Dr Griffin a Competent Competency Evaluation

By now you have read the de-identified competency evaluation completed by Dr. Griffin. With the knowledge you have gained from the lecture and text, do you feel the competency evaluation was thorough and appropriately conducted? If not, what could have been done to improve the evaluation?PSY 205 Module Two YouTube Lecture Hello, class. This is Dr. Barter again. And I’m going to talk to you a little bit about the difference between competency evaluation and sanity or insanity evaluation. First, let me put my glasses on and get a good look at you all. Guess we’ll be taking those off. So the difference between sanity and competency is really an important one to distinguish, because a lot of times, people starting out in forensic psychology may confuse what those things mean. The one that would come first would generally be the competency determination. When competency is being assessed, the forensic psychologist– sometimes psychiatrist, but usually psychologist– assesses the ability of the person who’s been charged to participate in their own defense. So questions are asked such as, is this person able to communicate with their attorney. Are they able to engage in their own defense using an attorney, using the court system in a way that’s fair to them? Competency to stand trial might be impacted by serious mental illness. What if the person is psychotic? They’re talking to people that aren’t there. They’re talking to light switches. They’re a paranoid schizophrenic and they have not been treated for a while. They have not taken medication. Then may be deemed incompetent to stand trial. Now, in that particular case, competency might be restored. The judge may order that the person go on medication. And once they get on medication and their psychosis remits enough so that they’re living in reality again, then they could be deemed competent. So there can be a restoration of competency by the court. What if a person has an IQ of 40? An IQ of 40 is an extremely low IQ. Most people, I would think, with an IQ of 40 have a legal guardian. They’re probably not their own guardian. And they probably function at an age much, much younger than their chronological age. That person may well be deemed incompetent as well. But can their competency be restored? It can’t. IQ is a fixed number, and especially a low IQ like that probably couldn’t be remediated in any way. So in a competency evaluation, we try to determine whether the person being evaluated can participate in their own defense so that they can mount a good court case and get a fair trial. And can they communicate with and understand their attorney in the process? That’s competency. Insanity is another construct. It’s another thing that we do. And that is more of the guilt or innocence determination based on a person’s state of mind at the time the crime was committed. So for example, if a person has a psychotic break and they shoot someone, and they’re charged with attempted murder, they may well be found not guilty by reason of insanity. They didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t have control of their actions or their faculties or their thought processes. And so in that case, they really are deemed insane, not having the amount of sanity to make a good decision about whether something was right or wrong at the time that they did it. And so an insanity determination is made after the person has been determined competent to stand trial. So you see where those two things are different. Competency doesn’t have to do with guilt or innocence. Competency has to do with whether the person can stand trial at all. And sanity doesn’t have to do with competence to stand trial. Sanity has to do with whether the person was guilty or not based on their state of mind at the time of the crime. Molly, come over here. I’m afraid she’s going to knock my camera over. So when we make these determinations, we have to be aware that there are different levels of competency. There are different levels of sanity or insanity. In the long run, we make a determination, and it is the court that makes the decision, finally. So remember that– and I’m going to tell you this many times– forensic psychologists don’t make decisions in court. We provide a competency assessment. But the judge determines whether the person is competent or not based on what we say. There may be opposing opinions. One side may be saying the person is competent, and the other side may be saying they’re not. Same thing with sanity or insanity– the judge or the jury makes that determination based on the psychological evaluation, but we don’t make that determination. We do not make those decisions. We’re not fact finders, and we’re not decision makers in the court room. So I hope this helps to clarify the difference between competency and insanity. I know in module 2, you’ll be looking at a competency evaluation, a determination of whether a young man is competent to stand trial. And your professors and I really look forward to any input you have in the discussion board about that particular evaluation. So enjoy the module. Thank you for listening. And Molly thank you as well. …