with courts' decision-making regarding criminal responsibility and analyzed the relationship between each element and the adjudication of criminal responsibility. We investigated the changes in each element's prevalence over time. A logistic regression analysis revealed that the following were independently associated with the court decisions that offenders' criminal responsibility was intact: understandable motivation for committing the offense, homogeneity of the offense from the defendant's usual behavioral pattern, a coherent process used to commit the offense, alertness while offending, and absence of psychotic symptoms. We observed that recent verdicts are more focused on the offender's perception of illegality and the coherence of the offending process while disregarding the defendant's consciousness and memory while offending. Thus, the courts focus on some specific elements for evaluating the criminal responsibility of each offender.
患有精神障碍的罪犯的刑事责任是法医精神病学中的一个关键问题。日本在21世纪初实施的《医疗与监管法》和《陪审员法》提高了公众对这一问题的认识。为了确定日本刑事法庭法官如何评估罪犯的刑事责任，我们审查了453份提及精神病学证据的地方法院判决。我们从每份判决中提取了可能与法院关于刑事责任的决策相关的要素，并分析了每个要素与刑事责任裁决之间的关系。我们调查了每个要素的流行率随时间的变化。逻辑回归分析表明，以下因素与法院判定罪犯刑事责任未受影响的决定独立相关：犯罪动机可理解、犯罪行为与被告通常行为模式的一致性、实施犯罪所采用的连贯过程、犯罪时的警觉性以及无精神病症状。我们观察到，最近的判决更关注罪犯对违法性的认知以及犯罪过程的连贯性，而忽视了被告在犯罪时的意识和记忆。因此，法院在评估每个罪犯的刑事责任时关注一些特定要素。
