Kyle Javenes

A Modern Americanized Study of Crime and Punishment

            Let’s get right into it (as the title says it all). Raskolnikov (Raskol for short) committed two murders. Heinous, right? Well let’s look at his legal options. His lawyer saw some irrational behaviors (aside from the murder) and has a forensic psychologist analyze him to see if he could argue for the case of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGBRI). We are assuming here that Raskol got some help with finances because otherwise he would be stuck with a public attorney and five minutes of prep doesn’t really flesh out this case. So Raskol can be located in three locations prior to a trial depending on his circumstances. He could be placed under house arrest, in jail, or a psychiatric facility (if he was civilly committed). For the sake of exploration let’s say he was civilly committed. 

Raskol’s evaluation comes back as him having high anxiety, stress and depression. The lawyer begins to feel confident that they can use either the M’Naghten test or American Law Institute (ALI) test.  M’Naghten requires that Raskol was unable to tell right from wrong when committing the crime. Raskol was under a large stress and became morally incompetent so the lawyer could try and argue this. However, he was still able to determine from an ethical stand point whether or not the situation he was putting himself in was correct. This means this test may not be an option available. So, in order to better sway the jury and not have a poor cross examination, he would go with the ALI. This test simply allows for any person with a mental disorder such as depression to commit a crime on a moment of intense impulse. For example, president Reagan had an attempted assassination on his life by someone who qualified under this test (Comer, 2013). This made it an unpopular defense. It was a test that could have been used for alcoholics abusing their spouses as well. The usage of this test is quite conservative as a result. Some courts will not recognize this test depending on the state. Some states don’t even recognize the NGBRI plea such as: Idaho, Kansas, Montana and Utah (so let’s pretend we aren’t in Utah for the purpose of this paper or any of the other states that ban the plea). Only 1% of cases attempt the usage of the NGBRI plea so it isn’t frequently abused. 15% of these cases are like Raskol’s, murders that is (Comer, 2013). In order to have the strongest case for Raskol the lawyer has another psych professional (preferably a forensic psychiatrist, but more on that later as to why) sign off on him being unstable and a danger to himself and others (if you recall earlier he was evaluated by a forensic psychologist). This gets Raskol into a psychiatric facility rather than jail. While this lets him get the proper healthcare it also subjects him to higher scrutiny by the forensic nurses (more on this later).

What will happen now? Well this depends entirely on his mental health. If he is not able to understand court proceedings his case can be postponed until he receives enough therapy for mental competence to be considered adequate to stand trial. He may not ever be able to attend trial, which effectively gives him a longer time in captivity than he would have otherwise spent in jail. Let’s say he is healthy enough though, which he is. His lawyer will now have his professional(s) take a stand, giving testimony as to the client’s mental health and capacity. Forensic nurses, psychologists, and psychiatrists are all the potential individuals to take the stand.

How might these different professionals benefit Raskol? Let’s start with the forensic psychiatrist. They will typically have the benefit of status, but when it comes to cross examination they won’t necessarily be as well suited to hold their ground. They have little background in anything relating to the evidence behind criminal actions and lack the patient exposure with their clients (Stevens, 2004). A forensic psychologist is really valuable for presenting evidence and statistics though as they have a lot more background in the research of criminals, but they typically still lack a lot of the patient exposure pre-trial (Bailey, 2015). Seeing how Raskol was civilly committed he is under the scrutiny of the nurses on staff pretty continually (Stevens, 2004). If he were to try and fake any conditions they would be the ones to catch it. While they are not as well versed as the psychologist or as well educated as the physicians they do have the largest personal experience with the patient typically out of the three. Having said, that if a physician makes a miscall nurses will speak up (Stevens, 2004). Forensic psychiatrists are typically split up to several prisons and clinics so they don’t have the time to really get to know the patient as well. So now that the jury has been updated on the mental health of the defendant what happens?

Well we haven’t even talked about the evidence against Raskol! Remember the court’s decision is supposed to be made on an empirical basis and if it isn’t, well we’ll talk about that soon. There was no evidence that directly showed his involvement in the crime and only his confession is the evidence against him. There was another man by the name of Nikolay who had confessed to the two murders before Raskolnikov. There’s also the issue that Raskol’s confession could have been considered forced. A certain police officer by the name of Porfiry had been constantly harassing Raskol for quite a while and this would mean there is reasonable doubt. Someone else could have been pressing Nikolay as well for a confession. Why not use a lie detector in this case? Surely that could clarify what’s happening! Well turns out not really. There are two problems with lie detectors. One is that they only have an 86% accuracy when people believe it works, but that’s still better than the 54% accuracy of people for detecting lies (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013). If people don't believe the lie detector works the accuracy drops significantly to below the average persons ability to detect a lie (Costanzo & Kruss, 2015). What might the jury be able to say in regards to their decision? There are five decisions which can be reached: guilty, not guilty, NGBRI, guilty with diminished capacity, and guilty, but mentally ill. NGBRI places Raskol into a psych ward until mental health improves to a sufficient extent. Guilty with diminished capacity would mean a reduced sentence with therapy. Lastly guilty, but mentally ill means that he would receive treatment in prison with no reduction to his sentence. Likely Raskol would receive the verdict guilty, but mentally ill. The reason for this is because the jury is usually more lenient with Caucasian individuals in regards to mental health cases (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013). If the outcome is considered unfavorable the lawyer might ask for a judge’s intervention, a retrial, or a higher court’s decision (Law, 2013 and Bergman, 2016). 25% of the time a judge disagrees with the Jury’s verdict so there is a good chance the lawyer could try and make this decision (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013). There would have to be reasonable doubt for the judge to overturn a Jury’s decision and in this case, there could be if all the information was presented. If the Judge doesn’t go in favor of Raskol they could potentially assign a harsher punishment so there is a risk here.

Let’s say that the jury’s decision was not overturned though. Raskol will be sent off to jail with the same sentence anyone else would have received, but just with therapy. If you didn’t realize I have been referencing Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Spoiler alert Raskolnikov comes out a reformed man! This was without therapy so results would likely have been better afterwards. Hopefully though we can come to understand just how complicated social systems are and how they intertwine with biological systems. That’s all this is, a biological/societal dysfunction as a person proceeds through a convoluted social process.

Works Cited

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2013). Social Psychology. London: Pearson.

Bailey, E. M. (2015, December 2). Forensic Psychologist, Career Video from drkit.org. (D. Kit, Interviewer)

Bergman, P. (2016). Appealing a conviction. Retrieved from www.Nolo.com: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/appealing-conviction.html

Comer, R. J. (2013). Abnormal Psychology. New york: Worth Publishers.
Costanzo, M., & Kruss, D. (2015). Forensic and Legal Psychology; Psychological Science Applied to Law Second Edition.

Dostoyevsky, F. (1991). Crime and Punishment. Penguin Classics.

Law, M. (2013, July 23). Can A Judge Overturn A Jury’s Guilty Verdict? Retrieved from www.minicklaw.com: http://www.minicklaw.com/can-a-judge-overturn-a-jurys-guilty-verdict/

Loftus, E. (2013, September 23). How reliable is your memory?

Stevens, S. (2004). Forensic Nurse: The New Role of the Nurse in Law Enforcement. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.