Representatives Introduce Bills to Eliminate Plea of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

In the latest development in the nationwide debate on the use of the insanity plea, the Joint Criminal Justice Committee yesterday heard testimony on eight bills that would radically change the way courts deal with defendants who say they were mentally ill when they committed a crime.

The bills, introduced by Rep. William G. Robinson (R-Melrose and two other republican lawmakers, abolish the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and allows the defendant to plead guilty, not guilty, or guilty but insane.

Defendants pleading guilty by insane would spend at least one year in a mental institution and then prove that they were sane in order to be released. The state would then have the right to monitor their condition for up to five years.

Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan now have similar legislation on the books. Other bills like it concerning both state and federal courts are now under consideration, in the Pennsylvania and Ohio legislatures, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Congressional Criminal Justice Subcommittee official said yesterday.

Robinson testified at the hearing yesterday that he was proposing the bills because "the general public is absolutely appalled when a defendant is allowed to escape punishment" by pleading innocent by reason of insanity, and is then set free.

Awareness

Rep. Stephen Pierce (R-Westfield), a co-sponsor of the bills, said they were designed to "raise awareness" of the issue, but that he was not sure of their chance of passage.

The committee will modify the bills and decide by April 27 whether or not to send them to the full legislature for a vote.

Critics of the proposed legislation said yesterday that its proponents had misinterpreted the insanity defense.

'Double Stigma'

"I think the guilty but mentally ill approach is silly," said Peter Arenella, professor of law at Boston University. Guilt is based on the moral accountability, hence the sanity, of the defendant, so a plea of guilty but insane would just "label the guy with a double stigma," he added.

Arenella said that the state already has the power to commit a defendant acquitted by reason of insanity to a mental institution, making the proposed legislation superfluous.

In addition, opponents of the bills said yesterday that the media coverage of would-be Presidential assassin John W. Hinckley Jr.'s trial had exaggerated the problem of the insanity defense, which they said is rarely used.