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97 Ind. L.J. 297 (2022)
Delusions, Moral Incapacity, and the Case for Moral Wrongfulness

handle is hein.journals/indana97 and id is 309 raw text is: Delusions, Moral Incapacity, and the Case for Moral Wrongfulness E. LEA JOHNSTON* Responsibility is a legal not medical construct. However, science can be useful in exposing faulty assumptions underlying current doctrine or practice, illuminating changes in practice or evidentiary standards to better effectuate the law 's animating purpose, and even suggesting updates to legal standards to account for modern understandings of functionalities of concern. This Article uses the science of delusions to assess the law regarding, and practice of establishing, criminal irresponsibilityfor defendants with psychosis. Over the last two decades, researchers from the cognitive sciences have compiled strong evidence that a host of cognitive and emotional impairments contribute to the origin and maintenance of delusions by impairing decision-making. This Article uses insights from those literatures to make three contributions. First, it analyzes current insanity standards and demonstrates their intimate relationship with rationality. It then argues that courts should consider evidence of any significant reasoning impairment, whether cognitive or emotional, as probative to sanity. Second, the Article explains how the reasoning impairments associated with delusions should bear upon assessments of a defendant's incapacity to know, or ignorance of the wrongfulness ofher criminal act. In assessing the latter, the Article argues that scientific research exposes as misguided the traditional rule expressed in M'Naghten's Case which is currently followed to varying extents by nine jurisdictions that a delusional defendant lacked knowledge of her act's wrongfulness only if her delusion, if true, would have justified or excused her act. Instead, the science exposes the strict legal wrongfulness standard as inappropriate for populations with delusions and suggests that courts should consider excusing defendants whose delusions cohere with the general thrust or gist of a legal defense. * Professor of Law, University of Florida Research Foundation Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law. J.D., Harvard Law School; A.B., Princeton University. I am grateful for the summer grant provided by the Levin College of Law. I appreciate the thoughtful feedback offered by Christopher Slobogin, Susan McMahon, Christina Gliser, Deborah Denno and her students at Fordham College of Law, and the anonymous reviewer of the New Criminal Law Review. I am also grateful for comments on an early draft by Jamelia Morgan, Eve Hanan, and Kathryn Miller. Finally, I thank Sara Bensley, Crystal Ellison, Lucas Goda, Mikaela Guido, Jonathon Haney, Elta Johnston, Vince Leahey, Joshua McCroskey, Jonathan Nickas, Lindsey O'Brien, Melissa Petersen, and Nadia Rossbach for their outstanding research assistance.

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