The compulsory medication of criminal defendants asserting an insanity defense violates three major constitutional rights: the right to privacy, the privilege against self-incrimination, and the right to present and manage a defense to the charges filed against them. These constitutional rights reflect the importance of the state shouldering the entire burden in its contest with the individual, of not allowing the state to use that individual as the source of its case against him, of permitting defendant's access to both the tools and the information they need to fight the state's case, and of letting them be the architects of their own defense. When the state insists on the medication of insanity defendants as a condition of their being 'competent' to stand trial, each of these goals is compromised. Such compulsory medication makes it easier for the state to rebut the defendants' contentions that they were insane at the time of the offense -- by using the cruel device of using the defendants' own bodies and minds as vehicles for this rebuttal. Medication denies the defendants the evidence they need to demonstrate convincingly their insanity and violates the basic constitutional precept of deference to personal autonomy. (Author summary modified)