For 150 years, courts have recognized that people who have a significant mental illness may be found not guilty of a crime—even it they did the crime.  The Amygdala Hijack is a term psychologists use for an activity in the brain where it goes “haywire.”  Each of us has two parts (and more, of course!) to our brains.  They’re called the neocortex and the amygdala.  The neocortex is the thinking, rational part that over rides the primitive, impulsive part called the amygdala.  We need both because in times of danger, the amygdala fires and tells us to run!  In other situations, where we may be tempted, at first. to violence the neocortex acts.  It tells us to “think before acting.”  See this article in Psychology Today.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/51483/handling-the-hijack.pdf

However, for people who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, the brain is slightly jumbled.  PTSD means the person has experienced a traumatic incident that scarred them.  It’s so bad they continue to re-live the situation.  Even in the absence of an actual threat.  The person’s brain sees the threat while the amygdala fires to warn the body.  It fires so  fast that it “hijacks” the neocortex so the brain/body act impulsively as if the threat were real.

So far, there aren’t any states that accept the amygdala hijack as a defense.  But PTSD was tried during the 1980s.  Particularly for Vietnam vets and the Battered Woman Syndrome, lawyers attempted to convince courts to allow the defense.

The weirdest case was the “Twinkie” defense.  The accused was found not guilty because he’d eaten dozens of Twinkies right before the crime.  He was so full of sugar his brain malfunctioned.  Of course, this happened in a California court—no one else agrees with it.

But there is a lot of legitimate research and psychological experts that say our legal system is long over-due for an up date into the 21st Century regarding mental illness.

What do you think?  Should we open the doors to the use of these mental illness defenses?

In my own research for the new book, I created a character who is accused of killing his wife.  The defense lawyer, Ted Rohrbacher, wants to try the amygdala hijack as a defense.  The prosecutor fights him every inch of the way.  There’s another problem, too.  No one can find the wife’s body.  So, can the husband be found guilty of murder if there’s no body to prove she died?  Even if he did kill her, can he get off because his brain was hijacked by the amygdala?

The book’s coming out soon!  I’ll let you know when.

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When a guilty person “gets off” like this it makes many of us upset or even mad.

What does this really mean and how does it work in a trial?

In Minnesota, the law allows a not guilty verdict by reason of a mental illness defense if: at the time of committing the crime the defendant was laboring under such a degree of mental illness that he was unable to know the nature of the act he was committing or he did not know his act was wrong.

Interestingly, this standard comes from the 1800s in England when Daniel M’Naghton killed someone he mistakenly thought was the English Prime Minister.  Even today, we call the Minnesota law the “M’naghton Rule.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M’Naghten

The mental illness defense mechanism works like this in a trial.  In the first part, the prosecutor presents evidence of factual guilty which the jury decides.  In the second part, experts such a psychologists or psychiatrists testify about the defendant’s mental health.  The jury must make two decisions.  If they fin the defendant not guilty, the trial is over.  If they find the defendant guilty, the jury must go further and decide if the defendant’s mental illness defense fits within the M’Naghton Rule and is, therefore, not guilty.

Does this mean the accused walks away from any responsibility?

No.  The defendant would be moved into mental health court where another judge (no jury here) decides if the accused will be committed to a hospital for an indeterminate time but not prison.  Some legal scholars are looking at the laws in light of modern day knowledge of mental health.  A few states have experimented with new, broader statutes than the M’Naghton Rule.  The new rules tend to allow more people to be found not guilty by reason of a mental illness defense.

On the frontier of expert thinking is something called, the amygdala hijack.  It refers to people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and a “primitive” part of the brain called the amygdala.  For most of us, when faced with a traumatic situation, our “higher” or thinking part of the brain over-rides the amygdala and makes a rational choice.  But for others, the amygdala “hijacks” the rational part and causes them to do violent things they normally wouldn’t do.

Should this become a mental illness defense?

I’m working on a new book in which the amygdala hijack plays a big part in the story.  I’ll write more about it in my next blog and explain what it is.

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