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Since the 1991 Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act, if the judge determines that the defendant is unfit to plead, a "trial of the facts" is held in which evidence is heard and the jury asked to determine whether the defendant did the act or made the omission charged against them as the offence. [9]
The number of findings of diminished responsibility has been matched by a fall in unfitness to plead and insanity findings. [11] A plea of diminished capacity is different from a plea of insanity in that "reason of insanity" is a full defense while "diminished capacity" is merely a plea to a lesser crime. [23]
In consequence fitness to plead was very rarely raised by defendants. [1] Under the 1991 Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act 1991, if the accused is found unfit to plead then a "trial of the facts" before a jury is held, so that the evidence against the defendant is tested to some degree.
Furthermore, although the plea had to be based on some form of mental abnormality, that condition need not be one bordering on insanity. Instead the court ruled that diminished responsibility required the existence of an abnormality of mind which had the effect that the accused's ability to determine or control his actings was substantially ...
Robinson v. California: A state cannot make a person's status as an addict a crime; only behaviors can be criminal. 1st 1968 Powell v. Texas: Similarly to Robinson v. California, a state may not criminalize the status of alcoholism itself; the state may only prohibit behaviors. 8th
“The system in California is very DA-driven,” says Ellen Kreitzberg, a former public defender who teaches law at Santa Clara University and who opposes the recall. “They decide how to charge the defendant, they decide the plea deal. The judge can decide not to take the plea deal but it very rarely happens. The judge is secondary.
The exception to this rule occurs when the court determines that such use would violate the ex post facto clause of the Constitution – in other words, if the sentencing guidelines have changed so as to increase the penalty "after the fact", so that the sentence is more severe on the sentencing date than was established on the date that the ...
A former guard at California State Prison, Sacramento, pleaded guilty Monday to four felony counts that could net him up to 60 years in prison for physically abusing two inmates, one of whom later ...