Citation

Chauhan P, Warren J, Kois L, Wellbeloved-Stone J. Psychol. Public Policy Law 2015; 21(1): 50-59.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, University of Arizona College of Law and the University of Miami School of Law, Publisher American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/law0000026

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Joint evaluations of competency to stand trial (CST) and mental state at the time of the offense (MSO) are common practice and implicitly assumed to be unrelated to evaluators' psycholegal opinions. To investigate this assumption, the authors used a sample of 5,731 forensic evaluations conducted over a 17-year span to determine (a) the prevalence of joint versus CST-only and MSO-only evaluations; (b) their association with evaluators' opinions regarding defendants' competency and/or sanity; and (c) whether referral source, defendant-specific and evaluation characteristics, and psycholegal criteria interact with joint versus referral-specific evaluations in determining evaluators' opinions.

RESULTS indicate that a joint evaluation structure occurred in 54% of the evaluations. Opinions of incompetency were significantly more likely in CST-only relative to joint evaluations. Conversely, opinions of insanity were significantly more likely in joint relative to MSO-only evaluations. Within the joint evaluations, competent and sane was the most frequent opinion. In CST-only evaluations, opinions of incompetency were associated with defendants' medication noncompliance at the time of the offense, being charged with a nonviolent offense, and the evaluator receiving defendants' criminal records. These variables were not associated with an incompetency opinion in joint evaluations. In joint evaluations, the absence of prior conviction was related to an opinion of incompetency; this was not the case for CST-only evaluations. The predictors of insanity did not interact with evaluation structure. These findings suggest that the evaluation structure is more important than commonly assumed for forensic practice and may help to inform the clinical practices of evaluators.

Language: en