Insanity plea: Interexaminer agreement and concordance of psychiatric opinion and court verdict.

Abstract

Previously, Albers and Pasewark (1974) found a 98% concordance rate between psychiatric recommendations relating to involuntary commitment and subsequent court decisions. Much like this prior investigation, the present study investigates the degree of agreement between psychiatric evaluations and eventual court verdicts but in a different context, namely, the employment of the plea in criminal proceedings. Additionally, it addresses the question of interexaminer agreement in a nonadversary examiner situation. Data were derived from 484 consecutive Hawaiian criminal cases in which the not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) plea was entered as a defense. In these cases, 444 defendants had made the plea once, 11 twice, three on three occasions, one on four occasions, and one in five instances.