The Study of The Competency to Stand Trial For Mentally-ill Criminal Defendants - Lesson From The U.S. Legal System

• Main Authors: CHUANG, WAN-JU, 莊宛儒
• Other Authors: WANG, JIANG-JIA
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5ye289

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 法律系研究所 === 105 === Recently, mentally-ill criminal offenders are reported from time to time, thus raising public panic towards mental illness and triggered retributive justice to become the mainstream conception in the society. Cruel and severe punishment is therefore leading the formation of criminal policy. However, defendants with mental illness concurrently hold both identities as “patient” and “criminal”; suppose they are brought into usual criminal procedure and imposed with charges and sentences, it could be injustice to them as they cannot understand what they committed had constituted criminal offenses due to mental disorder; on the other hand, if we look at it from the perspective of restorative justice, the penalty cannot make defendants to realize the severity of their actions on victims. Therefore, the competency to stand trial, being the basic requirement of the criminal procedure, is duly necessary for the defendants with mental illness. The requirement of competency to stand trial is stipulated under Paragraph 1, Article 294 of The Code of Criminal Procedure, that "If an accused is insane, the trial shall be suspended until he recovers," which the core spirit is to protect the defendants’ rights of instituting legal proceedings. The essence of criminal procedure encompasses oral argument process whereby the parties perform attacking and defending pursuant to their respective standing in cross-examination. If the defendant is not able to understand that he will be decided guilty through this process and the ensuing punishments, or is not able to effectively communicate with his attorney of his litigation strategy due to the mental illness after he was prosecuted, the procedure of oral argument performs practically no function and thus may seriously infringe the right of the defendant. Therefore, the litigation procedure shall proceed on the premise that the defendant has the ability to "understand the meaning of litigation procedure" and "assist the attorney in pursuing attacking and defending actions". Where the defendant has no such ability, the criminal procedure shall be suspended until he recovers. From the perspective of purpose for penalty imposition, in addition to uphold fairness and justice, the proceeding of litigation procedure also aims to educate the defendant. By realizing the crime the defendant himself had committed and clarifying the whole fact through cross examination, he may truly comprehend the pain the victim has suffered, which may be more effective in preventing recidivism. Moreover, from the perspective of the victim, if the victim intends to pursue absolute retributive justice, having the defendant with the competency to stand trial (i.e. his mental condition recovers to the condition that the people can be put on trial) means the defendant will face the litigation procedure and the penalty as normal people, rather than feeling nothing due to his mental illness. Justice will be served only to that end. Hence, ensuring the defendant is with the competency to stand trial is good for the balance between the condition of the mentally ill defendant in the procedure and the justice the victim intends to pursue. After reviewing all Taiwan laws and regulations, while The Code of Criminal Procedure provides skeleton structure of the competency to stand trial, there is no corresponding rules with respect to the determination criteria, method of forensic mental health assessment and the applicable procedure after competency to stand trial is recovered, and literatures covering related topics are also lacking. Contrary to the hollow of rules of our country in respect of competency to stand trial, the United States of America has set forth the definition in its statute, which not only describes the conditions of incompetency to stand trial, and also the rule for a subject to apply for hearing to determine competency when it is unclear. In addition, the case law over the years in the United States have gradually weaved out a clear structure for the determination of competency to stand trial, which can be served as a reference for the development of our country in this respect. This thesis proposes to take reference of the laws and regulations and milestone cases related to the competency to stand trial of the United States, compare and integrate them with the structure and needs of our laws and regulations so as to clarify the future direction in establishing systematic rules, in the hope of improving overall structure for competency to stand trial.