If you didn’t catch this from a few days ago, I’m working on getting everything done for my summer semester at college, so I don’t have much time on my hands. As a result, I’ll be putting my homework on my blog until I have some extra spare time to blog, which may or may not be of any interest to you.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is an extra credit paper I wrote for my abnormal psychology class about Jared Lee Loughner and the issues he has been having with schizophrenia and court appearances.

Back on August 1, 2011, I got a breaking news update via email from CNN: “Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to U.S. House chamber to a standing ovation to cast vote in favor of debt ceiling deal.” This updated reminded me of the Tucson, Arizona shooting that occurred back on January 8, 2011 that injured 14 people (one being United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords) and killed six people. Once the constant updates on the news ebbed away after a while, I stopped keeping track of the developments of the story. To get back to date, I went on Wikipedia to read about what ended up happening to perpetrator Jared Lee Loughner, and saw that he was, as expected, having some issues with psychological disorders.

On March 3, 2011, Loughner was indicted on charges of murder and attempted murder, adding up to 49 total counts. Six days later, Loughner pleaded not guilty to all 49 charges. During his court appear-ance on May 25, 2011, he was ruled not competent to stand trial after two individual medical evalua-tions and an outburst during the hearing. The trial was suspended indefinitely until Loughner receive proper treatment for his diagnosis of schizophrenia. His next court appearance will be on September 21, 2011, when he will be reevaluated for competency.

The troubling components of that decision are the indefinite suspension and the reevaluation. What would happen if Loughner is not found not competent to stand trial on September 21, 2011, and this drags on for years without a solution? Would Loughner be held in a psychiatric facility for the rest of his life without ever being convicted for his crime and sentenced to death?

To prevent this, on June 26, 2011, United States federal judge Larry Alan Burns ruled that prison doctors could forcibly medicate Loughner to make him competent to stand trial. A few weeks later, a federal appeals panel reversed the decision, saying, “Since Loughner has not been convicted of a crime, he is presumptively innocent and is therefore entitled to greater constitutional protections than a convicted inmate.” This means that Loughner now has permission to refuse psychiatric medication, and effectively never be considered competent to go on trial. This prompted me to do some research about forcible medication through involuntary treatment.

The whole issue of forcible treatment was introduced into law with Dr. J. B. O’Connor v. Kenneth Donaldson (1975) when the United States Supreme Court ruled that forcible hospitalization and treat-ment of an individual who is not dangerous and can survive safely by him/herself is a breach of his/her freedoms and rights. Four years later, Rubie Rogers v. Robert Okin, M.D. (1979) declared that a mental patient has the right to make treatment decisions in non-emergency circumstances, and in the case of an inability to make a decision, a full evidentiary hearing in court is required to allow substituted judg-ment (doing what the patient would most likely have decided to do without the patient being able to explicitly state so). In Washington, et al. v. Harper (1990), the United States Supreme Court ruled that an incarcerated inmate with a psychological disorder can be medicated against his or her will only in the circumstance that (s)he is a danger to him/herself and those around him/her.

Applying these case laws to Loughner’s situation, the main issue becomes determining if he is a danger to himself or those around him. The fact that Loughner went ahead and shot 19 people in an attempt to assassinate a politician seems like pretty solid evidence that he is a dangerous man, but according to the ruling of the federal appeals panel, they think otherwise. It has been proven and has become common knowledge that those who commit crimes are more likely to commit more crimes in the future than those who have not committed any crimes at all. Even though Loughner is confined, that does not stop him from committing more crimes while being held (such as assaulting and battering fellow inmates and facility staff). It seems vital that Loughner’s mental state and level of dangerousness is reanalyzed as soon as possible to make sure that he does not use a loophole in the law to end up being confined in a hospital for the rest of his life and never face the punishment he deserves.