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88 St. John's L. Rev. 495 (2014)
Autism and the Criminal Defendant

handle is hein.journals/stjohn88 and id is 513 raw text is: AUTISM AND THE CRIMINAL DEFENDANT CHRISTINE N. CEAt INTRODUCTION Picture this: A man at a fast food restaurant walks towards his table with a tray full of food. A woman, who is on her cell phone, passes by the man and is not paying attention. She bumps into the man and his food spills all over him. The man panics. She begins to apologize, but the man cannot focus. He is upset about the food, upset that it fell, and upset that the woman touched him. The woman continues to apologize and suddenly grabs his arm to clean the food off of him. Shocked, the man pulls his arm back, and swings his other arm at the woman. He hits her. She is on the floor. He did not mean to hit her, but he did not stop himself either. It all happened so fast. He simply could not deal with all that had happened at that moment. The man was diagnosed with autism when he was six months old. He spent his life confronting the challenges of his condition, and overcame many of those challenges. He went to college, got a job at a computer-programming agency, and now lives on his own. Overall, he is able to function in his day-to-day life, but the challenges of his disability remain and manifest in specific ways. His social skills are impaired, and he often engages in self-isolation. He dislikes social pressures. He was fired from his last job as a customer service representative because working with people made him nervous. Like many other autistic individuals, he has difficulty communicating with others. He does not process chaotic interactions very well and finds it difficult to focus when too many things are going on at I Notes and Comments Editor, St. John's Law Review; J.D., summa cum laude, 2014, St. John's University School of Law; B.A., Government and Politics, 2010, University of Maryland, College Park. I would like to thank Dean Michael A. Simons for his guidance in writing this Note, as well as my family for all of their continuous encouragement and support. 495

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