Actual Conditions of Psychiatric Expert's Testimony and Assesment of Legal Responsibility

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

There are altogether 946 cases of mentally disordered offenders in Japan during one year in 1980. On the basis of these cases, a study was made to clarify the condition of psychiatric expert's testimony and the assesment of the responsibility made by the lawyers and prosecutors.First, we studied the situation of the psychiatric testimony for violent schizophrenic offenders(homicide 119 cases, physical assault 96 cases). We found poblems as follows :1. Some of the psychiatrists who conducted the psychiatric testimony didn't have enough knowledge in forensic psychiatry. It is necessary to provide more extensive education for them.2. It is important to have adequate facilities and staff for the psychiatric testimony.3. The content and conclusion of the psychiatric expert's testimony should be used in the management of the mentally disordered offenders.Secondly, we studied the condition of assesment of legal responsibility in 102 cases of recidivism, found in a follow-up study of the 946 cases. The determination of legal responsibility for the same cases tended to vary considerably. We found the problems as follows :1. The legal responsibility was not always assesed according to the severity of the disease or the disorder of the judgment. The prosecutors were proposed to assess the offendrs of serious crime as irresponsibility, while those of the mild crimes as limited responsibility.3. It was common to the recidivism that the crimes were committes under the similar mental conditioins. Even to such cases, it was not rare that the assesments were varied from full, limited to no-responsibility.4.The fact that no security measures are there in our country seemd to cause recidivism of mentally disordered offenders frequently, and meanwhile, to make lawyers difficult to asses the legal responsibility.