Behaviour that underpins non-pathological criminal incapacity and automatism: Toward clarity for psychiatric testimony

摘要

Psychiatric expert testimony is challenging in cases of violence when the accused person submits a defence that he or she was so overwhelmed by emotions triggered by an upsetting event that his or her violent behaviour was an uncontrollable consequence of the emotions. This defence is usually presented in terms of an automatism particularly not attributed to a mental disorder. Clouding testimony in these cases is the various definitions of both automatism and mental disorder definitions by which the jurisprudential distinction is made between a sane and an insane automatism, or pathological and non-pathological incapacity (NPCI).