Insanity Evaluations Represent the Most Challenging Forensic

¶ … Insanity evaluations represent the most challenging forensic assessments in the criminal domain" (Rogers, 2008, p.126). This is due to the fact that insanity evaluations require the psychologist to assess whether a defendant had a mental illness at the time that an offense was committed, and, whether that mental illness was related to the commission of the crime in a way that would make the defendant "insane" under applicable state laws. First, whether or not the defendant is presenting as mentally ill at the time of the assessment is often not relevant to the assessment; most defendants, processed and in the jail system, have access to medications and treatment that they may have lacked at the time of the crime. Therefore, it is important to realize that a defendant's competency to stand trial is a different issue than whether a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity. If a defendant is determined to be competent to stand trial and sanity is still an issue, then the forensic examiner has to combine psychology with one of two primary legal standards. Approximately half of the states follow the M'Naughten rule, which basically states that a defendant can be found not guilty by reason of insanity if he did not know the nature of the act he was doing or did not know that what he was doing was wrong (Frontline, Insanity FAQs, 2013). Other jurisdictions use "some variation of the Model Standard set out by the American Law Institute (A.L.I.) in 1962. Under the A.L.I. rule, a defendant is not held criminally responsible 'if at the time of his conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality (wrongfulness) of his conduct or to conform his conduct to requirements of law'" (Frontline, Insanity FAQs, 2013). Three states do not allow for an insanity defense, but do allow defendants to plead guilty but insane. Therefore, how a forensic psychologist examines a defendant may be partially dependent upon state law.

One instrument that has traditionally been used to assess criminal responsibility is the Mental State at the Time of the Offense (MSE-Offense). In fact, some have advocated that the MSE-Offense is not only an effective screening tool for insanity, but can even be relied upon as the sole means of measurement in obvious insanity cases. However, recent testing of the MSE-Offense suggests that there are serious problems with it as a screening tool, not only because of reliability concerns, but also because recent testing suggests that the test may be invalid and may not actually measure sanity or lack thereof at the time of the commission of the offense (Rogers & Shuman, 2000). As a result, it cannot be said to be a widely accepted tool in the field of forensic psychology and would not pass the Daubert standard for the type of expert evidence that should be admissible in court.

Another one of the instruments that may be used to assess criminal responsibility is the Rogers Criminal Responsibility Assessment Scales. I believe that this tool is one of the most appropriate assessment tools for determining criminal insanity because it has a demonstrated inter-rater reliability that most assessment tools are lacking. In fact, studies that have examined the reliability of the Rogers Criminal Responsibility Assessment Scales "reveal strong (>95%) agreement among trained raters who score the measure based on the same records and the same interview of a criminal defendant" (Gowensmith et al., 2013). Given that rater reliability can be as low as around 50% when evaluators use different assessment tools, this reliability is a key factor in suggesting that the Rogers Criminal Responsibility Assessment Scales are a good tool for measuring insanity.