Word: mental
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Crimson's overall showing was mediocre at best, but the opposition was very good, and Harvard showed and ability to play well at times. A shortages of prior outdoor practice time, the hectic pace of the games, and the tiresome traveling in Florida helped accounted for the mental errors which offset the strong effort of the team...
...activity, or other biological symptoms, may be unwilling to concede insanity unless these factors are present. Calculating the effects his testimony will have, one expert may overstate a judgment because he knows that a jury's finding of insanity will start proceedings to commit the offender to a mental institution; another may be influenced by the thought that more rehabilitation will be possible in an enlightened prison than a backward asylum...
...most common disagreements arise when experts are pressed to take a third step away from the defendant's present condition. With few exceptions, they are asked to decide whether his mental state during the crime made him fit the legal definition of a word which few psychiatrists use: insanity. Under the 126-year-old M'Naghten rule, insanity is not knowing what one is doing, or not knowing that it is wrong. However, many people who can tell right from wrong are nonetheless patients in mental hospitals, and some courts permit more elastic definitions-such as the Durham...
...rest. This solution would end courtroom squabbles over the question of responsibility, but could raise a host of new problems and require a drastic reform in present legal processes. It might, for instance, lead to further disputes about whether to send a man to a prison or to a mental hospital for rehabilitation. Ultimately it might require doing away with the distinction between prisons and asylums altogether. It might also tuck away in an administrative process what Yale's Goldstein calls the "almost forgotten drama of individual responsibility," a drama which present trials highlight and make "part...
...more likely approach, advocated by both lawyers and psychiatrists, would change court rules. Experts could testify fully on the defendant's mental state, but would not be forced to render opinion on the ultimate question of responsibility. "That's a decision for the jury," says U.C.L.A.'s Suarez. Federal Judge David Bazelon adds that "the decision is often painfully difficult, and perhaps its very difficulty accounts for the readiness with which we have encouraged the experts to decide the question." In a democratic society, which believes in letting its citizens decide how offenders should be treated...