Andrea Yates, John Hinckley and the Insanity Plea: A Look Back
According to the definition of insanity at the time, the jury could do nothing else. Based upon my research of Hinckley, the legal defense of “not guilty by reason of insanity” was appropriate in this case. This decision, though legally correct at the time, was instrumental in the reform of the insanity plea.
The drift away from reality into insanity began with the movie Taxi Diver starring Robert Deniro and Jodie Foster. It was 1976; Hinckley had just dropped out of college and had traveled to Hollywood in hopes of becoming a musician. He was aimless, restless and very malleable. The movie Taxi Driver had fed his depression and need for a challenge in his life. The life he had created was nothing but sorrow and despair. In the movie, a crazed taxi driver played by Deniro delves into ideas of political assassination and violently saves a young prostitute (Foster) from her pimp. He would watch this movie fourteen times within two years. Almost methodically, his disassociation began to develop.
When the Hinckley trial began, there was no question that he had attempted to assassinate the president. The prosecution paraded expert witnesses throughout their case. Soon after this testimony, the prosecution would introduce a videotape of Hinckley at a gathering where then President Jimmy Carter was along with a worker at a rifle range where he had been practicing. These would pave the way for the prosecution’s argument for sanity and premeditation. Early on, the prosecution tried to show the specific planning and conscious decisions of Hinckley leading up to March 30th, 1981. The prosecution was arguing that Hinckley was sane at the time he shot the president. This essentially was the problem, since the prosecution had to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Hinckley was sane. This concept left many loopholes. Only one loophole was needed for a “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict. One of those very large loopholes was the discrepancy in expert testimony. This confusion brought on by the testimony played a large role in the verdict.
With every defense witness saying Hinckley was insane, a prosecution witness would counter it. Dr. Sally Johnson spent the most time with Hinckley in prison. She had stated that he was sane and he seemed almost “coerced into faking mental illness” Dr. Park Dietz, also for the prosecution agreed stating Hinckley had a “narcissistic personality disorder.” Their conclusion was that he was in competent control every step preceding and every step taken during his assassination attempt. The defense disagreed bringing twice the number of expert witnesses. Hinckley had “schizophrenia” “disordered thought”, “social withdraw” and a “bizarre obsession with Jodie Foster.” Ultimately, it seemed like the experts agreed that Hinckley shot the president, but they really did not know why. ‘I dare say that not one psychiatrist who has analyzed me knows any more about me than the average person on the street who has read about me in the newspapers. Psychiatry is a guessing game and I do my best to keep the fools guessing about me.
They will never know the true John Hinckley. Only I fully understand myself.’ (Honigsbaum 1 ). The arguments continued to go back and forth, confusing both the jury and the public. Dr. Park Dietz gave a report on Hinckley’s mental condition “Mr. Hinckley’s history is clearly indicative of a person who did not function in a usual reasonable manner. However, there is no evidence that he was so impaired that he could not appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law” (Linder 9).There was however one difference: if the jury had any doubts about Hinckley’s state of mind at the time of the crime, he must be found not guilty. “In the Hinckley trial, Federal District Judge Barrington Parker instructed the jury to acquit Hinckley if they found his actions were related to “any abnormal condition of the mind, regardless of its medical label, which substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs his behavior controls.” The instruction was straightforward; the jury’s task was anything but. Rather than making a finding of fact, the jury had to determine what was in Hinckley’s mind” (Sokolove 54).
The prosecution was asking a group of people, both educated and not to make a complex legal decision. The jury saw reasonable doubt and Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on thirteen counts related to March 30th. As one Hinckley juror noted about the verdict, “If the expert psychiatrists could not decide whether the man was sane, then how are we supposed to decide?”
Morally was this verdict correct? No. Nevertheless, at the time it was legally correct. One being found medically insane is substantially different from legally insane in 1981. At that point in time it took much less effort to find someone legally insane than diagnose them mentally. When reasonable doubt is in the picture, the whole trial is molded in a completely different way. Parallels in reasoning can be drawn from the O.J. Simpson case of the 1990’s. Johnnie Cochran, by having Mr. Simpson try on the glove in front of the jury (which did not fit) he created a sense of reasonable doubt. With four mental health professionals claiming Hinckley’s insanity, Vincent Fuller created reasonable doubt that Hinckley was insane. The jury must acquit. Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying after the trial “If you start thinking about even a lot of your friends, you would have to say ‘Gee if I had to prove they were sane, I would have a hard job” (Hibbits 11). Alternatively, what presidential counselor Edwin Meese said about proving the opposite: “You couldn’t even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.”
However, the problem lay in the jury having to decide what the defendant’s mental state was at the time of the crime. This task is not simple, and is near impossible. The whole premise of “mens rea” is not all too scientific. In nearly every case, it is subjective. This can be seen by the psychologists at both ends of the spectrum in the Hinckley trial. The insanity plea stems from one concept: that people have free will and most people choose to follow the law placed before them. In certain circumstances however, there are people who have a mental disability that makes them incapable to make the conscious effort to follow the law. It originated with the “right or wrong” test, also known as the M’Naughten rule which stated “a person was not criminally responsible if at the time of the crime he did not know the nature of the act was wrong”(âÂ?¦).
Therefore, the burden of proof on the prosecution was minimal: if the defendant knew the moral consequences of what they did, he was sane, mental illness or not. The American Law Institute in the early 1950’s has developed a test in insanity cases. “Compared to M’Naghten, it lowered the insanity standard from an absolute knowledge of right from wrong to a substantial incapacity to appreciate the difference between right from wrong; thereby recognizing degrees of incapacity” (âÂ?¦). Instead of a defendant having no idea at all of what he did, they now just need to lack “substantial capacity” It was a softening of the M’Naughten Test which Hinckley was able to take advantage of. The burden of proof officially shifted when the District of Colombia adopted this test. Now the prosecutor was under the gun.
“The public directed its outrage at Hinckley against the insanity defense, blaming the legal standard for letting off the man who shot the president. The insanity defense became a target of demagoguery and vengeance. An ensuing wave of federal and state restrictions on the defense made it harder for insanity defendants to be acquitted, easier for them to be committed to state custody if they are and harder for them to be released once they are put away.” (Caplan 3).
The reforms that occurred due to the Hinckley verdict were dramatic. It exposed the problems of a jury deciding what the defendant’s mental state is. The case also demonstrated the problems with expert testimony. On the one side, you have the prosecution labeling Hinckley as a “troubled young man” but the defense takes the same evidence, and their experts testify that he is insane. The jury must then take the minimal and confused knowledge they were presented with and come up with a verdict. Their verdict had to be correct in legal standards-which in most cases they did not fully understand to begin with. This is why there needs to be a national policy in regards to the insanity plea. The verdict in Hinckley’s case caused reforms that were good to a certain extent. By having a national policy, the disparity between cases would be minimal. If John Hinckley is the poster boy for everything that was wrong with the insanity plea, Andrea Yates of Texas should be the poster girl of everything that should be right with a revised insanity plea.
This plea would focus less on the expert testimony and give better options: guilty but mentally ill. The expert testimony raises too many questions about objectivity and conjecture. Yates had a history of mental instability, which leads to the killing of her children. Dr. Dietz, who was also an expert witness for the prosecution in the Hinckley case, pushed hard that Yates knew what she was doing. Andrea Yates had the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and killing her children was wrong. “Dietz’s testimony about Andrea’s condition is full of troubling speculations that sound authoritative but have no empirical support. Of course, the field of psychiatry in general is vulnerable to such criticisms., Dietz’s accounts give Andrea’s actions a degree of internationality and manipulation that seem to derive only from Dietz’s interpretations and no other source” (Denno 2).
This exemplifies what is wrong with the insanity plea in the courts: subjectivity on both sides, including the jury. With a mal-informed jury making a complex decision about life, death or being free, the outcome is destined for doom. The answer is guilty but mentally ill. By instituting this as a national policy cuts down the rate or error, and gives a less complex situation to the jury. The defendant would then be held responsible for their actions and be sent to a facility to receive treatment. This is the same for guilty but insane. How does this differ from Hinckley’s verdict? If there comes a point in time where Hinckley is free, his record is clean in the courts, maybe not from public scrutiny. Though the Hinckley verdict did cause public outcry and reform, was it reform in the right direction? Thanks to Mr. Hinckley Andrea Yates sits in a cell not receiving the psychiatric help she so desperately needs.
