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Right to a Partisan Psychiatric Expert: Might Indigency Preclude Insanity?

NCJ Number
109677
Journal
New York University Law Review Volume: 61 Issue: 4 Dated: (October 1987) Pages: 703-737
Author(s)
M P Goodman
Date Published
1987
Length
35 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the Supreme Court's decision in Ake v. Oklahoma (1985) which held that constitutional due process requires that the government provide indigent criminal defendants with a competent psychiatrist on a showing that their sanity is likely to be an issue at trial.
Abstract
After describing the facts of Ake v. Oklahoma, an analysis of the Court's opinion concludes that although the ruling explicitly granted indigent criminal defendants the right to nothing more than one objective psychiatric opinion, the Court's analysis implicitly granted indigents the right to a partisan psychiatrist. The paper surveys the use of psychiatry within the criminal justice system, examines the pervasive skepticism of both commentators and the judiciary toward psychiatry, and compares the role of court-appointed counsel to that of court-appointed psychiatrist. The development of due process in indigents' rights cases is discussed. Reapplying the Mathews v. Eldridge due process calculus applied by the Ake Court, the author concludes that, because of forensic psychiatry's diagnostic inadequacies, indigent defendants should have the right to see a defense-oriented psychiatrist. 226 footnotes. (Author summary modified)

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