Ogunwale Adegboyega, Pienaar Letitia, Oluwaranti Oluwaseun
Neuropsychiatric Hospital Aro, Abeokuta, Nigeria.
Forensic & Neurodevelopmental Sciences Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Apr 19;14:1084773. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1084773. eCollection 2023.
Insanity as a defence against criminal conduct has been known since antiquity. Going through significant reformulations across centuries, different jurisdictions across the globe, including Nigeria, have come to adopt various strains of the insanity defence, with the presence of mental disorder being the causative mechanism of the crime as their central theme. A critical ingredient in the Nigerian insanity plea is the presence of 'mental disease' or 'natural mental infirmity' as the basis for the lack of capacity in certain cognitive and behavioural domains resulting in the offence. Mental disorders, which are the biomedical formulations of this critical legal constituent are primarily subjective experiences with variable objective features. Using illustrative cases based on psycho-legal formulation as well as reform-oriented and fundamental legal research, it is shown that Nigerian courts have held that claims of insanity based on the accused person's evidence alone should be regarded as "suspect" and not to be "taken seriously." Thus, Nigerian judicial opinions rely on non-expert accounts of defendants' apparent behavioural abnormalities and reported familial vulnerability to mental illness, amongst other facts while conventionally discountenancing the defendants' plausible phenomenological experiences validated by expert psychiatric opinion in reaching a conclusion of legal insanity. While legal positivism would be supportive of the prevailing judicial attitude in entrenching the validity of the disposition in its tenuous precedential utility, legal realism invites the proponents of justice and fairness to interrogate the merit of such preferential views which are not supported by scientific evidence or philosophical reasoning. This paper argues that disregarding the subjective experience of the defendant, particularly in the presence of sustainable expert opinion when it stands unrebutted is not in the interest of justice. This judicial posturing towards mentally abnormal offenders should be reformed on the basis of current multidisciplinary knowledge. Learning from the South African legislation, formalising the involvement of mental health professionals in insanity plea cases, ensures that courts are guided by professional opinion and offers a model for reform.
自古以来，精神错乱就被视为一种针对犯罪行为的抗辩理由。历经数百年的重大重新阐释，包括尼日利亚在内的全球不同司法管辖区都采用了各种形式的精神错乱抗辩，其核心主题是精神障碍的存在是犯罪的致病机制。尼日利亚精神错乱抗辩中的一个关键要素是存在“精神疾病”或“自然精神缺陷”，以此作为某些认知和行为领域缺乏能力从而导致犯罪的依据。精神障碍作为这一关键法律要素的生物医学表述，主要是具有可变客观特征的主观体验。通过基于心理 - 法律表述以及以改革为导向的基础法律研究的实例表明，尼日利亚法院认为仅基于被告人证据提出的精神错乱主张应被视为“可疑”，不应“予以认真对待”。因此，尼日利亚的司法意见依赖于对被告人明显行为异常的非专家描述以及报告的家族易患精神疾病情况等事实，而在得出法律上精神错乱的结论时，通常对经专家精神病学意见证实的被告人合理的现象学体验不予理会。虽然法律实证主义会支持现行司法态度，以其微弱的先例效用巩固该处置的有效性，但法律现实主义促使正义和公平的支持者审视这种缺乏科学证据或哲学推理支持的优先观点的价值。本文认为，忽视被告人的主观体验，尤其是在存在未被反驳的可靠专家意见的情况下，不符合正义的利益。基于当前的多学科知识，应对这种针对精神异常罪犯的司法姿态进行改革。借鉴南非的立法，将心理健康专业人员参与精神错乱抗辩案件的程序正式化，可确保法院以专业意见为指导，并提供了一个改革模式。
