Guilty But Mentally Ill?

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Allen S. Weiner ("An Insane Verdict," November 15, 1982) worries that a proposed guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict will encourage a jury to compromise unfairly to the detriment of the individual and of society. I agree with him. But, more fundamentally, I disagree both with the proposed guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict and with the insanity defense itself, which he accepts.

I disagree because society must decide through the criminal law what is morally tolerable and what is not, Killing or seriously wounding in self-defense may well be morally tolerable: killing or seriously wounding in response to mild or severe mental illness, religious fanaticism, economic disadvantage, sociological anomie, philosophical existentialism, radical politics, literary accomplishment, or infatuation ought not to be.

The liberal reform expansionists of excuses would include nearly all of these, if given the opportunity, as "guilty buts"; some would include many under the insanity defense itself. The rethinking contractionists would suggest that the criminal law ought to have but two verdicts, guilty and not guilty.

But these rethinkers would add that individuals found guilty ought to be helped: the physically ill might want or need medical care, for example, and the mentally ill might want or need mental health care.

But there is a great gap between what the guilty may want or need and a declaration that individuals are not guilty because of their wants or needs, or guilty but something else. Instead, society must reassert the importance of moral, not quasi-medical, decision making It is time to abolish the insanity defense, not to propose alternatives like guilty-but-mentally-ill. Ellsworth A. Fersch, J. D. '63, PhD '72