ABSTRACT
Criminal sexual psychopath laws typically specify that the decision to so declare a particular offender (or, alternately, to declare him or her a “felony sex offender”) is to be made by the presiding judge after conviction and after, and in light of, professional mental health assessment intended to guide that judicial decision. While that decision is a prerogative of the court, it is the clear legislative intent that the court’s judgment be influenced by professional opinion that speaks both to the engines for the criminal behavior of which the offender has been convicted (that is, did the crime arise situationally or from “sexual psychopathy”?) and to the issue of future dangerousness. As earlier observed, in those cases in which an accused offender is so severely disordered that a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity prevails, disposition proceeds according to the pathway for involuntary criminal commitment to psychiatric hospitalization, without prior evaluation focused specifically on psychosexual pathology.
