What Does “Not Guilty” Mean?
While dealing with mental health issues is difficult at the best of times, when the mentally ill person commits a crime resolution is even more difficult. The New Jersey Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether persons who are aquitted of a crime by reason of insanity and who are then returned to the community should be further monitored by the court. It would be easy to say yes to further monitoring or even to suggest these people should not be allowed in the community if they have tendancies toward violence but the method needed to the monitoring requires careful consideration.
There is already in place laws to protect the institutionalized insane from being held beyond the point for which they are a danger to themselves or others but there is no such monitoring mechanism in place for those insane deemed ”non-dangerous”.
Law is about precedent. So if the precedent is set in one area it can arguably be applied to others. For example, if a person who has been found not guilty but will still be monitored by the state then that monitoring can be applied to others found not guilty. If the court can require a person found not guilty to submit to medical tests, require the release of medical history not just to the court but to the district attorney’s office, then not guilty for all is redefined. Is that what we really want to do? Granted there needs to be something done to ensure public safety from the criminally insane who are not institutionalized and not complying with there medical treatment plan, but not guilty needs to mean not guilty, even for the insane.