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What Is Myers III V. State Of Indiana An Example Of Mental Competency?

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In the field of criminal law there is a certain type of criminal defense that comes to the court and has a low success rate. These cases concern the mental capacity of the defendant and if they have enough mental capacity, or are sane enough, to be aware of their crime and consequences of crime. The insanity defense is extremely rare because of how difficult it is for the defense to prove to the court and jury that the defendant did not have the mental capacity to understand what they did wrong and the consequences from it. The case of Myers III v. State of Indiana is one example of criminal responsibility and mental capacity. This case has information that can be connected to the textbook with the insanity defense tests, mental competence …show more content…

Mental competency is critical for court because if someone, like Myers, was determined to not be mental competent then the trial will be placed on hold for days or months or years until another psychological evaluation brings results that the individual has the mental capacity to understand the legal proceedings and consult with the defense attorney to help their case (Samaha, 2019, p. 211). In court, the jury was informed about Myers' history with mental illness and when it came time for deliberations the jury ruled that Myers was guilty of his crime but mentally ill. This conviction led to one main question for the insanity defense, and that was whether the mental illness that Myers suffered from prevented him from understanding the wrongfulness of his crime (Samaha, 2019, p. 215). After looking at the textbook and the case, there could be an argument that Myer’s mental illness did prevent him from knowing the wrongfulness of his crime because of how his chronic disorder of paranoid schizophrenia twists what is real and what is not real. At the time of the crime, Myer may not have known that what he was doing was actually real and he may not have thought that it was wrong because it was not real. This would be sufficient evidence to answer the main question for the insanity

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