What Are the Insanity Statutes in the State Arkansas?

What are the insanity statutes in the state I live in? In Arkansas, once the defense states that they are using the insanity plea, all proceedings are suspended. This is also done if there is reason to believe that the defendant is not fit to proceed (LexisNexis, 2012). Once the proceedings are suspended the judge will order the defendant to undergo an evaluation by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist. After the evaluation is done the judge will then determine if there should be more testing, commitment to the state mental hospital, or if the proceedings can resume. If the defendant refuses the evaluation the psychologist/psychiatrist will have to determine if the refusal is due to a mental illness.

How often the insanity defense is used and how successful is it? This defense is really not used as much as you would think. Only about one percent of county courts use this defense (PBS). The majority of these cases are successful. This type of defense ends in a plea barging most of the time. With the low amount of cases using this defense it is hard to track the success rate. The ones that do decide to go to court normally are found guilty.

What are the major criticisms of the insanity defense? One criticism is that the person pleading insanity is faking it. People fear that a murderer or rapist will say that they committed the crime because of a mental illness and then be released back into society to commit another crime. This is feared because of the difficulty in proving a person legally insane.

Another criticism is that a celebrity will use this plea just so they can get away with anything they want to do. Or that someone will shoot a public official and then say that they are insane. An example of this would be when John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1982. The Government psychiatrist diagnosed him legally sane and three defense psychiatrists diagnosed him legally insane. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity (Linder).

The biggest criticism would be the difficulty in proving that someone is insane. This can only be done by a licensed professional. There is an extensive series of tests that are run to determine the mental status of an individual. I say that this is the biggest criticism because there are cases that even the professional has been fooled.

Should the psychologist provide an ultimate opinion