Lee Coleman – The Insanity Defence, Storytelling on the Witness Stand
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 212 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2019
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on MIA Radio, we present our second chat with Doctor Lee Coleman. In the first interview in this series, we discussed Lee's career, his views as a critical psychiatrist and his 1984 book Reign of Error. For this second interview, we focus on psychiatry in the courtroom and why the psychiatric expert witness role may be failing both the individual on trial and society at large. We also focus on Chapter 3 of Reign of Error: The Insanity Defence, Storytelling on the Witness Stand.
In this episode we discuss:
- What led Lee to his involvement in the courtroom as a psychiatrist testifying as to the reliability of psychiatric testimony itself.
- How both psychiatrists and psychologists have been given a role by society to judge both the current mental state of an individual on trial and also the potential future behaviour of that individual.
- How important it is to address the three dimensions of past, present and future when looking at psychological testimony.
- The role of psychiatry in the trial of Patty Hearst, when required to provide evidence that she has been brainwashed and therefore was incompetent to stand trial.
- How Lee and a colleague, George Alexander, came to arrange a press conference to address the issue of the reliability of psychiatric or psychological testimony.
- How speaking out in this way ultimately led to many years of opposition not only by psychiatry but also by attorneys on both sides of the debate.
- The legal definition of the term 'insanity' and the context in which it is used.
- How if someone is found legally insane, the punishment may be far worse and the incarceration far longer than if that person were found guilty.
- The details surrounding the trial of Dr. Geza De Kaplany, who committed a gruesome murder but came to be represented at trial as having multiple personalities and being mentally disordered.
- The inconsistency often found in both the defense and prosecution in the courtroom when it comes to subjective assessments of the mental state of an individual.
- That it is crucial that people band together to share information and to actively demonstrate and have conferences and influence legislators because we can't rely on media channels and we can't rely on professional bodies.
Relevant Links:
YouTube - Competent to Stand Trial?- A Psychiatric Farce
YouTube - Society Doesn't Need Protection from the "mentally ill"
To get in touch, email us at podcasts@madinamerica.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice. |
| 0:13.1 | Hello, this is James, and welcome to the Madden America podcast. |
| 0:17.4 | And this week I'm delighted to say that we have the second in a series of chats with |
| 0:21.9 | Dr. Lee Coleman. Lee, welcome. It's so nice to get to chat again for our second interview. |
| 0:29.9 | And just to remind people that for people that want to know a bit more about you, we covered |
| 0:34.3 | your career and, you know, some of your broader thoughts on psychiatry in our |
| 0:38.4 | first interview, which is available on Mad at America, which people can go and listen to. |
| 0:43.4 | So this time, I thought it might be nice to perhaps delve into a bit more detail and focus |
| 0:49.8 | perhaps on one chapter from your book, Rain of Error. And I think I mentioned last time, a chapter |
| 0:55.2 | that really kind of stood out for me was the chapter dealing with not guilty by a reason of |
| 1:00.4 | insanity. And in that chapter, you mention a few trials and a few proceedings that kind of give a |
| 1:07.9 | hint to why there are problems with this approach in the courtroom. |
| 1:12.1 | So I wondered if we could start by perhaps getting into the relevant chapter in Rain of Error to |
| 1:17.6 | kind of see where we get to. |
| 1:19.1 | Okay, James, thank you very much. |
| 1:21.2 | It is, of course, always a pleasure to have a chance to talk to you and knowing that |
| 1:26.0 | there are people out there listening because that's the whole |
| 1:28.6 | point of it. It's for you people out there. So I think we need to let the audience hear |
| 1:34.8 | how I came to be exposed to these subjects and actually end up working in these areas as it |
| 1:44.0 | unfolded in my work. So we're going to do the best we can. |
| 1:48.7 | I think you're going to find it very interesting but very revealing about what psychiatrists |
| 1:55.7 | don't know how to do. That is the theme. They don't know how to do any of the things that society so desperately |
... |
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