ABSTRACT
A decision sequence for criminal responsibility is inherently built into all legal tests of insanity. Possible bias by the examiner and witnesses in addition to possible deception by the defendant must be factored into the sound criminal responsibility evaluation. This chapter elaborates on the decision sequence for criminal responsibility evaluations based on over 1000 court-ordered sanity examinations by the authors. A heuristic model of seven discrete steps for evaluating insanity defenses is presented, which explicitly integrates a deception analysis into the evaluation. Once the database is sufficiently comprehensive and a deception analysis has been conducted, self-control and choice become the center point of the evaluation. A self-control checklist (Appendix B) and an insanity report exemplar (Appendix C) are offered to the readership.
