Good work

A Victory for Justice

Over the last 50 years, the psychiatric profes­sion has made a mockery of our criminal justice system. It has gotten to the point that the insanity defense, bolstered by psychiatrists masquerad­ing as expert witnesses, can be invoked any time someone commits a heinous crime.

Thanks to a recent US Supreme Court decision, we may be coming to our senses. In 2003, Arizona courts convicted Eric Clark of first-degree murder for “intentionally and know­ingly” luring a policeman to a parking lot and killing him. The defendant didn’t deny that he killed the officer, but he pled insanity. The state ruled, however, that in order for an insanity plea to stand, the defendant must be incapable of knowing his actions are wrong at the time the crime is committed, and Eric Clark did not meet this criteria.

He appealed, stating that his rights to an insanity defense had been truncated, and his case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court. These astute justices didn’t buy it. They ruled that the state of Arizona was perfectly within its rights of limiting the insanity defense, and Clark was not deprived of a fair trial.  They also put psychiatrists in their place, stating, “No matter how the test for insanity is phrased, a psychiatrist or psychologist is no more qualified than any other person to give an opinion about whether a particular defendant’s mental condi­tion satisfies the legal test for insanity.”

I truly hope this decision will allow other states to wrest the justice system from the fraud­ulent grip of psychiatrists and psychologists.